Cypress Cove at Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Hi! I'm Stephen, a UI/UX Engineer.

Ex-Meta Web developer with a knack for building accessible, mobile-first user experiences. Aspiring user experience designer with an eagerness to learn!

Picture taken by Stephen Vergara

About

Stephen Vergara in the tulip field
Hello there!

My first time programming was when my high school introduced me to Scratch during an annual Hour of Code back in 2012. Not long after, I took a course in Java and the rest was history! Since then, I've made a horde-style brawler game in Unity for my capstone, graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science, and worked for three (3) years as a Web software engineer at Meta.

I started as a backend programmer, learning Java, C++, Python, and C# in school. Entering the workforce, I pivoted to Web development, and I love fiddling with web technologies and transforming them into user experiences.

After learning React and GraphQL at Meta, I self-taught TypeScript, Amazon Web Services (AWS), server-side rendering, and many different styling methods.

When I'm not coding, however, I love kayaking, singing karaoke, and playing video games!

Experience

  1. Software Engineer II at McDonald's Corporation

    Full-stack Web engineer for McDonald's "Value Creation Engine" vendor product. Will start end of May, further information TBD.
    ReactTypeScriptNode.js

  2. Software Engineer at Meta Platforms, Inc.

    Full-stack Web product software engineer for the Org Effectiveness team within the Enterprise Engineering division. Released multiple high-priority stakeholder feature requests pertaining to HR-sensitive employee data. Leader of team app performance optimization opportunities.
    ReactHackGraphQLRelayMySQLJest

  3. Software Engineer Intern at Facebook

    Intern for the Traffic Analytics team within the Infrastructure division. Created monitoring tool for team oncall to measure network packet failures with interactive web page.
    C++PythonThriftMySQL

  4. Research Assistant at the University of Michigan

    Assistant at the university's Transportation Research Institute as part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program. Conducted an anthropometric study for Defence Research & Development Canada (DRDC). Analyzed/visualized the change in posture for 3-D scans of military personnel with respect to varying levels of uniform encumbrance.
    MATLABWolfram Mathematica

Projects

  1. Simple "Keyboard" Piano

    Small app that presents a user's computer keyboard as a virtual piano keyboard, built with a GUI and audio playback using the Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML).
    C++SFML

  2. URL Shortener

    FastAPI application + Chrome Web extension that generates a shortened version of the current tab URL on right-click using Chrome's context menus and notifications, and redirects user from shortened link to original URL when entered in the address bar.
    PythonPostgreSQLChrome Extensions

  3. v1 (GitHub Pages)

    Static single-page application with user-determined color schemes and supported with unit and end-to-end testing.
    ReactTypeScriptSCSSBootstrapJestPuppeteer

  4. v2 (Remix + AWS)

    First server-side-rendered web application with data fetched via AWS Lambda and DynamoDB and assets saved in S3 and CloudFront.
    RemixNode.jsMantineVanilla ExtractAWSSST

  5. v3

    Optimum performance and accessibility, built with Next.js and TailwindCSS.
    Next.jsTailwindCSSFlowbiteVercel