gksander

I'm Grant. I build cool shit.

headshot

Code cowboy

TypeScript connoisseur. Animation aficionado. Frontend web, mostly React and Next.js. Cross-platform mobile with React Native, Kotlin, and Swift. Backend with Node.js. Can do a bit of cloud wrangling.

Team leader

With a background in education and technical communication, a passion for people, and the technical sophistication to guide projects – I'm your guy when it comes to leading engineering teams.

Lifelong learner

Learning is one of my favorite past times, followed closely by teaching others. You'll catch me learning new things on the daily and walking head first into horizon expansion.

Background & Experience

My academic and work background.

Experience

My work history. From teaching calculus, to slinging code, to leading teams.

VP of Engineering

Helping client engineering teams shine their brightest. Overseeing the development of open source software and community outreach.

Formidable
June 2022 – current
Sr. Software Engineer

Full stack web and mobile on the Platform team. Built client SDKs and developer tools to help third parties integrate with Coinbase's fiat payment rails.

Coinbase
Nov. 2021 – June 2022
Sr. Software Engineer

Software consultant, building software and helping others build software better. Focus on front-end web and native mobile using primarily JS tooling.

Formidable Labs
Mar. 2021 – Nov. 2021
Sr. Software Engineer

Team lead on health/insurance tech client. Full-stack web and mobile. TypeScript, React, React Native, and Node.js.

Synapse Studios
Jan. 2020 – Mar. 2021
Sr. Software Engineer

Full-stack web and mobile development. React Native, Vue.JS, and Ruby on Rails.

Henri Home
Sept. 2019 – Jan. 2020
Software Engineer

Full-stack web development of eCommerce sites and internal tools. Vue.js, NodeJS, and MongoDB.

Artisan Colour
Aug. 2018 – Sept. 2019
Software Engineer

Development and R&D of custom online math courseware. JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL.

COSma Learning
Jan. 2015 – Aug. 2018
Math Instructor

Taught calculus and precalculus. Lead professional development workshops. R&D of online courseware.

Arizona State Univ.
May 2014 – Aug. 2018

Education

My academic background in theoretical mathematics, computational science, and education.

M.A - Mathematics

4.0 GPA. Focus on theoretical mathematics, math education, and online curriculum development.

Arizona State University
2018
B.S. - Mathematics

4.0 GPA. Focus on theoretical and applied mathematics.

Arizona State University
2014

Projects

Some open projects I've worked on.

Groqd screenshot
Groqd

A type and runtime safe query builder for the GROQ query language.

Clips screenshot
Clips

A screen recording app built with web technologies. Check it out.

Mandelbruh screenshot
Mandelbruh

A mandelbrot fractal generator built with raw WebGL and Svelte. Check it out.

React Native Zephyr screenshot
React Native Zephyr

TailwindCSS-inspired styling library for React Native. View the docs.

Personal PokeDex screenshot
Personal PokeDex

Pokedex site built with Next.js static site generation powered by PokeAPI CSV data. Check it out.

GifMaker screenshot
GifMaker

Browser-based FFMPEG video converter. Handy for turning .mov files into GIFs. Check it out.

Content

Some dev-related content I've created over the last few years.

Blog posts

Some things I've written over the years.

How we reduced image bandwidth by 86% migrating our media library to Cloudinary

Merely migrating to Cloudinary is saving us significant image bandwidth, which is great for our end-users and great for the world.

formidable.com
February 2023
What the hex?

If you’re a designer or frontend developer, chances are you’ve happened upon hex color codes (such as `#ff6d91`). Have you ever wondered what the hex you’re looking at when working with hex color codes? In this post we’re going to break down these hex color codes and how they relate to RGB colors.

formidable.com
October 2022
Screen and Webcam Mixing and Recording with Web APIs

There are great native applications on the market for screen recording and editing. While tools like these include a whole host of powerful editing features, for short-form content that doesn’t require post-processing, they might be overkill. I wanted to explore how far browser technology has come in the way of screen sharing and recording, and attempt to create a tool that would allow me to quickly create short-form technical video content with a little bit of flare.

formidable.com
September 2022
What to Expect When Moving from React Web to React Native

If you're a React Web engineer looking to build native mobile applications, React Native is a great choice. But it IS a little different. Here's where the paths diverge.

formidable.com
July 2021
Animations in React Native: Performance and Reason-about-ability with Reanimated 2

In this article, I'm going to discuss one of the aforementioned challenges of mobile app development with RN—building smooth animations and gestures—and a tool in the RN ecosystem, React Native Reanimated, that helps us take on this challenge without fear.

formidable.com
April 2021
React Native Tilt Carousel Animation

It turns out, React Native FlatLists can do a ton of cool stuff! In this post, we'll look at one of those things: building a carousel that has a fancy tilt effect.

dev.to
October 2020
A Keyboard Display using CSS Grid

I started working on a project for a client, that consists of creating web-based typing lessons. Part of the requirement was to create a non-interactive on-screen keyboard where the keys light up on keystroke.

dev.to
April 2018

Videos & Presentations

Some videos and presentations I've made over the years.

RN EU 2021: React Native Animations
Chrome Live Expressions
Browser currentTarget vs target
Better Images in React Native
Custom Pressables in React Native