Ben Duncan

I'm now working as an independent contractor, where I've done prototypes for Nike.com, build the UI for a React Native iPhone app for a social networking company, and have built and helped maintain multiple small business websites.

I worked with teammates to create and deploy a universally rendered application framework to be used by ourselves and other internal teams for the migration of the site from static Python to React. As team lead, I also interfaced with product managers and other stakeholders about incoming features or product changes to consult on feasibility or timelines, and helped limit internal team processes (maximizing developer time) and encouraging cross-team communication and knowledge sharing. I also created a styleguide and living documentation for Sass styles and React components to encourage code reuse throughout the site. This was done as a custom NodeJS application that would render live components with specs and examples of Sass mixin and variable usage.

After joining the team as a dedicated Javascript developer, I created a custom AMD loader to minimize size while including features that (at the time) RequireJS did not have. This allowed the team to write front end code in self-contained modules and pull in dependencies as needed, speeding up the site and cleaning our front end by conforming to a modular pattern. Later, when tasked with building a UI for editing web pages, a designer and I planned and built a drag and drop WYSIWYG tool where users could build a web page from scratch, loading images and writing in movable components. That tool was popular with users and continued to be used and extended for years after I left. To help support tracking automated marketing campaigns, we used D3.js and vector based graphics abstracted into a jQuery plugin to simplify development and render charts with custom animations for our specific needs. For a greenfield project I was tasked with bootstrapping the structure, tooling, and patterns. The project was developed using CSS components and a documented design system using CSS 3, Backbone, and Marionette.