Hi! Call me Sam.

I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2021 with a degree in Information Science. Still located in Pittsburgh, I currently work at VISIMO as a software developer, contributing to a variety of projects using React and building wireframes with Figma.

Some of my first web programming projects were completed when studying abroad during the summer of 2019, but I also interned with two Pittsburgh web design agencies during college, Responsival and RedTree Web Design.

I am passionate about the design and development process and understanding the people behind technological solutions. My primary skills are in frontend development using React and React Native. At the same time, I am always improving my backend skills, primarily with Python and Django.

My strengths lie in determining and executing technical requirements based on user needs. Additionally, I am detail-oriented, which benefits my contributions to project planning and debugging. In my current position, I am the lead software developer, so I help manage budgets and determine the tasks and staffing across the variety of projects. I am also technical leads of indiivdual projects, where I contribute to client communication, project management, and overall guiding the direction of the software side of the project. Depending on the project, I also interact with Data Scientists to translate requirements in order to integrate the software with the AI/ML components.

Working on a small team with limited other frontend developers has showcased my ability to solve complex problems, and plan and execute internal initiatives for the benefit of the development process. When I first began working at VISIMO, we created our projects using Create React App, but in 2023, I took the opportunity to update the frontend project templates to use Vite. When one of our Army projects required unit test coverage, I lead the initiative to learn and implement testing on that project, and incrementally add it to our other projects. Originally I used Jest, but now with Vite, we use Vitest. Due to this work, we have added unit testing as a part of the development process whether there are external requirements or not. I was also the developer that first suggested using Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) instead of depending on native applications for offline-first projects. I now have strong knowledge of PWAs and use the Redux Offline package to create applications that work smoothly offline, which is a valuable selling point for many of our projects - I've worked on 3 PWAs in the past year.