Dune Thomas

[code wrangler, problem solver]

As a software engineer, he can solve for extreme programming puzzles. As a designer/producer, he will make any product look good... My recommendation is five stars.

— Bill Sarris, CEO | Linqto, Inc.

This guy is amazingly balanced between the right and left brain - both highly creative and highly technical... it's a combo you don't find very often - so snap him up while you can!

— Tim Levy, CEO | Tim Levy & Associates

Dune is that rare find: personable, fun, reliable, and relentlessly dedicated to high-quality work.

— Duke Houston, Principal | Houston Graphics

Dune is a fantastic developer... a programmer who genuinely cares about quality and will push through walls to make things work.

— Jason "Django" Zeaman, President | Handcrafted Learning

Dune is an endlessly creative and technically savvy problem-solver...
Whoever gets him on their team or project is very lucky.

— Noel Murphy - CEO | Rocket Cat Films

He not only does a great job but also never fails to have a terrific attitude regardless of the challenges presented to him. His energy and sense of humor are definitely missed...

— Kerry Laws, Game Producer | GSN (TV & Games)

Have worked with Dune Thomas on various projects for over seven years. Would recommend him highly to anyone seeking the rare combination of left and right brain skills.

— Bill Sarris, CEO | Linqto, Inc.

Dune really knows his stuff... Constantly trying to make things easier, faster, better. Wildly creative, always willing to share what he knows/teach/listen. Tech savvy, artistic, and a lot of fun.

— Casey Bourgeois, Contractor | Video & Audio Production

...a challenging project with lots of tricky quirks but Dune is exactly the type of engineer you want on a project like that... the type of engineer who will propose solutions no one else would have thought of.

— Lucien Kahn, Product Manager | Arizona State University

...absolute delight to have on the team and always provided great insight to our work… always able to make you laugh and has a great coding mind to back it up.

— Eric Tan, Senior Software Engineer | Riot Games

I heartily recommend him for anyone seeking an expert coder for web or mobile projects.

— Duke Houston, Principal | Houston Graphics

Summary

Senior Front-End Engineer

Headshot of Dune ThomasSoftware engineer (front-end dominant) with 20+ years of diverse experience architecting and building sites, web apps, mobile apps (iOS & Android), automation tools, games, digital simulations, training courses, and more. Strong cross-discipline background in multimedia content creation, audio/video production and editing.

Driven problem solver. Excellent communicator. Flexible. Eye for detail on front-end, solid experience on the back-end. Assimilates new skills at an alarming rate. Dynamic, positive personality. Writes clean, efficient code that is legible and easily re-purposed. Ability to program nearly anything.

Skills

Done Lots of This Technical Stuff

  • JavaScript: ES3-8
  • React & Redux
  • Svelte
  • Backbone
  • HTML/XML/JSON
  • CSS/SASS/LESS
  • Node.js
  • GraphQL
  • MongoDB
  • AWS
  • Git
  • npm / yarn
  • Java
  • Lua
  • VB
  • Python
  • AutoIt
  • Selenium
  • UX & UI
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • Premiere Pro
  • After Effects
  • Moho Animation

Highlights

Noteworthy Acts of Code Wranglin' and Creative Problem Solvin'

AWS-Driven Boilerplate Application for ASU

Architected and built ASU’s LMS-connected peer-review tool boilerplate app from which several other apps could be developed.

Higher Education Chemistry Wetlab Simulations

Help to build out over a dozen digital chemistry wetlab simulators.

Build, Test & Deploy Automation

Prototyped and developed build, test, and deployment automation solution for mobile banking division of a fortune 500 company.

Mobile Game

Programmed and released Ivory Tower Defenders action/strategy mobile game for iOS & Android. (Ranked in top 3%, #51 out of 20,000. 4+ years later, still no bugs.)

Video Automation

Automated video production process for company to produce custom-branded videos for venture partners at a fraction of time and costs.

Adobe Plugin Creation

Wrote several Adobe plugins used by thousands of Flash Developers to automate and speed up various animation and layout tasks.

Photoshop to Strict HTML/CSS Generator

Wrote tool to convert PSD site layouts into HTML & CSS, resulting in a massive improvement to site development time, cross-browser stability and uniformity.

Book Highlight Parser

Wrote program to scan books, extracting only highlighted text, and build summarized reports of key information. (Personal project.)

Experience

Companies & Clients

Pearson

Position
Senior Software Engineer
When
03/20 to 10/21*

Pearson acquired Smart Sparrow and I began the process of converting much of Sparrow’s legacy (backbone.js) front-end codebase into React and Redux based components. This rapidly evolved into a team of 6-8 engineers. About 8 months in, I made the team’s initial foray into Svelte which was eventually adopted for many components… yielding a 40% to 60% code reduction on average.

ASU (Arizona State University)

Position
Senior Software Engineer
When
06/20 to 07/21*

At Smart Sparrow I architected and built ASU’s peer-review tool. Post-acquisition, I contracted directly with ASU to architect a new boilerplate version of the app from which several other apps could be developed. I built the entire front and back-end using MongoDB, Express, Apollo, GraphQL, NodeJS, React, and Redux running on an AWS framework. I also built the UI mock-ups and helped map out missing UX and logical flow requirements. To implement Canvas LMS connectivity, I coordinated with ASU’s chosen 3rd party LMS consultants.

Smart Sparrow, Inc.

Position
Senior Software Engineer
When
06/16 to 03/20*

Here I developed custom learning applications and educational lab simulations. Work was primarily technical, front-end application architecture and engineering, but also meant providing creative, conceptual, and UI/UX input. Tech stack was predominantly JS, Backbone, React and Redux. Projects ranged from building virtual chemistry wet labs, interactive circuit board simulators, UI widget design and construction, automation scripts, CSS animations, and implementing accessibility requirements.

Linqto, Inc.

Position
Senior Software Engineer
When
04/13 to 05/16

Played multiple roles, predominantly automation development. Led the architecture, prototyping, and development of a sizable build, test, and deployment automation solution for a key $1.6B client in the financial sector.

Also assisted in developing marketing content, strategy, and messaging for Linqto as we worked to make the transition from a service-based revenue model to a product-based one.

GSN (TV & Games)

Position
Game Developer
When
04/13 to 11/13

Focused predominantly on refactoring code for various flash-based casino games, bug hunting and fixing, writing feature additions, and prototyping. Also built some automation tools to help cross the production gap between the design and development teams.

Dune Thomas Digital Design

Position
Contract Full Stack Developer / Designer
When
03/00 to 04/13

Contracted with numerous organizations and individuals to build dozens of varied projects covering all things mobile and internet: CMS / WP sites, web apps, mobile games and apps, interactive multimedia presentations, video, audio, and design/animation work. I typically provided clients with full-spectrum design, content, and software development using HTML, XML, CSS, Flash/Flex, ActionScript 1-3, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, and jQuery.

Portfolio

Tech & Creative

ASU Peer Review Tool

Complex Peer Review Tool application user interface screen used by teachers to create custom assignments and rubrics.
PRT - (click for Demo)
User interface mockups and designs for Peer Review Tool.
PRT - Adobe XD Mock-Ups

ASU Peer Review Tool & Boilerplate

Architecture, coding, and UI / UX.

I built version 1 of this application was for Smart Sparrow's client, ASU. With proper consent, after Smart Sparrow was acquired, I initially contracted with ASU to build a second version of the tool that could connect and exchange data with an LMS (Learning Management System). Early on, I learned of ASU’s desire to create several such apps. I thus proposed building out a boilerplate application instead of all 3 of the planned off-shoot apps.

This strategy would allow ASU to leverage my work… using the boilerplate as a template from which ASU could build as many apps as they wanted with relative ease. A large part of the heavy lifting was designing how to organize the data and front-end functionality between such apps and an LMS. Designing the 2nd version of the Peer Review Tool to act as a template required a lot more thought and preparation that simply building it as a stand-alone application.

The result: after completing the initial boilerplate, the other planned applications were able to be produced at a fraction of the time and cost of building them from scratch.

Smart Sparrow Projects

Chemistry wetlab application with beakers, burners, a combustion chamber and other virtual lab equipment students can interact with.
Combustion Chemistry Lab
Interactive lab application for blood typing. Interactive elements include pipettes, waste and biowaste bins, blood samples, gloves, sample trays, antigens, and stir sticks.
Blood Typing Lab

Smart Sparrow Projects

Collaborative Coding

The chemistry wet-lab simulators (nearly 3-dozen) were just a fraction of all the projects I wrote code for at Smart Sparrow. These simulations were filled with some very fun and diverse challenges. Aside from overcoming all the obstacles we faced to create a truly intuitive UI that provided the desired 2.5-D experience, every individual lab had its own unique puzzles to solve.

(Burning substances, liquid color changes based on the various chemical substances mixed together, animating the flow of a liquid with precise accuracy from a single drip to a stream of fluid, etc.)

Other projects included a blood-typing lab simulation, electronic breadboard simulator, and labs for iodine clocks, calorimetry, freezing-point-depression, electroplating, and many more.

Mobile Game: ITD

Ivory Tower Defenders mobile game splash page showing teachers and faculty menacingly guarding college entrance.
ITD - Splash Page
Top-down view of classroom as students try to get to empty seats without being pelted with books and paperwork from the faculty surrounding the classroom boundaries.
ITD - Game Play Screen
Collage notebook open to page with handwritten notes about different types of students strengths and weaknesses.
ITD - Hints Notebook

Ivory Tower Defenders

All Coding, front-to-back

Coded from start-to-finish a mobile “tower defense” style action/ strategy game called Ivory Tower Defenders, which was recently launched on both the iTunes Apple Store and various Android markets such as the Google Play Store.

Though simple in appearance, the path-finding issues in this game were very complex. Students (runners) would each follow different paths according to the type of student they were. This was altered by which empty seat each student was nearest to. Finally, if a student was defeated or sat down, all other runners on the screen must immediately respond by recalculating seat distances, competing student choices, and a variety of route options.

The problem is that this must be done very quickly and on every frame that the display was refreshed. Which would have been tolerable if there weren’t timing issues due to processor/display engine limitations. If the timing wasn’t perfect, identical choices by a player could result in different outcomes in the game, which would be unacceptable as it defeats the point of the game mechanics.

Mobile App: EV Bay Tour

Application UI with map of Palo ALto wetlands including several highlighted points of interest.
Bay Tour - Map Screen
Image of salt marsh harvest mouse as one of several topics related to the selected point of interest.
Bay Tour - Image Detail Screen

Environmental Volunteers Mobile App

All coding, front-to-back. Design, UI, Voice Over & Audio.

This mobile app was designed to give visitors to the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve an interactive, self-guided walking tour of the wetlands. In addition to handling all programming for the app, I covered various design and audio tasks, and provided the narrative voice-overs for the app’s feature locations. It is available for both iOS and Android devices.

(Also, 2 years later I built a second version of the app in Español.)

Web Quiz Game

2000 presidential election game. Candidates Obama and McCain on a stage... able to be dragged about to see if user can match the candidate to the quote.
Quiz Game Play Screen
final score screen showing user's guesses and where each candidate stands on key healthcare issues.
Quiz Game Score Screen

CWA Presidential Election Quiz

All programming, UX/UI, Graphic Design, Animation, Audio

CWA wanted an interactive Flash-based quiz-format game to inform participants about Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s respective healthcare platforms during the 2008 presidential election. All they had were a simple set of questions and answers, and they wanted a way turn this into a quiz of some kind that would be fun and engaging.

The result of this 6-week project is what you see here. This was a truly ‘built from scratch’ effort as I handled every last thing from the sound effects and graphic design to the animation and coding.

The app uses an XML back-end with a simple question/answer editor. As a bonus to leverage CWA’s efforts, the app was designed to be easily updated to run other quiz-games with different token graphics.

Web App: Vitamin Finder

Vitamin application UI showing one of several multiple choice questions.
Question Screen 1
Recommendations screen giving user key vitamin product recommendations based on how the user answered the survey questions.
Recommendations Screen

RLNS Vitamin & Calcium Recommendation Widgets

All programming, front-to-back

Rainbow Light Nutritional Systems offers a numerous selection of multivitamin and calcium supplements, each suited to the needs of specific customers. RLNS needed a way to help customers find the products that were tailored to their needs.

Given an excel spreadsheet of their products and features, I created a pair of web apps that would walk a potential customer through a set of questions about their wants and needs. The app then suggests up to 3 products to meet the user's criteria for a multi-vitamin or calcium product. If interested, the user can choose to purchase the product, connecting to the store directly from the app.

These apps make use of a MySQL database to gather anonymous user data to further provide RLNS with valuable feedback about their customers. I also set up and connected an email marketing campaign/service for the company, and added an opt-in feature to the apps so interested customers can subscribe to receive company email offers.

Panasonic Camera App

Instructions screen showing how to hook up the Panasonic networking camera.
Embedded web app UI

Embedded Panasonic Camera Utility App

All Programming, UI, Graphic Design

Developed UI and software for a consumer class Panasonic security camera, allowing consumers to control the camera remotely through a standard web browser. The software and UI was embedded into the camera so it could be used out-of-the-box. This is the oldest project on my portfolio, but I’m listing it because it was done when this sort of remote access technology was still rather new stuff.

Interactive Product Demos

Splash screen for interactive video presentation. Lexar thumb drive is shown next to windows PC.
Lexar - Power to Go
Interactive presentation shows Fujifilm V10 camera next to image processor diagram and 10 navigation icons along bottom of screen.
Fuji - FinePix V10

Interactive Product Tours

Coding, animation, project & team management, VO, Graphic Design

Here are two average examples of the literally dozens of product tours done for various high-profile clients such as Sony, Canon, Epson, Netgear, Pentax, Fuji, Avaya, Lexar, SanDisk, SlingBox, and many others.

These interactive demos were all created in Flash, which was a tricky feat to pull off… the Flash Player had big timing issues when it came to playing audio. Voice over synchronization would slip because the Flash player would drop frames to keep up visual playback speed, but it did this without dropping audio frames. That meant 30 seconds into the tour, the VO would be talking out of sync like a bad kung-fu movie.

Finding a solution to this problem meant our studio was the only one at the time that could produce these interactive product tours with voice overs tracks that remained in-sync during playback. In addition, some clever pre-loading kept performance smooth regardless of presentation length or user bandwidth.

Reviews

Endorsements from CEOs, clients, and coworkers

Have worked with Dune Thomas on various projects for over seven years. Would recommend him highly to anyone seeking the rare combination of left and right brain skills.

As a software engineer, he can solve for extreme programming puzzles. As a designer/producer, he will make any product look good... My recommendation is five stars.

Bill Sarris - CEO | Linqto, Inc.

...a challenging project with lots of tricky quirks but Dune is exactly the type of engineer you want on a project like that… the type of engineer who will propose solutions no one else would have thought of.

Lucien Kahn - Product Manager | Arizona State University

...absolute delight to have on the team and always provided great insight to our work... always able to make you laugh and has a great coding mind to back it up.

Eric Tan - Senior Software Engineer | Riot Games

Dune is a fantastic developer... a programmer who genuinely cares about quality and will push through walls to make things work. I can think of 2 major issues (memory leaks and a complex pathfinding algorithm) we had with the game app which could have easily stopped other coders, but he came up with creative solutions that worked.

On top of all that, he has a great sense of humor and makes working together fun. I can't recommend him highly enough.

Jason "Django" Zeaman - President | Handcrafted Learning

This guy is amazingly balanced between the right and left brain - both highly creative and highly technical. To be honest, it's a combo you don't find very often - so snap him up while you can!

...and I want to say this - he's a first class human. You couldn't do better.

Tim Levy - CEO | Tim Levy & Associates

Dune is that rare find: personable, fun, reliable, and relentlessly dedicated to high-quality work. I heartily recommend him for anyone seeking an expert coder for web or mobile projects.

Duke Houston - Principal | Houston Graphics

I’m most familiar with Dune’s Flash, design, scriptwriting and video skills. Dune is an endlessly creative and technically savvy problem-solver. High integrity, great communicator, a lot of fun to work with. Whoever gets him on their team or project is very lucky.

Noel Murphy - CEO | Rocket Cat Films