Patrick Cason

I've been a professional full-stack engineer for over 15 years with a focus on front-end, specifically with 7 years of experience in React. I also have strong technical leadership experience and have led teams of up to 80 people across of a variety of technical disciplines. Virtually my entire career has been spent doing startups and freelancing for companies big and small all over the world: non-profits, artificial intelligence, healthcare, civics, big data, and entertainment are only some of the industries I've worked in. I pride myself on my ability to work anywhere in a stack, but have always had a specific focus on front-end development. Likewise, I'm also a fully-capable UI/UX designer using Figma, Sketch, and Adobe Creative Cloud. When it comes to front-end, there's virtually nothing I haven't done before. I look forward to working with you!

Why did you choose to go into software development? Because I fell in love with development at a young age. I taught myself how to code websites when I was 10 and picked up my first paid gig at 15. I've been freelancing ever since!

What role were you the most proud of? What responsibilities did you take on? Why are you proud of that? I co-founded an open-source project that, over the course of a few years, grew to over 14,000 people from over 80 countries. During my time here, I ended up leading the entire engineering team, about an 80 person headcount of data scientists, developers, and cryptographers. I was also responsible for writing software development grants totaling over $2m to fund various members of the community. Overall it was an amazing experience and I learned a lot.

What personal or professional project are you the most proud of? What did you struggle with the most in building that, and how did you resolve the problem? I'm most proud of the work I've done on my startup, Raise Financial. We've helped hundreds of families save over $2m on future educational expenses.

What type of environment do you want to work in next? (Individual contributor, part of a team, leadership role) Why? I'm a great individual contributor, but I really shine when I'm leading people. I'm a natural leader and technical architect and I find that I'm at my best when I'm assisting and mentoring others to do their best work.