UNICEF KidPower
About the project
Featured in TIME 25 Best Inventions of 2016!
UNICEF Kid Power gives you the power to save lives. By getting active with the UNICEF Kid Power Band, you can go on missions, earn points and unlock therapeutic food packets for severely malnourished children around the world.
Presenting Sponsors: Star Wars: Force for Change and Target
My role (2015 - 2017)
A large UNICEF funding partner requested a release of the KidPower app much sooner than the team had planned. My expertise was brought on to help bring the mobile experience to market for nationwide holiday sales in a very tight timeframe.
I worked with the KidPower team to architect and implemented the MVP around their existing BLE (sync) code. We made a vast amount of progress with a small team, and launched a stable app in time for the 2015 holiday season!
By mid-2016 user feedback was showing that the existing BLE code stack was not scaling well. To address these issues, I re-built the full BLE communication stack, virtually eliminating user issues around syncing.
Once Kid Power hired a full-time iOS developer, I continued working with senior management to understand the goals of the project and provide appropriate solutions, scope, and architecture for their growing internal team.
Mid-2017 I stepped back into a more hands-on role to architect and build Apple Health integration and an Apple Watch app to allow parents to more easily participate in the program alongside their kids.
Justin helped us quickly take our product from a MVP that we could technically ship to a polished product that we were proud of and actually works in the marketplace. He is a serious and nimble thinker and a curious problem-solver who is great at looking ahead, seeing potential pitfalls and offering solutions. He’s a great asset and I’d absolutely recommend him. (read more …)
‑ Ryan Modjeski Sr. Director - Product, UNICEF USA
I cannot recommend Justin more highly. He does not tolerate “good enough”, especially of himself; he strives toward excellence. He believes in products that meet a genuine need, are intelligently designed, and are a pleasure to use. He’ll take the time to make something the right way, the first time. Justin would be an invaluable asset to any organization for his energy, responsibility, and technical savvy, but I believe his desire to exceed expectations and pursue challenges is what truly sets him apart.
‑ Daniel James, iOS Developer with UNICEF KidPower
Walmart Labs / Asda
About the project
ASDA is one of the largest retailers in the UK.
My role (2014 - 2015)
I worked with the existing mobile team at Walmart Labs for 9 months rebuilding several large pieces of the UX, and underlying data/API handling for the ASDA iOS app.
Gloo
About the project
Gloo provides the infrastructure and tool sets to allow organizations to quickly deploy content on their own digital platform uniquely designed for growth.
My role (2013 - 2014)
During my time at Gloo, I lead a team of 6 mobile developers through multiple major revisions of the Gloo native mobile apps to meet the needs of Gloo customer organizations. We build an entirely new UI/UX, a separate rebrand effort, and implemented a fully automated white labeling solution that provided branded apps for each customer.
During my first few weeks on the team, I identified a significant amount of technical debt that was preventing the team from quickly shipping new versions of the app. There was no time in the roadmap for a full re-write of the app, so I lead the team though an incremental rewrite of 90% of the app that resulted in >50% reduction of code! With minimal impact on the feature roadmap, the team significantly improved the speed of execution and app stability.
When I started with the team the development process was slow and in-efficient, sprint plans would often take over an hour. By working with the team to optimize our process, we were able to regularly complete a planning meeting in 15-20min, substantially reducing organizational overhead.
Justin is a solid engineer and natural leader, and his development skills speak for themselves. Justin is a great asset to any team, and I’d certainly work with him again in the future.
‑ Nico Valencia, Director of Engineering at Gloo