Alek Shnayder

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Senior full-stack engineer with a product engineering mindset, experienced in taking new digital products from concept to production as well as contributing to established products at scale. I work where technology, user experience, and business needs intersect. It's not only about how something is built for me, but what need it solves, how people will use it, and what tradeoffs make the most sense while still delivering a polished, high-quality experience.

Currently contributing to a global consumer platform serving tens of millions of monthly users, working across engineering, product, design, and business stakeholders to translate ambiguous requirements into practical, well-engineered solutions.

Previously spent nearly five years on Perkins&Will’s digital innovation team. There I architected greenfield geospatial and data-visualization products using Next.js, Deck.gl, Mapbox, GraphQL, Node.js, and Postgres/PostGIS, including taking a full-stack mapping platform from concept to a deployed MVP. Additionally, conducted proof-of-concept explorations into MCP servers and AI-powered image segmentation tools.

Skills

Front

React, Next.js, Redux Toolkit, TypeScript, Tailwind, Sass, Apollo Client, Storybook, HTML, CSS

Back

Node.js, Express, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Apollo Server, GraphQL, Turf.js, REST, Auth0, Azure Active Directory, Model Context Protocol (MCP) Servers & Clients, OpenAI API

Other Tools

Vitest, Playwright, Jest, Cypress, AWS, cursor, Claude, Docker, NGINX, Git, PM2, ESLint, Prettier, Logrocket

Articles

VS Code Extensions for Happier JavaScript CodingArticle link

Medium / Hackernoon

Having a well-calibrated editor is paramount to productivity, so as use-cases become more niche, it’s nice to be able to pull in extensions to help boost quality of life. Luckily, VS Code vibrant extension community with single-click installations makes this super easy.

A Gentle Introduction to tmuxArticle link

Medium / Hackernoon

tmux lets you tile window panes in a command-line environment. This, in turn, allows you to run and keep an eye on multiple programs within one terminal. This guide will go through the installation and basic usage of tmux to get you up and running.

How-To: Vim Functionality with Sublime LooksArticle link

Medium / Hackernoon

Just because you are using a command line editor does not mean you should have to do a time warp back to the days of green screen CRTs. This guide will walk through the process of setting up Vim to achieve a more Sublime-like experience.

Work

Senior Consultant, Web Development

EidraArticle link

Jan 2026 - present

Providing senior web engineering consulting on global-scale digital products for industry-leading brands and clients.

Contribute new customer-facing functionality to the global online ordering web application of a leading Fortune 500 quick-service restaurant brand serving tens of millions of monthly users.

  • Evaluate new feature concepts and provide documented technical and product guidance on feasibility, implementation approach, tradeoffs, roadmap planning, and staggered rollout using feature flags.
  • Build production features using Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, Zustand, and Storybook, with unit coverage in Vitest and integration coverage in Playwright.
  • Present completed feature work directly to client stakeholders and translate technical implementation details for product and business audiences.
  • Help shepherd features through code review, visual and technical QA, accessibility validation, backlog refinement, and client-facing demos.

Senior Software Developer

Perkins&WillArticle link

Jan 2021 - Oct 2025

Designing a better, more beautiful world since 1935.

Part of the Perkins&Will Insight i/o Digital Innovation team. Focused on the development of geospatial 3D mapping and model rendering web applications targeted at architects and urban planners.

  • Architected Portfolio Explorer, a greenfield full-stack application from concept to MVP for campus-scale geospatial data visualization and mapping. Based on Next.js, Deck.GL, Redux Toolkit, D3, Apollo GraphQL, Node.js, and Postgres with PostGIS. Currently in internal user testing.
  • Developed a Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server that uses tools and resources of our existing GraphQL API and exposes them for use by the OpenAI LLM API via our MCP Client.
  • Leveraged Go programming language (Golang) to stand up a screenshotting microservice with a lower memory footprint than the prior Node.js-based solution.
  • Stood up Airformer.io, a quick turnaround concept project focused on mapping solutions for urban air mobility, using AWS Amplify, Next.js, Deck.GL, Mapbox, GitHub Actions, and some light custom D3 visualizations.
  • Published a standardized UI component library as a private NPM package utilizing Storybook for use by other teams/projects within the department.
  • Worked as a full-stack developer on Spatial Composer, a 3D mapping software targeted towards urban planners and architects using React, Mapbox, Three.js, Express, and Postgres.
  • Provided guidance on incorporating semantic versioning, release tagging, backlog grooming, and changelog.

Front End Developer

Accenture InteractiveArticle link

Jan 2018 - Jan 2021

Help clients create the best customer experiences on the planet, across the entire customer journey.

Developed and provided consulting guidance on web-based digital products for enterprise clients operating in institutional finance, quick-service restaurants, and corporate IT monitoring.

  • Involved in standing up and developing a new front end for an internal SPA security dashboard utilizing Apollo GraphQL, Angular 7, and AG-Grid to carry it from InVision design concept to functional MVP state.
  • Worked with the development team of a major national fast-food chain on a touch-screen ordering kiosk. Kiosk built with React/Redux running on node-webkit (NW.js).
  • Assisted backend team with full-stack work by creating new GraphQL API queries and dependent SQL in Node.js for backend portion, as well as the associated frontend UI work of consuming the API for data-driven UI components.
  • Converted Fjord design renderings to functional pages as part of national fast-food client’s integration with Doordash food delivery.
  • Participating in a greenfield investment research platform for a large institutional bank utilizing React, React-Virtualized, Styled Component, React-Contextmenu, and date-fns.
  • Engage in both formal and ad-hoc meetings between different stakeholders to help bridge the gap between product owners, middleware back-end developers, and client's design research team.
  • Unit-testing with Jest for 80% coverage and ESLint and Prettier for linting and pre-commit formatting with two developer code reviews for PRs.
  • Provide feedback to client's design team in relation to in-progress Invision UI mock-ups for future features in terms of the technical implications.

Senior Member Support / Frontend Developer

Spring RewardsCompany link

Jan 2016 - Jan 2018

Spring connects your digital channels with in-store results using your customers' own credit and debit cards.

Developing an automated web-based enterprise data reporting platform for internal users and corporate mall clients.

  • Reporting platform replaced for a collection of Logi reports and Excel spreadsheets. Front-end using React, React-Router v4, and Webpack for bundling. RESTful API built using Node and Express, with JSON Web Tokens and Bcrypt for authentication. Larger Postgres queries run in separate Node process at predefines time interval and saved to local Mongo database for faster client-side rendering.
  • Converted a complex Excel report to a web application by merging data from multiple PostgreSQL databases and Salesforce reports. Deployed to EC2 with Express, MongoDB, Node, PM2, and NGINX as a reverse proxy.
  • Wrote Node.js app to POST Salesforce accounts to the Zendesk API, after an external consultant was unable to find a migration path.
  • Developed a front end interface for generating missing transaction cURL POST statements using Javascript, CSS, HTML. Adopted by all Member Services team members due to the significant process improvement created.
  • Manually load Square transactions batch reports on behalf of a major national partner using a series of SQL and Python scripts. Based on workflow originally created by our internal data scientist.
  • Created a series of SQL reports to check transaction feed status for merchants and credit partners ( Visa, MasterCard, AMEX).
  • Onboard and trained new employees in CLI workflow for setting up hostname config files per IT guidelines, SSH key creation and connections, Psql usage, and posting cURL POST statements to internal API.

Technical Account Manager

SunGard (Now FIS)Company link

Sep 2013 - Jan 2016

Provide leading software and IT services to institutions in virtually every segment of the financial services industry.

Acted as the primary point of contact for a set of large institutional investment banks, conducting top-day incident management related to post-trade derivatives clearing for Stream Clearvision, a real-time middle-office trade matching, allocation, and acceptance system using FIXML.

  • Developed web-based FIXML message parser to expedite issue investigation by internal teams. Also shared with overseas QA team for training purposes.
  • Road-mapped multi-month upgrade implementations for several institutional clients. Created Gantt charts, confirmed completion of UAT testing, and ensured internal resources were available for on-call assistance during production go-live dates.
  • Conducted bi-weekly review meetings with management of assigned clients. Completed a full case history review and presented it to the client which led to a 43% and 76% reduction in open cases two months after transitioning into the two main clients. Subsequently assigned two additional clients to oversee.
  • Collaborated with a project manager to support her in creating a series of Excel VBA macros in order to help format and migrate a large dataset off of a previous Lotus Notes based system to an internal cloud based solution.
  • Created and followed through on change requests and feature enhancements for specific software products, assist the client in BRD documentation.
  • Carried out on-site client training of product installation, upgrading, issue management, and basic Oracle SQL SELECT statement overview.

Airformer

Concept project to see how Advanced Air Mobility can intersect with existing transportation and transform how we might plan cities and mobility in the future.

Next.js Redux Toolkit Mapbox Deck.gl Turf.js Prettier ESlint Webpack HERE Api Babel Cypress Jest TypeScript AWS Amplify

Spatial Composer

A tool for designers and planners to communicate complex concepts for the built environment in an engaging and intuitive platform

React Redux Postgres PostGIS Mapbox Turf.js Auth0 Prettier ESlint Node.js Express LogRocket NGINX Webpack Babel three.js react-dnd TypeScript sequelize AWS

Swiftsheet

Upload a CSV to mock a REST or GraphQL API endpoint or share a spreadsheet that auto-deletes after expiration. No user account needed

React Apollo Express-GraphQL MongoDB Styled Components AG-Grid Jest Prettier Node.js Sentry.io NGINX Webpack Babel PM2 Code Climate Snyk Helmet.js

select-run - NPM Package

A CLI tool to interactively select one or many package.json npm scripts to run

Node.js Inquirer NPM Repository

Pseudo Zen

Online pseudocoder that makes pseudocoding as easy as it should be

React Express Node.js Mongoose MongoDB Webpack Babel Helmet Mocha Travis CI Supertest