Hello, world!

My name is Matt Lean and I’m a full-stack web developer & UI/UX designer. I was born in NY and raised in SoCal. Now I live in the SF Bay Area and am currently building software at Voltaiq.

In elementary school, my sister introduced me to a browser game called Neopets. The main objective of the game was to take care of virtual creatures, but the most impactful feature was that it allowed users to personalize and share webpages in-game with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I ended up building sinful pages with lots of blue Comic Sans, absurdly loud auto-playing MIDI music, flashing background GIFs that probably triggered epileptic seizures, and seemingly endless stacks of alert dialog boxes that would “freeze” your computer and make your mom think you got a virus. (I apologize if you ever fell victim to my heinous pranks!) Despite the fact I was creating foolish webpages about my Neopets, the reality was that the game was introducing me to the very fabric of the web.

After I quit Neopets, I continued to learn web development through free online tutorials and books I couldn’t buy during visits to bookstores. These studies would then manifest as fan websites about other video games that intrigued me on free web hosting platforms like GeoCities.

In high school, my sister started her own neighborhood business as a dog walker and inspired me to try something similar. I ended up taking my web development hobby to the next step and established my own business as a freelance web designer and developer where I built websites for small, local businesses for several years.

For college, I moved to northern California to study computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Because I had been self-taught up until this point, it was here that I began to truly realize the scope and diversity in opportunities the field offered. I had been completely oblivious to computer science fundamentals, and I began to study topics that online tutorials never directed me to like data structure and algorithm analysis, assembly, computer architecture, and more. I also tried to step away from web programming to explore other specializations like graphics programming, network programming, game programming, virtual reality, and more. At the end of my studies, I realized that it made the most sense to come full circle and combine my formal education with my previous “street” coding experiences to find a job in Silicon Valley as a specialist in web technologies.

Since graduating and receiving my Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science in 2015, I’ve been professionally building web applications for the Bay Area in a variety of industries including biotech, medical, on-demand services, and more. My education hasn’t stopped here though. Outside of work, I continue to learn and play with new technologies that often come up as open source experiments on my GitHub. Because I currently reside in South Bay, I occasionally take online or night classes at De Anza College where I study graphic and interactive design when I find extra time.

Thanks for reading my story,
I'd love to hear yours!
Let's start talking

Work

Voltaiq
Software Engineer
2020 – Present
LGC, Biosearch Technologies
Web Developer Consultant
2014 – Present
Medable
Frontend Web Developer
2016 – 2018
Miles & Company Services
Frontend Engineer
2015 – 2016
Food Lovers United Company
Frontend Developer
2015 – 2015
MattLean.com
Freelance Web Designer/Developer
2008 – 2014

Education

University of California, Santa Cruz
B.S. in Computer Science
2015
De Anza College
Certificate in Graphic & Interactive Design
2020

Languages

  • JavaScript
  • TypeScript
  • Python
  • Java
  • Sass
  • Less
  • CSS
  • HTML
  • SQL
  • PHP
  • C#
  • C, C++
  • Ruby

Testing

  • Jest
  • SuperTest
  • Cypress
  • Chromatic
  • Enzyme
  • React Test Renderer
  • Mocha
  • Chai

Frontend

  • React
  • React Router
  • Redux
  • Fetch
  • Axios
  • XMLHttpRequest
  • Promise
  • CSS Grid
  • Flexbox
  • Multicol
  • Floats
  • Media Queries
  • Framer Motion
  • Anime.js
  • CSS Animations & Transitions
  • Storybook
  • Google Charts
  • Canvas
  • Web Storage
  • Intersection Observer
  • Moment.js
  • Material Design
  • Materialize
  • Google Maps API
  • Mapbox & Leaflet
  • react-intl
  • Google Analytics
  • Segment
  • Open Graph Protocol
  • Bootstrap
  • jQuery
  • RequireJS
  • Modernizr
  • Webshim
  • A11y
  • Design Systems
  • SEO
  • BEM
  • Backbone.js
  • Knockout
  • AngularJS

Backend

  • Express
  • webapp2
  • Memcached
  • node-postgres
  • pg-promise
  • Mongoose
  • Google NDB/DB Client Library
  • Google Blobstore API
  • bcrypt
  • Jinja
  • Pug
  • EJS
  • Node.js
  • web2py
  • Django
  • Flask
  • Ruby on Rails
  • REST
  • Cookies
  • HTTP
  • WordPress

Databases

  • PostgreSQL
  • MongoDB
  • Google Cloud Datastore
  • MySQL

Servers

  • AWS Elastic Beanstalk
  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon CloudFront
  • Heroku
  • Google App Engine
  • Firebase
  • Apache

Tooling

  • webpack
  • GitHub
  • Gulp
  • Git
  • Electron
  • Flow
  • CircleCI
  • Grunt
  • Subversion

Design

  • XD
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • InDesign
  • Lightroom
  • Premiere
  • After Effects
  • Audition
  • Audacity
  • Blender
  • Unity
  • Vegas Pro
  • Flash