Stephen Schooley

Full Stack Web Developer

About Me

Hello and welcome to my site! I am an ambitious and energetic Full Stack Web Developer, from Kitchener, Ontario. I am passionate about creating data driven solutions to emerging challenges, in the form of dependably functional, accessible and intuitive pieces of software. I value every part of the development process, from research and design to deployment and maintenance. I am a continuous and constant learner, fuelled by a deep desire to stay on the cutting edge of emerging technologies, and deliver the best possible experience to clients and users alike.

My journey with Web Development began in earnest, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when like so many others, the way I lived and worked changed forever. After years of interest, I suddenly found myself with the time to immerse myself in Web Development education, and on the advice of some dear friends in the industry, enrolled in the Front End Web Development Program at Juno College of Technology. Shortly after graduating, I began my first full time job as a Front End Developer. My desire to take ownership over more and more of the development cycle lead me to expand my learnings into database and server-side architecture, before ultimately taking a role as a Full Stack Developer with Communitech in 2023.

I have greatly benefited from the experience with Communitech, working primarily on tools for the administration of the federally funded ElevateIP Program, which provides vital financial and educational support to growing Canadian companies as they seek to protect their Intellectual Property. I have worked in truly every facet of the development, from participating in user research along with the UX/UI Designers, to ensuring the clean and efficient collection, storage and utilization of user data, to the deployment of the site, which allowed me the oppourtunity to further grow my capacities with DevOps and AWS. I have cherished this chance to see the real world impact of a clean and flexible User Interface leading to thousands of applications, providing clean data for insights into the tech eco-system and facilitate the delivery of millions of dollars worth of funding.

I seek to utilize all the skills I have aquired on my journey so far, and all the skills I continue to pursue, in order to continue to make similar impacts in new and exciting projects!

Experience

Communitech (2023-Present)

My primary focus at Communitech has been the creation of the ElevateIP Portal, a MERN app that allows for 5 different user groups to interact and manage all stages of the program. The Frontend is built on React and TypeScript to provide a modern and relaible UI/UX, and integrates a number of other external libraries and API's such as Google Maps. Designs were provided in Figma files and accurately reproduced as dozens of fully functional and responsive pages.

A Screenshot of the Elevate IP Portals homepage

The Backend is built with Node.js and Express.js, and JWT is used for user authentication. The integrity of the data is ensured through both Frontend and Backend verifictions, and it is securely in a MongoDB database. There are a myriad of CRUD operations that can be carried out by the various User groups, using proven development and design patterns, to advance or reject the application at the many necessary stages of administration. Conditionally rendered UI's based on the Backend data ensure an application's status is kept up to date for all user groups, and automated communications based on the actions taken are sent to the relevant users via NodeMailer integration.

Deployment of the portal, both on the developement and production servers, is handled through a number of Amazon Web Services and triggered via a GitHub Action. Hosted on an AWS EC2 and utilizing CodePipeline and CodeDeploy ensures seemingless server updates are pushed with no server downtime and no impact on live users.

Q4 (2021-2023)

At Q4, I helped create modular and modern Investor Relations sites, for clients ranging from those launching an initial public offering, all the way to huge scale companies on the Fortune 500. Collaborating closely with designers, QA and management in tightly structured Sprints, I produced high quality code in a rapid paced environment, handling multiple ongoing projects and priorities.

SANAS Health (2021)

With SANAS Health, my first full time contract following graduation from Juno College of Technology, I was responsible for the rebranding and conversion of their Shopify and WordPress sites, using custom theming and PHP to optimize the user experience. In doing so, I refactored and unified a variety of codebases to ensure uniformity, efficiency and readability across multiple sites, themes and languages. This, combined with a complete overhaul of their accessibility practices, Google Tag Manager implementation and other SEO optimizations, allowed them to demonstrably increase their SEO and more effectively track and direct ad spending.