Joseph Slack
Software & Product Development
I'm a highly experienced Software Engineer, Technical Problem Solver, and an innovative Product Developer
Hire meI'm a highly experienced Software Engineer, Technical Problem Solver, and an innovative Product Developer
Hire me
I've been professionally developing web, app, and mobile applications for over 15 years. Experienced in startups, corporate product development, agency contracting, and bespoke engineering. I enjoy the challenge of technical problem solving and creative solutions.
I'm a fast learner, and highly experienced with practical implementation. I enjoy the experience of new challenges, learning new things, and building new products while working with others.
I'm a highly experienced full-stack engineer and curious problem solver, who is interested in solving complex problems according to product needs, scope and limitations.
I have an interest in best practices, modern process & frameworks, and using the appropriate tool for the job. I like to understand the human problem in making product design decisions, and collaborating with a team to create the ideal product solution.
In addition standard web/app/mobile application development, I enjoy new challenges in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchains and other emerging technologies, especiall focused on impact & innovation projects.
I'm most interested in solving difficult problems, market disruption, and creating positive impact with product development. I would love to talk to you about your ideas, and share my own.
A small sample of some of my recent professional projects
Provide custom integrations for AI platform providers to access a wealth of knowledge for objective answers. Experts provide certified answers based on an incoming request queue and provide sourced contributions to solve the answer to a question. The attribution network is distributed and available to third parties, and earns income for highly specialized requests.
MACROS provides a high protein, nutritious meal that focuses on health benefits that doesn't spoil. Designed for athletes and active individuals, we provide a convenient meal when you don't have time to cook yourself. Consider this meal-prep in a can. It contains 100% natural animal protein and vegetables, with no additives, GMOs, soy, or other additives.
Using speech-to-text, we transcribe dream descriptions upon waking up. Available on iOS and Android, Astroplane allows you to keep records of your dreams, and transcriptions turn into multimedia such as pictures, videos and audio. We generate AI art to bring your descriptions to life, and we match dream trends with our social network.
Dynamic narrative generation for teaching children to read. Named after legendary American author, Zora Neale Hurston inspired an entire generation of readers, writers and learners. We provide dynamic skill evaluation, and provide passage testing, allowing a young learner to generate books of their imagination, and be quizzed on their understand.
Privacy focused P2P document collaboration utility, with simplified editorial features and user generated permission access tokens. Web based application, with no identity tracking, and account-less interaction. Designed for inline collaboration, security, privacy and ease of use with the fastest collaboration start time.
Enabling higher yield crops in East Africa for improved commerce. RC-20 based digital token with distribution system, designed for agriculture based supply chain inputs, outputs, and tracking. Funding, tracking and investing in foreign farming projects, using decentralized transaction systems for larger yields and profitability for small farms.
ML based technical recruiting platform for hiring military veterans transitioning to the civilian workforce. A multi-sided marketplace allowing skill matching & translation, enabling technical recruiters to hire from a non-standard talent pool. Provided technical fellowships and full-time employment for many military veterans with strong backgrounds.
Drone based inventory management robotics & service. Handles egress & ingress package tracking in large warehouses, navigated by drone automation for collecting inventory photos and data. Generates real-time reporting on package tracking, allowing a more granular view into inventory management.
Recruit talented graduates from overlooked colleges. A diversity pipeline providing increased access to top brands. Interactive online events allow brands to connect with talent that exists in schools that may not host top job fairs and events. Allows recruiters to select from a large underrepresented talent group.
Food review application for social influencers. Commissioned work to provide food ratings as a white-labeled product for social media influencers. Populates location results from third party providers, and allows rating, submissions, and reviews of locations near you. Designed for influencer participation and co-branding.
Developed a highly scaled publishing platform for a large editorial staff, and served editorial content and news to a large audience over web and mobile. I specialized in Search Engines, public/private APIs and real-time chat. I created scalable web services in mult-zone, failover and auto-scale to handle high traffic events, and provide 3rd parties with fast API access for a number of well known properties.
Developed heart rate monitoring devices for this Canadian founded hardware and product company. First of its kind, using digital optics, monitored blood speed of the client to determine heart rates, fitness and overall health patterns. I designed and developed software product solutions to allow consumer interaction with their digital data, including monitoring and tracking of their health & fitness.
Created event guide and scheduling applications for iOS, Web and Android solutions for popular conference, festivals and events. Using standard database systems, we generated dynamic front ends to serve branding and authored content to millions of users.
Digital marketplace for private label products. Generated branded product marketplace for private label partnerships with social influencers, offering unique marketing opportunities to their fans.
Created event guide and scheduling applications for iOS, Web and Android solutions for popular conference, festivals and events. Using standard database systems, we generated dynamic front ends to serve branding and authored content to millions of users.
My specializations as a software engineer and product developer:
Backend DevelopmentHighly experienced in developing and deploying large (and small) scale back-end environments in a variety of languages, deployments and configurations. Specialized in Web based REST micro services.
Most familiar with creating, maintaining and deploying:
Frontend DevelopmentWorking closely with designers, my aim is to produce working versions of design concepts. Using modern techniques and tool sets, I am experienced in deploying HTML/CSS/JS applications in modern frameworks.
Most common workflows include:
FounderThrough significant corporate and agency product development experience, I have learned to enjoy the creation and early growth aspect of startups and early staged products built on new ideas. I particularly enjoy the challenge of pitching, developing, fundraising, and bringing new ideas to life. As an experienced founder, I am knowledgeable in the journey of bringing new products to market through the iterative process.
As a founder and experienced start-up developer, I understand the following:
DevOpsIn addition to engineering and product development, I am highly experienced in automated workflows and infrastructure design & deployment. Experienced with the major providers (AWS, GCP, Azure), I have much experience allocating, deploying, and managing high-scale & elastic production environments.
I'm most experienced with production deployments on:
The majority of my projects within the decade include heavy Node usage on the back-end due to popularity. Taking advantage of Typescript and ES6 allows increased safety. From real-time interaction (Websockets) & video (WebRTC) to highly distributed web and REST services, I am highly experienced with modern node frameworks, associated tool sets & best practices. I employ the usefulness of type safety with Typescript when possible, and enjoy using modern frameworks and standards.
Many of my proof-of-concept, ML, scraping, computer vision and utility applications are created with Python. The large number of publicly available scientific and utility libraries make for rapid prototyping. I'm actively developing python projects in Machine Learning for language processing and Computer Vision for real-time video object tagging. I use Django and Flask for quickly creating and prototyping web services & CRUD based APIs.
Although not as common as it once was, I'm very experienced with Ruby, Rails and and it's associated ecosystem. I've launched and maintained several production products based on Rails CRUD scaffolding. Rails has been especially useful for simple REST API services. I employ Ruby scripting for simple text and data processing.
Highly experienced with modern front-end styling, templating and implementation. Experienced in working closely with design teams and adept with modern build systems and workflows: Sass, Grunt, Webpack, Gulp and modern design tool sets. Very experienced in developing React, Vue and Angular front-end systems from concept to completion.
Highly experienced with data, privacy and storage in a wide number of configurations. From concept to completion I am well versed in schema design and implementation. Using the right tool for the job, I am experienced in creating databases for REST API services, large distributed data sets, and small CRUD requirements. I focus on efficient data storage and retrieval and using the right database for the purpose. In full-stack applications I prefer taking advantage of ORMs and database abstractions.
In addition to programming and development technical skills, startups often offer unique challenges that I've become accustomed to solving. I'm highly experienced in working with many new companies, bringing new product ideas to fruition. Raising money, pitching product, communication & collaboration are essential for bringing a fragile new concept to market. Experienced in serving large traffic in elastic, multi-zoned auto-scaling, automated workflows and server management.
As an Obj-C turned Swift developer, I am experienced in the creation and deployment of several App Store products. I've adopted Swift as my target iOS language of choice, in the increasingly rare instances of needing a iOS/Mac product. I am experienced with abstracted mobile solutions such as Expo, Electron, Flutter, and React Native. Additionally, I have strong Java fundamentals, and basic Kotlin experience in creating, debugging and maintaining production applications.
Inspired by Doom as a child, I wanted to become a video game developer and pursued programming in college with the aspirations of 3D engine development in OpenGL. I don't create games professionally, although I'm happy to develop 3D rendering engines and games in my free time. Additionally I am a longtime linux developer, advocate, and supporter and contributor to FOSS.
Having learned about search engines for a previous employment, I enjoyed learned about search technology, it's platforms, algorithms, and best practices. Experienced in Elastic, Solr and Sphinx, I have implemented search systems for high volume public consumption. Familiar with dynamic ranking systems, index boosting, filtering and caching from a search perspective.
I enjoy the enthusiastic Rust community, and their passion for sharing projects. Although I don't have much professional experience in Rust, I'm interested in employing its usage for practical applications. I'm highly interested in Wasm and web3, and am impressed with Rust toolsets. I am experienced in developing with basic Rust, having used it for a Polkdadot based blockchain project, and I'm eager for the opportunity to spend more time on Rust projects.
Proficient in Machine Learning implementations and neural networks for data and image classification. Experienced primarily with Tensorflow and PyTorch environments. I've developed professional applications for semi-supervised learning on text classification and NLP. Continuing to learn and explore the possibilities for complex data vectorization, object recognition and procedural text generation.
As an early bitcoin adopter, miner and advocate, I became aware and involved in the potential of Blockchains more than a decade ago. I enjoy creating and prototyping blockchain solutions and continue to develop blockchain tech at an attempt solve real world issues (supply chains) . I'm experienced in development and deployment of Ethereum based ERC-20 DApps with Solidity, and enjoy learning about modern development and networks in my free time.
Purely an interest of passion, I greatly enjoy thinking about and developing VR applications for popular devices. I created VR tool sets for Unreal Engine and Unity, allowing developers to interact with physical objects as a payment gateway (BitcoATM). I enjoy the process of solving problems that fit into the VR landscape. Although VR is still not mainstream, I have been enjoying the Apple Vision Pro most recently.
Summary of my most recent professional experience. Please feel free tocontact meto receive a copy of my resume or to inquire about my availability
Slamhounds.com, Oakland, CA - Founder2022 -Current
Decentralized Autonomous Organization
Panth.ai, San Francisco, CA - CTO & Co-Founder
A Modern Talent Network with Humans in the Loop
Solving attribution, sourcing and blackbox issues for AI Platforms. Offer integration services to AI platforms to access a proprietary expert network that pays researchers for expertise.
MACROS Food, Oakland, CA - CTO & Founder
Nutritious Food in a Convenient Format
Physical canned food product developed to solve nutritional needs of the active macro nutrient affionados. Developed out of personal need, a supply chain business utilizing commercial kitchen as a private label.
Astroplane, San Francisco - CTO
Dream Journaling with Dynamic Generation
Dream journaling application, using AI generation of descriptions. Takes advantage of Mistral, StableDiffusion, and Anthropic Claude for dynamic story generation. Built for iOS & Android.
Zora Learning, Oakland, CA - CTO
Dynamic Storytelling Platform
Applied educational learning aid to improve reading skills with AI generated content. Using Anthropic, Stable Diffusion and others, generate dynamic storytelling with dynamic skill testing. Built in Swift for iOS.
Ikan, Oakland, CA / Founder
Innovative Interview Systems
A unique product approach to conducting level 1 interviews for candidate screening. Conducts interactive interviews through a board game for a unique and humanizing skill assessment interview. Includes software reporting and evaluation reporting.
Venture Capital / Startup Studio As Expa, San Francisco - Hacker In Residence2016 - 2022
Input, San Francisco - Head of Engineering
Collaborative P2P Documents
Privacy focused P2P document collaboration utility, with simplified editorial features and user generated permission access tokens. Web based application, with no identity tracking, and free account-less interaction. Designed for inline collaboration, security, privacy and ease of use with the fastest collaboration start time.
Gather.ai, San Francisco, CA - Lead Product Engineer
Autonomous Drone Platform
Created and maintained products for automating and collecting drone flight data to populate client administrator controlled software. Managed data transfer between offline storage systems and generated real-time reports of flight data to REST API services. Microservices for data transformation and collection via API, client and data utilities, in Node (Nest), React, Objective-C.
HalloThere, San Francisco, CA - Lead Developer
Discover Unrepresented Talent
Built a platform to Recruit talented graduates from underrepresented colleges. A hiring pipleline service, providing increased access to top brands to under-represented students. Interactive online events allow brands to connect with talent that exists in schools that may not host top job fairs and events. Allows recruiters to select from a large underrepresented talent group.
NINAYO, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania - CTO, Head of Engineering
Empowering Small Holder Farmers
Created technologies enabling higher yield crops in East Africa for improved commerce. RC-20 based digital token with distribution system, designed for agriculture based supply chain inputs, outputs, and tracking. Funding, tracking and investing in foreign farming projects, using decentralized transaction systems for larger yields and profitability.
Shift.org, San Francisco, CA - CTO, Co-Founder Unique Pipeline for Talent Sourcing Founded and developed an ML based technical recruiting platform for hiring military veterans transitioning to the civilian workforce. A multi-sided marketplace allowing skill matching & translation, enabling technical recruiters to hire from a non-standard talent pool. Provided technical fellowships and full-time employment for many military veterans with strong backgrounds
Flare Media, San Francisco, CA - Head of Engineering
Corporate Social Network
Built and maintained an iOS based social media platform for professionals. Create and share media among co-workers, focused on security and ease of use, share moments of your work life with your co-workers, friends and families in a safe and convenient way. Designed for ease of use and privacy for professionals.
CMS Platform Development Developed a highly scaled publishing platform for a large editorial staff, and served editorial content and news to a large audience over web and mobile. Managed a small development team, and specialized in Search Engines, public/private APIs and real-time chat. I created scalable web services in multi-zone, failover and auto-scale to handle high traffic events, and provide 3rd parties with fast API access for a number of well-known properties. CBS Interactive, San Francisco - Principal Software Engineer2013 - 2016
Product Development Agency Created a Web Services REST platform for this Vancouver based digital agency. Created and maintained the official event & schedule guides for large events such as: Winter Olympics, Summer Olynpics, SXSW, Lollapalooza and more. Specialized in creating customized iOS and web applications to meet the needs of vendors of festivals and events. Intergalactic, Vancouver, BC - Senior Software Developer2011 - 2013
Hardware Health Monitoring Lead Web Developer on a novel hardware health monitoring device. We created custom wearable health hardware monitoring devices, which interfaced with our desktop and web software. Our software read input data from hardware devices and generated custom views targetinged web and mobile. Basis, Vancouver, BC - Lead Software Engineer2009 - 2011
IT Services Lead the Web Development department for this northern Canadian IT consulting agency. Architected, designed and developed production web applications for clients by specification, specialized in the Oil & Energy industry. Created unique inventory tracking systems, secure member areas and payment solutions. ITNorth.ca, Fort St. John, BC - Senior Web Developer2007 - 2009