Nick Landgrebe
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Chicago, IL, United States
Toptal member since March 22, 2017
Nick has engineered and designed products for celebrities that he has presented to the leaders of the largest tech companies. He draws on a lifelong love of programming and seven years of AI-focused development and design. In his work, Nick transforms complex technological ideas into simple concepts for everyday people to understand and enjoy. Educational products are a specialty.
Portfolio
Experience
- JavaScript - 16 years
- API Development - 10 years
- Git - 10 years
- PostgreSQL - 10 years
- Ruby on Rails (RoR) - 10 years
- React Redux - 6 years
- SDK Development - 4 years
- AngularJS - 4 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Ruby on Rails (RoR), Node.js, React, Next.js
The most amazing...
...thing I've developed is an improv learning app for Lin-Manuel Miranda (creator of Hamilton) and Wayne Brady (star of Whose Line Is It Anyway?).
Work Experience
Engineering and Product Lead
Freestyle+
- Led the design, management, and development of an app for learning improv from Freestyle Love Supreme, the group started by Lin-Manuel Miranda (creator of Hamilton) and featuring Wayne Brady and other Broadway talent.
- Delivered an immersive mobile app and content management web app using Expo React Native, Next.js, and GraphQL and deployed it to AWS with CI/CD pipelines.
- Created multiple lesson formats, including video/audio games, free response text games, timed arcade text games with templated Madlib-style text-masked responses, and correct answer validation using GPT-3.5.
- Developed a rewards system using HTML-rendered socially-shareable output posts from finishing journeys that are personalized to the user's various answers transcribed using OpenAI's Whisper speech-to-text.
- Presented innovative mission-critical deliverables to a client advisory board made up of leaders of Google, Nike, Zoom, Snap, and other industry-defining organizations.
Chief Technology Officer, Co-founder
Ideafire
- Led the design and development of Rails web and mobile app for advanced note-taking and consumption of all forms of media in one feed, including YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), articles, images, Kindle, TikTok, and Instagram using React and React Native.
- Researched and implemented unique AI solutions for bringing content curation into prompt inputs and chain-of-thought into generated outputs at a time when available LLMs (GPT 3.0) to provide social-media style outputs to create user journeys.
- Performed code reviews, owned all Figma designs, and wrote all user stories and feature cards across full-stack web and mobile.
- Developed API and JavaScript SDK for internal and external developers based on open-source libraries that I wrote, simplifying state management and API interactions across all front-end repos.
Front-end Developer
Duolingo, Inc.
- Launched the front end of v3 of the Duolingo English Test, an AI-powered product used by millions of international students to certify their English skills when applying to universities.
- Improved user experience through guided example tutorials and expanding input formats (using jQuery).
- Upgraded website-wide raw CSS stylesheets from v2 to v3 with advanced customizations.
Full-stack Developer
Doxel
- Developed singlehandedly V1 of the enterprise web app for Doxel.AI's autonomous rover, enabling construction project managers to project budget, schedule overruns, and track construction errors down to individual pipes and boards.
- Created graph visualizations for massively complex AI output datasets generated by vision AI.
- Developed construction site virtual explorer using 360-degree images generated by Vision AI.
API/SDK Lead
Occasion
- Headed an effort to re-engineer the foundation of the company's entire Rails codebase — increasing quality, accelerating development, and lowering user interaction wait times.
- Collaborated using Agile to release an enterprise API using the JSON API standard—elevating the company to a greater strategic position in the marketplace.
- Created singlehandedly the cutting-edge next version of the company's critical product—its consumer-facing widget—using React Redux and the company's SDK.
Experience
Flowzone
https://freestyleplus.com/flowzoneCreated all Figma designs, strategized all user stories, scoped all feature cards, developed web and mobile apps, and presented mission-critical deliverables to the leaders of Google, Nike, Snap, Zoom, and more.
Ideafire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUiRVTEBJaUWhoapro
Various viral video templates were made, such as simulated SMS conversations and long-form storytelling with multiple AI-generated lipsync'd characters/narrators generated using chain-of-thought techniques. I implemented AI-generated voiceovers with Google and ElevenLabs and automatic text captioning using FFmpeg complex filters.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Economics
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - Champaign, IL
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Moment.js, API Development, React Redux, React, JSON API, Node.js, Underscore.js, RequireJS, Ruby on Rails API, Graph.js, Twilio API, React Router, jQuery, Immutable.js, FFmpeg, Backbone.js, Mustache
Tools
Git, Babel, RSpec, Terminal, GitHub, Webpack, CircleCI, Atom, RubyMine, SourceTree, Slack, Zapier, Adobe Photoshop, Prisma, Expo, AWS ELB
Languages
HTML, CSS, HTML5, ECMAScript (ES6), Object-oriented JavaScript (OOJS), JavaScript, Ruby, Haml, SQL, GraphQL, TypeScript, C++, Sass, Java, Python 3, Less
Frameworks
React Native, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Redux, Jest, Underscore.String, Bootstrap, Jasmine, AngularJS, Material UI, PixiJS, Angular, Sails.js, Django, Next.js, Stimulus, Ruby on Rails 6, Express.js
Paradigms
Asynchronous Development, Agile, Functional Programming
Storage
PostgreSQL, MongoDB
Platforms
Docker, Linux, MacOS, OS X, Twilio, WordPress, Heroku, Nexus, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda
Other
Open Source, API Design, SDK Development, APIs, Full-stack, Web Development, Software Engineering, Software Architecture, API Integration, Mind Maps, Graphs, Responsive Design, Axios, Open Source Customization, Square, Google Material Design, Enzyme, Economics, Design, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Stable Diffusion, OpenAI GPT-3 API
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring