Jesse Foltz BS MS

jessefoltz@jessefoltz.com - 423.773.4108 - San Jose CA

This resume is a single html file and can be easily saved by hitting ctrl+s (command+s).
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Professional Experience

  • Netflix

    December 2013-Present

    • Lead engineer for cross platform originals UI team (20 engineers)
    • Worked on creating new promotional canvases for originals programming
    • Created and maintained cross platform middleware meta data service
    • Built new UIs for web, Android, and TV devices
    • Worked on major AB test initiatives working closly with UX, content and engineering partners
    • Developed isomorphic web applications
  • Lead User Experience Developer

    Salon Media Group

    January 2012-Present

    • Reduced content availability time by 20 seconds (Now 1.25 seconds before ads)
    • Implemented deferred ad loading system to increase page responsiveness
    • Developed large-scale, real-time, live blogging server and UI using Node.js and YUI
    • Developed on demand, combo and compression server using Node.js
    • Created JS framework used to dynamically deliver scripts based on page content
    • Created clean, simple to use, HTML5 friendly video players and slide shows
  • Lead User Experience Developer

    The Washington Post

    March 2011-December 2011

    • Created prototype HTML5 based mobile site, fully replicating functionality of ipad app created in Node.js and YUI3, eliminating need for native app development
    • Launched redesigned Washington Post website
    • Created JS framework used on new site to deliver scripts based on page content
    • Developed dependency management system based on YUI3
    • Implemented site wide dynamic content aware lazy loading system
  • Senior User Experience Developer/Designer

    The Washington Post

    June 2008-March 2011

    • Lead rapid developement “Web Ninjas” innovation team
    • Created emmy nonminated video graphics, 2D graphics, 3D graphics
    • Designed and developed Time-Space feature responsible for 3 million dollars of yearly ad revenue 2 years in a row
    • Built 3D Flash Interface for award winning onBeing Series
    • Created, designed and developed visually threaded comment system
    • Designed, JavaScript implementation for site wide alert system
    • Built universal media player used site wide with JS, AS2 and AS3 APIs
  • Senior Designer/ Web Developer

    The Washington Post

    November 2006-June 2008

    • Created, designed and developed user interfaces
    • Designed and maintained LoudonExtra.com
    • Helped build Flickr and Facebook User Generated Content System
    • Advocated for and Lead Javascript Best Practices Summit
    • Developed and Designed applications for the launch of Facebook apps
    • Developed and Deisigned application for launch of iGoogle

Skills Summary

  • Languages / Frameworks

    • JavaScript
    • Node.js
    • React/Redux
    • GraphQL
    • Java
    • Python
    • D3.js/Three.js

Education

  • Masters of Science

    Digtial Media

    East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN

    Graduated May 2005

  • Bacholers of Science

    Digtial Media Concentration in Graphic Animation

    East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN

    Graduated May 2003

Awards

  • Sacred Ground: The Building of the Pentagon Memorial

    • Award of Excellence: Society of News Designers
  • onBeing

    • Nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy®
    • Award for New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming: Arts, Lifestyle & Culture
    • Special Distinction Award: The Institute for Interactive Journalism
    • Silver Award: Society of News Designers
    • 2007 Knight-Batten Award

Projects

  • Project Name

    Zite Web "Alpha"

    The Zite web alpha is one of my favorite projects. It combines the awesome back end tech that Zite is known for and a true symmetric JS UI. The project uses Yahoo Mojito client and server. It produces identical HTML output either via state changes client side or full round trips to the server. It can function nearly 95% without the client JS loaded. The UI is clean and simple with slick transitions and animations. Although only an alpha it is ready for fullscale production.

    The initial Alpha was created in a mind boggling 2.5 weeks. Initial development was followed by a rigorus QA and feature refinement process. The whole project was completed in aproximately 3 months. It is currently in private "Alpha" and waiting on design and feature updates before moving into a public Beta.

    • node.js
    • Yahoo Mojito
    • Full Stack Development
    • UX
    • Design
  • Project Name

    Washingtonpost.com onBeing Versions 1 & 2

    onBeing was The Washington Post's award winning flagship video series that produced two large series of videos. The magic of onBeing was the combination of excellent video content and innovative minimalistic interactive design. The original interface was 2D but the second incarnation featured a slick 3D interface built in flash. Both interfaces focussed on a rich fullscreen experience that put the content front and center. It supported multiple modes of interaction and a novel spiral comments system that surfaced important comments visually.

    • API Design
    • UI Development
    • UX
    • Design
  • Project Name

    Gaussian Lines - WebGL Tech Demo

    The Gaussian Lines project was done on kind of a whim based on a dream I had. I have always loved withing with 3D. The porject focuses on using a Gaussian distribution to distort a field of lines. You can tumble around the lines field by clicking and dragging. There is also a bit of noise added to the field distortion to give a sense of the frame rate and depth. It's my first time working with WebGL and Three.js. I am now a big fan of both especially when it comes to performance. < source example >

    • Javascript
    • Math
    • UX
    • Design
  • Project Name

    Salon.com Multi Presentation Slide Show

    The slide show player I built for Salon is by far the most adaptable I've built so far. The player has 3 modes normal, full width, and fullscreen. In each of these modes the player is responsive, handles ads updating, and GA tracking. Each slide can be either HTML or a simple image, allowing for slide shows of you tube embeds. It also has a nice little pop out animation that keeps a nice smooth feel. < source example >

    • UI Development
    • PHP Backend
    • UX
    • Design
  • Project Name

    Home Row - XBMC Web Interface

    The Home Row web interface is another side project I work on. The focus of the project is to create a super fast keyboard driven web UI for XBMC. It uses quick flitering and simple hot keys to quickly find and play what you would like to watch. It also turns out to be a very finger friedly design and works well on mobile devices as well. Although it started out very simply I have added more complex features like pop up menus, queueing, and playlists. It is availible in the XBMC app repository for each version of XBMC since dharma.

    This project was actually very challenging building a complex menu system that self replicates and has lots of specialized features per menu type. Also there is no back end availible for templating just a maddeningly complex and poorly documented JSON-RPC API. < source example > < source example >

    • UI Development
    • HTML
    • UX
    • Design
  • Project Name

    Multi User Real Time Word Find Game

    The Word Find project has a funny history. I originally was asked to build a very simple command line word find game as part of a coding test. Unhappy with just producing a commandline version of the game I also created a web interface. The company was quite happy with my implementation in node.js. My wife is a big fan of word searches and wanted to actually make it playable, so I added UI game logic. We then noticed playing on the same screen wasn't so much fun so I thew in socket.io and ended up with a multi-user real time word search game. I still pick this up every now and again and have a lot of fun playing on it. < source example >

    • node.js
    • Full Stack Development
    • UX
    • Design
  • Project Name

    Salon.com Live Blog

    The live blog project was very exciting to work on. It was the first realtime app used in production written entirely by me and entirely in javasccript. The live blog features an event stack which is used to sync all users. New users grab static JSONs of past events then join a socket.io room where new events are directly broadcast via websockets. The admin is built directly into the UI. A logged in admin sees extra buttons users do not and admin cookies are checked against an auth server on the back end for secureity. The server is very efficient allowing over 15,000 users to be logged in and participating simultaneously on a single core with 0 lag. The servers can deployed in cluserts that use UDP discovery to build a back channel network to rebroadcast events throughout the network. Our admin users a big fans or this tool for it's speed and reliability. < source example >

    • node.js
    • Full Stack Development
    • UX
    • Design
  • Project Name

    Hand Brake Server

    This Hand Brake server grew out of simple necesity. I needed to convert a lot of video files from one format to the other and keep track of their progress. I was a big fan of the handbrakeCLI for doing the actual crunching but needed a way to make it user friendly. I built a server and UI that can look within a single directory and give tab completion style directory and file listings. This makes it easy for the user to find and add media to the queue. Each transcode job can have any profile used during conversion. It can recursively scan and queue entire directory trees as well. There are also options to delete the original file when the completetion is successful. < source example >

    • node.js
    • Full Stack Development
    • UX
    • Design