Jason Kraus

Full-stack Senior Software Engineer

I am a wonky person when it comes to improving software development. Because I have been continuously learning for 18 years, I will bring a diverse set of tools that I hope will catch on like fire: Toyota Kata, Wardley Mapping, Event Storming, Non-Violent Communication, and more! These are tools that get to the core of what I believe is the ultimate challenge in software development: intentional communication. My philosophy is that development is a process of continuously setting expectations, often in response to unexpected outcomes. To succeed, we must not only provide psychological safety to encourage dissenting viewpoints, but also give others to tools and setting to explore those questions and ideas.

Location
Fresno, CA, US
Email
Website
https://krausdevhouse.com
LinkedIn
jasonkraus

Experience

– present

Senior Software Engineer at Apple

Maintained and developed existing materials experiment designer and result tracking system written in Django:
  • Formalized existing bespoke Schema designing tool to integrate with React JSON Schema Form
  • Implemented various experiment design workflows
  • Fully containerized existing deployment to make updates a more reliable process
  • Formalized OpenSchema API definitions with DRF-Spectacular which enabled:
    • automating the typing in the Front End, reducing defect occurrence in the code
    • shipping API documentation to various labs for their own automation
  • Introduced principles around “barcode” creation, heading off a possible disaster in complexity

–

Senior Software Engineer at UrbanFootprint

Maintained a legacy urban planning GIS application with interactive maps & data products:
  • Architected data flow and model to eliminate the need to deploy for certain changes
  • Reduced total number of API requests by migrating data from key/value to RDBMS
  • Refactors resulting in bug fixes and 2 lines deleted for every 1 line changed
  • Adopted RTK over custom libraries to eliminate an integration step and simplify Redux implementations going forward
  • Reduced unit test execution time by 7 minutes by switching from Mocha to Vitest
Participated in the hiring process for engineering leadership and helped develop interview plans for engineers at various levels:
  • Responsible for creating the hands-on interview session for FE engineers
  • Responsible for leading the hands-on interview sessions for FE engineers and training junior staff as interviewers
Developed a greenfield GIS application for delivering data insights stored in BigQuery to various partners and customers, focusing much more on presentation and performance:
  • Lead FE developer for a read-only geospatial mapping + dashboard application
  • Regularly presented project updates to the company including describing customer experience and business goals, reviewing milestones, and demonstrating engineering progress toward those milestones
  • Developed + implemented back end data model and FE logic (or end-to-end implementation of) charts and dashboards supporting time series and simple data summaries

–

Web Developer at Shift3 Technologies

Worked as a fullstack developer while supporting ongoing devops efforts. Helped popularize Docker & Django at the workplace which would later become a standard option. Would meet with clients to storyboard and formulate requirements. Projects covered a variety of sectors (Ag, Edtech, Social) and stacks:
  • Brought a business process to the cloud by porting a “desktop” PHP application to run on Elastic Beanstalk & Google Drive.
  • Developed a serverless GIS ETL pipeline to digest telemetry and weather data backed by AWS Lambda & Athena. Would forecast water demand for farmers.
  • Built a brandable public data portal for a non-profit using CKAN and Django-CMS
  • Made development safe again on a Point-in-time survey application developed in Meteor.js by implementing E2E testing and data validation.
  • Enabled farmers to plan their plotting from their phone using Turf.js & Leaflet.
  • Designed a cost-effective software stack for controlling an array of bioreactors
  • Researched & popularized DevOps knowledge that brought development environments closer to production with Docker & containers Taught two classes open to the public: React & Web development with Python

–

Full-stack Developer at Edit LLC

Developed a drag and drop website builder for small businesses.
  • Removed downtime for deployments by making site hosting its own service
  • Optimized static site hosting for cost & speed with S3 & Cloudfront
  • Performant frontend by adopting Immutable & PubSub patterns at a time before Flux & Redux

–

Web Developer at Cuker Interactive

Engineered a flagship CMS & PCI compliant eCommerce product in Django.
  • Never had a security incident even with millions of dollars in transactions
  • Searchable Catalog & Product pages were optimized for conversions first, SEO second
  • Platform enabled the agency to deliver strong branding with templates & assets
  • Built a client staff panel to control pages, products, coupons and order fulfillment
  • Developed dashboard for viewing sales & fulfillment performance
  • Developed integrations with various payment and shipping providers Developed course catalog service for uPro Golf device with a companion desktop application that was served on the device itself. Django & jQuery developer for various branding sites, notably DCShoes was done in 2 weeks.

–

Quality Assurance Engineer at Semdirector

Developed and executed test cases for an SEO auditing web application.
  • Documented with exacting clarity the numbers reported by the system
  • Automated validation of numbers with parallel OLAP computations
  • Added statistical fuzz to validation process to allow for different implementations
  • SQL generated by the validation system were faster than production by ~30%

–

Associate Quality Engineer at Quality Vectors

Wrote and executed manual tests for software driven devices.
  • Developed a perl script to generate exhaustive tests for the Schlage Electronic Lock
  • Maintained aging work computers with inexpensive bulk parts from eBay
  • Eliminated locking issues with our CRM system written in Access by adding a MS SQL server as the backend.

–

Lead Developer at Archspace.org

Deployed a web based game using C++, MySQL & Linux. Researched and implemented technologies relating to object persistence and game logic scripting.

Education

–

Bachelor of Science (BS) in Computer Science from San Diego State University-California State University

References

Jason is a full-stack engineer who cares deeply about the human factors behind code. From constructing Wardley maps to ensure we’re building the right thing, to applying software design patterns and developing team best practices, Jason is always inspiring the people around him to be better engineers, team members, and human beings.

— Per Nilsson

While LinkedIn only allows you to select one position for a recommendation, I've worked with Jason at three different companies – Cuker, Edit, and Shift3/Bitwise – and interacted with him in many tech community settings over the last 15 years. I have always found Jason to be an exceptional, thoughtful software developer. He cares greatly about the quality of his code while still being able to ship on time. He is the first person I think of when I hear the term "software craftsmanship". Jason has always shown himself to be both eager to learn and happy to share his knowledge. I have learned much from him over the years, and I am a better developer for having worked with him. Any team he is on will benefit from his presence, and his teammates will be better software engineers as a result.

— Derek Payton

Skills

Node.js
Level: expert
Software Infrastructure
Level: expert
Django
Level: expert
Clojurescript
Level: beginner
Sentry
Level: intermediate
Microservices
Level: expert
SQL
Level: expert
Redux.js
Level: expert
Python (Programming Language)
Level: expert
NestJS
Level: beginner
Django REST Framework
Level: intermediate
Vue
Level: beginner
Angular
Level: beginner
React
Level: expert
Redis
Level: expert
Serverless
Level: intermediate
Continuous Integration (CI)
Level: expert
Docker
Level: expert
Client Management
Level: expert
Requirements Gathering
Level: expert
Storyboarding
Level: expert
Cloud-Native Architecture
Level: intermediate
ETL
Level: intermediate
E2E
Level: expert
Mobile Application Development
Level: expert
DevOps
Level: expert
Public Speaking
Level: intermediate
Blueprint
Level: intermediate
Tailwind
Level: expert
Datadog
Level: beginner
Apache Airflow
Level: beginner
GIS Applications
Level: intermediate
System Architecture
Level: expert
Project Management
Level: intermediate
Leadership
Level: intermediate
Team Training
Level: intermediate
Unit Testing
Level: expert
Optimization
Level: intermediate
Data Migration
Level: intermediate
Systems Integration
Level: expert
Code Refactoring
Level: expert
Interviewing
Level: intermediate
Data Visualization
Level: intermediate
eChart
Level: intermediate
Microsoft SQL Server
Level: beginner
IT
Level: intermediate
OLAP
Level: intermediate
Verification and Validation (V&V)
Level: intermediate
RabbitMQ
Level: intermediate
Bootstrap
Level: intermediate
E-Commerce
Level: expert
AngularJS
Level: beginner
Extract, Transform, Load (ETL)
Level: intermediate
Vue.js
Level: beginner
Meteor.js
Level: beginner
Requirements Engineering
Level: expert
Terraform
Level: intermediate
Docker Products
Level: expert
PostgreSQL
Level: expert
NoSQL
Level: intermediate
Redux
Level: expert
Mapbox
Level: intermediate
Flask
Level: intermediate
Google BigQuery
Level: beginner
REST APIs
Level: expert
Event Storming
Level: intermediate
Kanban
Level: intermediate
Heroku
Level: intermediate
Front-end Engineering
Level: expert
SQL Database Administration
Level: intermediate
Next.js
Level: beginner
Tailwind CSS
Level: expert
TypeScript
Level: expert
WebDriver
Level: expert
Selenium
Level: expert
Jest
Level: expert
CSS Flexbox
Level: intermediate
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Level: intermediate
GraphQL
Level: expert
React.js
Level: expert
Python
Level: expert
jQuery
Level: intermediate
Linux
Level: expert
JavaScript
Level: expert
HTML 5
Level: expert
Web Applications
Level: expert
REST
Level: expert
C++
Level: intermediate
SEO
Level: expert
CSS
Level: expert
XML
Level: intermediate
Web Analytics
Level: expert
SEM
Level: intermediate
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Level: expert
PHP
Level: intermediate