Tom Chen, Developer in Kaohsiung, Taiwan
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Tom Chen

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Bio

Tom is a senior front-end engineer with 7+ years of experience at remote-first US companies. He's a self-taught web developer with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. His achievements include increasing build speed by 83% and reducing front-end bundle size by 20% over the years of maintenance. Tom is an open-source contributor, fixing code and updating documentation, and a unidirectional data-flow advocator with recent XState experience.

Portfolio

Freelance
ECMAScript (ES6), Babel, Webpack, React, AMD
Private Client
JavaScript, React, Chakra UI, Next.js, XState, APIs, REST APIs...
SpoonRocket
jQuery, Ruby

Experience

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

React, Babel, Webpack, Next.js, Single-page Applications (SPA), REST, XState, Speedy Web Compiler (SWC), HTML5, CSS3

The most amazing...

...project I've contributed to are the open-source projects that have brought about notable improvements and for which I received positive feedback.

Work Experience

Individual Front-end Consultant

2015 - PRESENT
Freelance
  • Improved the efficiency of the stockholders’ daily workflows drastically.
  • Crafted a Next.js single-page application from 0 to 1 with smooth navigations and great UX.
  • Shipped React-powered single-page applications from their user stories.
  • Reviewed the front-end architecture and suggested insightful action plans.
  • Migrated to the modern React components from the Backbone.js controllers.
  • Upgraded the asset build toolchain to webpack/CommonJS from RequireJS/AMD.
  • Testimonial: "Tom could work with vague requirements." – Client.
Technologies: ECMAScript (ES6), Babel, Webpack, React, AMD

Senior Front-end Engineer (Contractor)

2021 - 2022
Private Client
  • Developed a Next.js single-page application with smooth navigation and a great user experience. It leverages JavaScript, React, XState, and Chakra-UI as the foundation, and Lodash, date-fns, and i18next for fine-granted features.
  • Used GitHub issues and PRs and extensive code reviews. Communications were done on GitHub issues and Slack DMs and could work with vague requirements.
  • Impressed stockholders and users with the new system, greatly improved their daily workflow efficiency, and reduced wasted time.
Technologies: JavaScript, React, Chakra UI, Next.js, XState, APIs, REST APIs, User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), Application State Management, Internationalization

Front-end Engineer

2014 - 2015
SpoonRocket
  • Engineered the admin interface for the food delivery dashboard UI.
  • Worked closely with designers and product owners to deliver features within Agile sprints.
  • Rewrote the whole single-paged codebase with batman.js from the previous AngularJS one.
  • Improved efficiency by 20% by restructuring the server-generated JavaScript response into a JSON-based API for a dashboard page.
  • Created email templates from scratch with mockups from designers.
Technologies: jQuery, Ruby

Technical Guru

2013 - 2014
MimiOpen
  • Brainstormed the product with two co-founders and defined MVP with UX in mind.
  • Engineered the matching system between the college coaches and the high school students.
  • Involved in the DevOps process with daily deployments on Heroku.
Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails 3, Bootstrap, jQuery

GitHub

https://tomchentw.com
This is a single-page application built with technologies like Next.js, React, and Chakra-UI. It mainly served as my personal website.
I configured auto deployment to Vercel and set up Next.js Static Generation with this project.
2009 - 2013

Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering

National Taiwan University - Taipei, Taiwan

Libraries/APIs

React, REST APIs, jQuery

Tools

Webpack, Babel, PostCSS

Languages

ECMAScript (ES6), JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, Ruby

Paradigms

Functional Reactive Programming, Functional Programming, REST

Frameworks

Next.js, Redux, Ruby on Rails 3, Bootstrap

Platforms

AMD

Other

Single-page Applications (SPA), Electrical Engineering, Chakra UI, XState, APIs, User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), Application State Management, Internationalization, Styled-components, Speedy Web Compiler (SWC)

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