Senior Software Engineer with 10+ years experience specializing in frontend technologies including React, TypeScript, and Node.js. Expert in performance optimization, component-based architectures, accessibility (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG), and scalable web applications. Proven leader in mentoring engineers, conducting code reviews, and driving front-end technical strategy to enhance user experience (UX).
As part of the va.gov platform team, I provided operational support and developed components for a high-traffic government website with a focus on performance, accessibility, and scalability.
Deprecated antiquated css libraries without introducing regressions on va.gov, unblocking critical node.js upgrades.
Developed web components to align with the latest United States Web Design System (USWDS), optimizing both user experience and accessibility.
Collaborated with design and product teams to create responsive, accessible components, contributing to improved user experiences.
I managed large-scale projects and pioneered development using AWS Lambda to optimize web performance for high-traffic international sites.
Spearheaded the migration of seven legacy sites from Handlebars to ReactJS, resulting in improved maintainability and performance.
Supervised initiatives to enhance site architecture, implementing serverless architecture with AWS Lambda and progressive web applications (PWAs).
Led a cross-functional team of designers and developers, ensuring UX designs were implemented accurately. Conducted code reviews, mentored junior engineers, and optimized front-end performance to enhance scalability.
Skills & Technologies: ReactJS, TypeScript, NodeJS, AWS, Lambda, Progressive Web Apps, SEO, Sass
Software Technology Group
Web Developer Consultant
Worked closely with clients like Western Governors University and Graduation Alliance to build user-centric web solutions.
Collaborated with design teams to establish web design systems for clients, ensuring scalability and consistency across platforms.
Engaged with clients to deliver solutions aligned with business goals and user experience standards.
Utah State University Research Foundation / Space Dynamics Laboratory
Student Web Development Engineer
Engineered web applications to manage Human Resources recruitment and talent acquisition efforts, as well as plan and organize hosted conferences such as SmallSat.
In the time that Kerry and I have worked together on the design system team, I've been extremely impressed with his willingness to say "yes". I think his tendency to do so speaks to an enthusiasm for the work we are doing, and a confidence in tackling difficult problems. He isn't one to shy away from working on things that are technically ambiguous, and is always willing to give his time to helping others with their tasks. ...
... Kerry is an extremely valuable member of our team. His consistently excellent work, dependability, and ability to work independently on technically complex issues are all indicators of his proficiency as a senior software engineer
Micah Chiang - Manager
Shout out to @Kerry for wrapping up work to update the css import paths in vets-website from Formation to css-library. This gets us significantly closer to getting off of Formation and allowing us to drop our dependency on node-sass. It also gets us a big step closer to being able to upgrade the version of Node that vets-website runs on, which has been a significant platform initiative for a couple of years now.
Matthew Dingee - Project Manager
The Design System team has completed the upgrade of the VA Design System (VADS) to be fully based on USWDS v3 thus finally deprecating our v1-based system, Formation. This was a herculean task which achieves the following:
New components and parity with USWDS. We expanded VADS by converting 24 components from being based on USWDS v1 to v3. This included picking up variations of those components that we didn’t have in VADS. Plus it sets us up in future to receive as many as 22 components from the USWDS system that we won’t have to maintain (so our system is now, once again, a solid year ahead of their system and now it is their turn to catch up to us by shipping their own web-components)
Foundational elements also in sync with USWDS. All typography, colors, breakpoints, iconography, and spacing units are now in sync with USWDS v3 including:
31 colors added directly to VADS from USWDS v3 with hundreds of colors now available to us.
311 icons replaced across vets-website and content-build
155 design tokens created and available for use with many already being used by the mobile application
Much improved CSS utility class library. All CSS utility classes now generated using USWDS v3
Upstream bug fixes and improvements for FREE! For several dot releases of v3 we have been getting bugs fixes from USWDS. The team also made some contributions back to USWDS during this process and we’ll continue that practice in the future. This includes accessibility improvements where VA undoubtedly leads the way in the whole of the federal government.
Shed outdated dependencies. We remove many years of cruft from our system including deleting around 20 redundant imports of Formation shared-variables. We have plans to remove more now that we are detached from Formation.
Rebecca Tolmach - Work Associate
Shoutout to @Kerry. Due to some expired contracts, he’s currently a one-man SRE team on the Platform team and doing a great job holding everything together, including acting as the Incident Commander for an outage
Micah Chiang - Manager
I'd like to shout out @Kerry and @Jami Gibbs for their leadership in the work our team did to update the root font size for va.gov.
This work touched every single application and every single page on VA.gov, and the fact that we were able to merge and deploy this to production without any visual regression is indicative of the exceptional work they did in guiding our team through this initiative. Thank you both for the exemplary leadership and ownership you demonstrated. It's inspiring, and I feel really grateful that I got to come along for the ride.
