Dean Merchant

Dean Merchant - CV

Full-stack engineer with a particular enthusiasm for front end work (❤️ React). I love learning new technologies, languages, rock climbing and trying to get other people as enthusiastic about those pursuits as I am.

Professional work

Kairos sports - Lead product engineer - 2020 - Current

Key technologies: GraphQL, Typescript, React, React native, Kubernetes, Rust, Ruby, Postgres

  • Rapid development of major new features in an early stage startup environment
  • Overhauling infrastructure to enable faster iteration speed
  • Upgrading the skills of new & existing team members

Chroma climbing - Founder - 2020 - Current

Key technologies: GraphQL, Typescript, React, React native, Postgres

  • Developed a new product for interactive climbing walls
  • Hardware design, mobile & web app creation

Pirate Studios - Project/Development Lead - 2018 - 2019

Key technologies: Netlify, GraphQL, Typescript, React, Gatsby, Heroku, Docker, Haskell, Ruby, Postgres, InfluxDB

  • Led the development of a fully internationalized, mobile first website for Pirate Studios.
  • Created a fully featured content management stack aimed at non-technical users. Developed in-house infrastructure to ensure site stability even in the presence of continual updates from content authors.
  • Architected and implemented a highly available, fault tolerant system for live-streaming audio-visual feeds from DJ studios.

Ghyston - Technical Lead - 2014 - 2018

Key technologies: Docker, Typescript, React, React Native, Redux, Node, C#, PostgreSQL

  • Collaborated closely with multidisciplinary teams to fully digitalize hundreds of care homes nationwide. Enabled carers to save hours every day filling in paper work, allowing them to spend more time with residents.
  • Trained a team of developers with no prior mobile experience in modern best practices. Delivered a new mobile app and put in place the infrastructure and processes needed for the team to take over the project post release.
  • Developed in-house infrastructure and a CLI app to allow instant zero-config deployments for a range of languages / frameworks for internal services and new client projects, speeding up development workflow considerably.

Open Source

  • Tablecloth A portable and safe standard library enhancement for Reason & Ocaml.
  • use-url-state A React hook which lets you bind a component’s state to the URL.
  • react-native-json-tree A React Native component to display JSON using a collapsible tree view, perfect for debugging.
  • jest-to-match-shape-of A Jest matcher to verify the shape of an object. Makes integration testing simple.

Education

I have a BSc in Mathematics (1st) from the University of Reading

Sabbatical

In 2019 I took a sabbatical which I used to tour Europe’s best rock climbing destinations.

Since I couldn’t climb every day I kept my skills sharp with a couple of projects:

  • FIA: A mobile app to help you deal with timezones (keeping in touch with international friends is tricky!)
  • Dice words with friends (unpublished): I built a multi-player boggle clone in a particularly rainy weekend (I did not win the boggle tournament)
  • reason-standard: A portable and safe standard library enhancement for ReasonML & Ocaml. Now merged with Tablecloth.
  • expo-leaflet: A cross platform (web & mobile) library for interacting with maps
  • Chroma climbing: I started the first prototype of what is now a business