Curriculum vitae

TL;DR You’re viewing my expanded curriculum vitae / résumé. If you’re looking for a summative CV in PDF form, click here.

Table of contents

Bio

Kurt Medley is a Computer Science graduate, full-stack engineer, and industry professional with 10+ years of experience. Kurt possesses outstanding analytical abilities and is adept at solving complex problems through a blend of industry-standard and innovative technologies. With lead designation over many high-profile projects for major retail corporations, Kurt ensures the delivery of optimized, resilient, and well-tested software.

Education

The Evergreen State College

B.Sc in Computer Science

Awarded: 2013

South Puget Sound Community College

AA in Music Theory and Composition

Awarded: 2009

Industry achievements

Here are some industry achievements that I am proud of.

Brought Vite, Vitest, and Vue 3 to REI

When Vue 2 was announced EOL, our development platform was not positioned to upgrade to Vue 3. Initially, we attempted to update the constituent dependencies of our custom tools but encountered many technical impasses. I created a proof of technology that replaced our tools with Vite and Vitest, updated our back-end library to integrate Vite-compiled assets, and rewrote our server-rendering solution for Vue to accommodate Vue 3. This was adopted by all product engineering teams at REI. Read the whole story here.

Rewrote REI’s Adventures property with Vue

When I joined REI, my team and I rewrote REI’s Adventures property with Vue. We decommissioned several overlapping frameworks, ported functional requirements from legacy code, and delivered new user journeys.

Introduced TypeScript to the FED community at REI

After attending VueConf 2023, I was convinced our front-end ecosystem would benefit from a migration to TypeScript. We wanted to bolster application resilience and improve developer productivity with strict typing. After conferring with our larger front-end community, our team went about creating the path to TypeScript. We converted our archetypal microsite and tools to TypeScript. With a sanctioned functional example, we created documentation and shepherded TypeScript at REI.

Rewrote REI’s analytics library with TypeScript

Shortly after adopting TypeScript, I rewrote a legacy implementation of REI’s analytics library to TypeScript using Vite and Vitest. This effort involved sifting through a large amount of code I didn’t fully understand and making educated decisions about what a coherent type interface would be. The introduction of TypeScript surfaced underlying implementation problems that can now be corrected.

Canonicalized how NPM packages are scaffolded at REI

I normalized the process for scaffolding new utility libraries, Vue components, and microsites by introducing an NPM initializer. This CLI tool offers a series of prompts that ultimately generate a new directory of templated code. The templates alleviate the developer from the tedium of setting up build tools, managing package dependencies, and setting up CI/CD in GitLab. This tool is the official way to create new JS/TS-based code at REI.

Wrote middleware to server-render Vue applications at REI

I wrote an Express.js implementation with TypeScript that is responsible for server-rendering Vue applications in REI’s stack. This dockerized server runs adjacent to the primary microsite, handling HTTP requests to render server bundles, and finally sending back the resultant HTML to the primary microsite, where it is ultimately injected into our base templates.

Introduced modern front-end build tools at Costco

As part of a massive overhaul to the entire Costco eCommerce front end, I pitched Webpack and various other technologies to modernize the front-end build toolchain. This effort helped deliver modernized compiled assets to customers and boost developer productivity.

Industry experience

Senior Software Engineer | Front-end Platform @ REI

Hybrid | April 2020 - Present

As a front-end platform engineer, I contribute to a suite of applications, libraries, build-tool plugins, and configurations used by all product engineering teams at REI. Our team is responsible for the R&D of front-end patterns as well as vetting technologies that are ultimately adopted by all REI product engineering teams.

Additionally, we:

• provide support in the form of troubleshooting to teams experiencing runtime or setup issues.
• mitigate security vulnerabilities in our front-end ecosystem.
• integrate vendor scripts
• scrutinize our properties for optimal performance.
• track emerging technologies and trends in the industry.
• provide E2E technology direction and guidance.
• work closely with other enablement teams including Design Systems, Platform Engineering, Web Performance, SEO, and Accessibility.
• contribute to Cedar, REI’s design system.

Senior Software Engineer | Front-end @ REI Adventures

Bellevue, WA | July 2019 - April 2020

Delivered Vue applications and UI components for REI’s Adventures property. My team and I rewrote the REI Adventures property with Vue and decommissioned overlapping frameworks. We followed a standard SDLC using agile methodologies and ceremonies. I interfaced with UX designers, product and program managers, business analysts, and business stakeholders. I had rotating on-call responsibilities.

Software Engineer III | Full-stack @ Costco eCommerce

Issaquah, WA | July 2016 - July 2019

During my concluding position as a senior software engineer at Costco, I led several intricate projects including:

• implementing SMS notifications for our LTL (less-than-truckload) carriers.
• spearheading another site redesign, introducing React to Costco’s technology stack.
• integrating gas prices into the Costco warehouse locator.
• implementing a member validation service for customer profiles.

Beyond coding, I developed timelines that harmonized project requirements with stakeholder deadlines. I also led teams of off-shore contractors and provided mentorship to junior developers.

Software Engineer II | Full-stack @ Costco eCommerce

Issaquah, WA | July 2014 - July 2016

As my time at Costco progressed, I took on more substantial leadership roles, with a notable project being our responsive design initiative. Collaborating with business analysts, UX designers, stakeholders, QA, and both on-site and off-site consultants, my team and I successfully delivered a contemporary, responsive website. We employed then-modern build tools such as Webpack, utilized SCSS for styling, and implemented Mocha for testing. Through the application of industry-standard tools and patterns, we transformed the chaotic landscape of spaghetti/cowboy code into a well-ordered and efficient system.

Software Engineer I | Full-stack @ Costco eCommerce

Issaquah, WA | July 2013 - July 2014

After my internship, I was hired as a full-stack software engineer working for Costco eCommerce. I worked with fellow engineers on many projects spanning the entire stack. I was given a bi-weekly on-call responsibility to triage production issues which had me collaborating with our Dev Ops, Sterling OMS, and Networking teams. During this time I:

• built a manual authentication service that allowed customers to manage their membership details
• integrated internal and external web services
• performed general maintenance on applications

Software Engineer Intern | Full-stack @ Costco eCommerce

Issaquah, WA | April 2013 - July 2013

Started my SW career with a software engineering internship at the Costco HQ in Issaquah, WA. I was embedded within the Costco eCommerce team responsible for delivering costco.com and costco.ca. I was introduced to Costco’s large, distributed architecture and a suite of [un]customized IBM products including WebSphere Commerce, DB2, and MQ.

Industry projects

The following is a subset of notable projects from my industry experience.

Front-end

• REI Adventures
  • Landing page
  • Search page
  • Trip details page
  • Resource page

Full-stack

• @rei/ssr is a dockerized Express application that runs alongside Spring Boot and facilitates server-rendering Vue applications. This is used by all product engineering teams using Vue as their UI framework.
• Wrote a Spring Boot interceptor that makes HTTP requests to the @rei/ssr Express server.
• Wrote a custom Thymeleaf dialect within Spring Boot for the back-end integration of Vite-compiled assets.
• Climber’s Site is REI’s internal archetypal microsite used as a reference for all product engineering teams. View a screen capture.
• Packwood is an NPM package discovery tool used for reporting. It began as a hackathon project but became a fixture in the developer platform ecosystem. View a screen capture.
• Costco eCommerce
  • Checkout flow (Cart, Shipping, Billing, Review order, Order processing)
  • Warehouse Locator
  • Product page
  • Customer account and profile

Vite plugins, utilities, and configurations

• @rei/create-package is an NPM initializer and the officially supported way to create NPM packages at REI.
• @rei/vite-base-config is the primary Vite and Vitest configuration module consumed by all product engineering teams at REI. It offers a baseline set of configuration defaults aligned with business requirements. Supported by unit tests, this configuration guarantees our Vue applications are optimized and contain the polyfills required by our browser-support matrix.
• @rei/vite-plugin-alpine-uploader is a Vite plugin that facilitates uploading assets compiled by Vite to Akamai NetStorage, our CDN. This enables teams to source their bundled assets from the CDN, which improves the speed and availability of these assets for customers.
• @rei/vite-plugin-alpine-manifest-css is a Vite plugin that alters the CSS property of entries defined in the manifest generated by Vite builds. It ensures the correct injection order of CSS chunk assets.
• @rei/vite-plugin-alpine-stats is a Vite plugin that does static analysis of a repository to provide statistics on the code. Once these statistics are compiled, they are sent to Grafana. View a screen capture.

CI/CD

• Wrote the GitLab CI/CD bash scripts for NPM modules used to publish NPM packages to REI’s private NPM registry in Sonatype Nexus.
• cov-stats is a Node.js script that automatically sends unit test coverage results to the Grafana Front-End-Unit-Test Coverage board so that we can track project code coverage over time. It is integrated into GitLab CI as a job executed after a successful publish to REI’s NPM registry