Jonathan D. Sousa

Zuno, Inc.

Director of Engineering

February 2015 - present

San Francisco, CA / Washington, DC

Working with a small, highly-skilled, distributed team to build Poply and support BirthdayAlarm. I am technology lead for Poply—a beautiful reinvention of online invitations—, coordinating development across backend, front end, iOS, and Android.

In taking Poply from original idea to 50,000 members and growing, I’ve successfully tackled system architecture, API structure, security, anti-harassment tools, performance, containerization, deployment pipelines, monetization, and reporting. It’s a streamlined, forward-looking product and I’ve worked on every part of it.

My programming contribution is a multifaceted ES6 web application initially created on a Backbone/Marionette framework, but which I'm migrating to Vue. The elegant layout utilizes CSS grid, flexbox, and significant animation to provide a refreshing and friendly experience to users.

I've become the primary developer on the Poply iOS app, reworking and expanding the original mix of ObjectiveC and Swift/UIKit into a modern, SwiftUI codebase.

Monkey Inferno, Inc.

Front End Engineer

April 2012 - February 2015

San Francisco, CA

The sole Front End Engineer among 25 industry leaders selected by Michael and Xochi Birch—the founders of Bebo—to be part of their private start-up incubator. This group invented disruptive technology products, built them quickly, trialed them, and spun them out into full-fledged companies.

• Rebuilt the front end of the 12-year old BirthdayAlarm website to work on mobile as well as desktop while not disorienting 55 million habituated users. Mobile use soared and membership decline was reversed.
• Implemented HTML5 video on an extensive array of mobile devices, in some cases piping the content through Canvas. Product presented to the press at 2014 Launch Festival.
• Re-architected the team’s approach to JavaScript, utilizing a custom application of require.js and Backbone integrated with our Fabric deploy scripts. 12 HTTP requests reduced to 1.
• Built a showcase website for the founders’ major project, The Battery.
• Worked extensively with responsive design, custom icon fonts, SVGs, event tracking, progressive enhancement, python django templates, embedded mobile webviews, A/B trialing, and solutions for compartmentalized front end experiments.

Sousa Consulting, LLC

Principal

March 2006 - April 2012

Washington, DC

Managed all aspects of a successful technology consulting business developing superior websites for the private sector, non-profit, and academic worlds.

• For dozens of clients I handled server configuration, database architecture, back-end programming, front end development, custom CMS modules, multilingual sites, and more.
• My goal was always to find and build the creative, appropriate, on-budget solution for every client’s particular needs. Result: clients recommended me and returned for future projects.
• Services I offered included:
  • Website architecture and standards-based development
  • Expert Drupal and WordPress programming
  • Database design and development
  • Data mining, analysis, and reporting

Association of Research Libraries

Technical Applications Development Manager

October 2001 - March 2006

Washington, DC

I was brought in to take the LibQUAL+ project from a rough pilot to a worldwide effort to measure library service quality. The core of the project was an extensively researched web survey administered to library users.

• During my tenure, over 500,000 people completed the survey in six languages.
• I created administration and reporting tools that built a research project into a friendly but powerful turn-key solution for libraries.
• Technologies used include object-oriented ColdFusion, structures and procedures in MS SQL Server for statistical analysis, SPSS, Crystal Reports, CSS, XML, and web services.
• On several occasions I was a featured speaker at major library conferences.

Doceus, Inc.

Lead Developer

March 2000 - October 2001

Washington, DC

My duties as Lead Developer encompassed meeting with clients to plan their online projects, creating technical specifications for their vision, planning and building the database systems they would use, managing a team of developers implementing my specifications, and programming key portions of the sites.

I took $750,000-projects from initial idea, to concrete plan, to successful launch.

Georgetown University Law Center

Web Technical Coordinator

September 1999 - March 2000

Washington, DC

As part of a two-person team, I planned, created, and maintained the Georgetown University Law Center web site, with over 1000 static pages integrated with two dozen databases.

Tinted Industries

Independent Computer Consultant

October 1996 - September 1999

As Tinted Industries, I provided hardware and software support to individuals and businesses.

University of Virginia - Special Collections

Computer Network Support Technician, Senior

May 1997 - December 1997

Charlottesville, VA

University of Virginia - Digital Image Center

Assistant Coordinator

September 1996 - May 1997

Charlottesville, VA

Seagram Reengineering Team

Logistics Pilot Forecaster

November 1995 - March 1996

London, England