ResumeMichael Pelletier

Lead Engineer

Upstatement is a design and engineering studio that works with clients on everything from research and strategy, to branding, to complete transformations of their online presence.

• Technical Director on more than 25 projects, frequently juggling more than one project at a time.
• Worked across many different stacks including PHP, Node, Ruby on Rails, VueJS, React, TypeScript, WordPress, Craft CMS, and even used Google Docs as a CMS once. Wrote technical briefs and documentation, participated in client interviews, performed technical walkthroughs and client training sessions, and contributed to statements of work and creative briefs.
• Pioneered an engineering mentorship program and regularly held open office hours to support others.
• Gave company-wide presentations on VueJS and context switching, and led a standardization project on our SCSS usage.
• Streamlined new project creation and created a Starter Kit for Craft CMS that has saved hundreds of developer hours.
• Clients included Tito’s Vodka, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Trace, PBS Newshour, the American Thoracic Society, Covid Protocols, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Earth Alliance, The Miami Herald, Flagship Pioneering, and many others.

Senior UX Engineer

Traackr is an influencer marketing management platform that makes it easy for brands to discover, and connect & collaborate with influencers.

• Led a project based around discovering new influencers who are invested in your brand - which won a "Best Influencer Discovery" award in early 2019.
• Introduced ES2015 support, Jasmine front-end unit testing, and the VueJS Framework, and served as a resource for the team in these areas.
• Worked closely with our designer to build a team-wide style guide and enforce consistency in both the look and feel of different aspects of the application.
• Followed Scrum Process (Sprints, Sprint Planning / Review / Retro, Story Pointing). Worked with our Product Owner to prioritize User-Experience focused bugs, technical debt, and feature requests.

Senior Front-End Developer

Now known as Vecna Healthcare, Vecna specializes in software for patients in hospitals - used for check-ins on kiosks or mobile devices, with patients being able to fill out questionnaires and view their records and bills, and automating many tasks for the hospital staff.

• Improved build processes using Gulp to include automated compiling ("hot reloading").
• Worked with our designer to begin implementing a sophisticated styleguide that included realistic mock patient data, built within our application.
• Became intimately familiar with the Torso framework for Backbone with the intent of becoming a core developer.

Senior Web Developer

Society of Grownups was a financial education startup initiative backed by MassMutual - focusing not on generalities, but helping young adults apply lessons and behaviors to meet their specific goals.

• Helped grow the development team from 2 to more than 12 developers. Responsible for reviewing resumes, interviewing, and onboarding. Additionally, improved hiring processes, including writing a programming test.
• Led a 6 month project, supervising 7 other developers and tasked with a complete rewrite of the website, including an upgrade from Ember 1.5 to 2.4, and the addition of Ember-CLI and Ember-Data.
• Designed a collaborative office space for developers, designers, and QA to work more closely together.
• Mentored two junior developers by citing practical examples of best practices, pairing, offering encouragement, and enforcing diligent code reviews.
• Helped push forward an initiative based around employees volunteering in the community (“Grownups Give Back”).
• Implemented improvements to the Team Culture with the creation of a quarterly 2-day Hackathon, and a monthly game night.
• Introduced Scrum processes and attended Scrum Master training with the development team.

UX Engineer

Vista Higher Learning is a foreign language textbook publishing company with a branch that included a SAAS web application as an online language learning tool used in high schools and universities.

• Served as the lead UX developer for a satellite team of 8 back-end engineers.
• Assisted Product Management in the writing and tasking of features and user stories.
• Drew wireframes and worked closely with the designers on new features with a focus on user experience. Integrated designs ensuring cross-browser compatibility.
• Wrote 4 new XML tag parsers in Ruby on Rails for the purposes of creating online homework assignments for students to complete.
• Presented team-wide "tech talks" covering topics such as the benefits of SASS, cross-browser compatibility, JavaScript namespacing patterns, and solving the problem of having too many document ready calls.
• Maintained CSS and Javascript for a large code base spread across 4 applications.
• Ensured that feature specifications were updated through the Agile development process, and that the QA Manager had accurate test plan coverage.

CoFounder & CTO

Founded out of Minneapolis and through the Beta startup accelerator, HomSurfin was a real-estate startup aiming to bring more social and cutting-edge tools to the process of finding a home.

• Led development and feature planning of a prototype mobile application using Vue, Quasar, and Python.
• Assisted with branding and design work.
• Participated in business pitches and user interviews, and helped run an event around user research.
• Planned out post-funding hiring for an entire engineer team, in terms of roles needed, salaries, responsibilities, and how this would achieve our goals. Helped to codify broader company benefits.

Founder & CTO

Neon Remedy Studios is a digital production studio behind Half-Life: A Place in the West, an officially licensed digital graphic novel that is the first comic book to be released via the Steam media distribution platform.

• Managed company contracts and invoices, as well as the interviewing, hiring, and firing of contractors.
• Handled all technical accounts including email services, Adobe Suite and Dropbox subscriptions, the Steam store page, and more.
• Oversaw translations, worked alongside artists on different aspects of production.
• Developed an application for visualizing sales data.
• Calculated projected sales, handled discount schedules, and created budgets each year to allow us to meet our goals.

Writer & Editor

• Co-wrote and edited Half-Life: A Place in the West. Currently also serving as editor for Phase Transition, a Half-Life novel and prequel to A Place in the West.
• Contributed as a writer and editor on Slugblaster which was named IGDN's Game of the Year for 2022.
• Assistant editor for the RPG Crescent Moon, lead editor for its supplement The Exiles as well as the B/X edition. Wrote the official module Whychwood Fair for the B/X edition.
• Wrote & published unofficial RPG supplements for Blades in the Dark and Monsterhearts.
• Currently writing an RPG called A Passage Through about a medium and their spirit companion, solving mysteries and helping restless ghosts cross over to the other side.