Headshot of Matt Whitaker

Matt Whitaker

Front-end engineer by depth, full-stack engineer through breadth.

Frontend first React expert and JavaScript generalist with over a decade of building user interfaces and their backing counterpart systems.

Career

Depth, then breadth.

Frontend has been the throughline of my career. Nearly every role I've held touched it, most often with me acting as the de facto SME or lead. I've worked as a UX facilitator bridging design and implementation, advocated for best practices, contributed to frontend architecture and development, helped level up my peers, and led small teams building greenfield application spaces.

I enjoy sharing that experience and supporting everyone from juniors to seniors, while still doing the strongest individual work I can.

My frontend experience spans splash pages, charting and analytics platforms, component libraries, and complex administrative interfaces, including work on accessibility, internationalization, and web performance.

  • HTML / CSS / JavaScript 12 yrs · Expert
  • TypeScript 6 yrs · Strong
  • React / Redux / RTK 10 yrs · Expert
  • RxJS 5 yrs · Strong
  • Next.js 2 yrs · Comfortable
  • Figma / Component Systems 5 yrs · Strong
  • Tailwind 3 yrs · Strong
  • Web Performance 9 yrs · Strong
  • a11y / i18n 9 yrs · Strong

Backend has been part of the picture for most of my career. Since every frontend needs something behind it, I've worked as a fullstack engineer across most of my roles, with my hands in each layer. That work spans standard web services, MVC applications in .NET or Spring, client-supporting orchestration services (including serverless), and distributed microservice systems built with Node or Python, along with some earlier work on CMS platforms.

Working across that range of stacks has given me more than general knowledge of backend patterns. It's given me a broad vocabulary I can apply as standards evolve and as I move between projects and teams. I can pick up most web-focused backend systems fairly quickly, whether they lean on object-oriented, functional, or event-driven approaches.

  • Node.js / Express 4 yrs · Strong
  • C# / .NET 4 yrs · Comfortable
  • Java / Spring Boot 5 yrs · Strong
  • Python / Flask 3 yrs · Comfortable

I studied data systems in college, so thinking about how data is stored, represented, and queried has been part of my approach from the start. In my fullstack roles that's shown up as ordinary data work: modeling domains, designing schemas, and shaping how data flows from storage to the client.

Most of that has been in the relational space, where I'm comfortable with normalization, query design, and the tradeoffs of schema evolution. I've also used NoSQL where the data's shape and access patterns called for it.

  • SQL / MySQL 9 yrs · Strong
  • No SQL / MongoDB / DynamoDB 3 yrs · Exposure

Infrastructure sits at the core of every web system. It's not my focus, and I have less hands-on experience than dedicated backend or site-reliability engineers, but I've had plenty of chances to think like one. My experience centers on the "edge," where the frontend meets orchestration, including hands-on work with serverless architectures. Beyond that, I'm familiar with platforms like Kubernetes, and I can reason about systems architecture even where my hands-on experience is lighter.

  • System Design 8 yrs · Strong
  • Edge Architecture 12 yrs · Expert
  • AWS 6 yrs · Strong
  • Serverless 4 yrs · Comfortable
  • K8s 9 yrs · Comfortable

Open to Senior Frontend or Full-stack roles — fully remote, or onsite/hybrid.
Seattle Eastside / Bellevue / Redmond.
W2 Contract or Full-time.

Let's talk
The Emwhit Project

The Emwhit Project

An independent music project.

Solo, self-taught, entirely DIY. I write, track, and mix every song myself—no band, no outside production. Just me, my voice, and my computer. It serves as my creative, expressive outlet, contrasting with with the more logical and problem-oriented world of my career.

Projects

Stuff I've built personally

Learnings and musings about personal projects.

The Archives

Things I've built professionally

Some examples of work I've produced for others. Not everything is publicly accessible or available in the form it was at the time I was contributing. Here I focus on learnings and outcomes.

Contact

Let's build something.

The fastest way to reach me is below. I read everything myself.

contact@mattwhitaker.name