AmandaHaynes
Engineering Manager and Creative Director thriving at the intersection of Art and Technology
Favorite Tech Stack
- React / NextJS
- SCSS Modules
- Typescript
- NodeJS
- Mongo DB
Current Projects
I'm always up to something! Some of my current side projects through my side company Mixed Manifest include:
- Designing and implementing on an online presence for Big Kitty Magazine - an underground arts and culture magazine showcasing Calgary's street life.
- Organizing another block-long street art jam for summer 2022
- Building an interactive augmented art installation with data visualization, live aerosol mural painting, and visual projection mapping
- Working as Live Art Director for Inter.Sect Art and Music Festival, Wicked Woods Music Festival, Feral Music Festival, Casabastock Festival, and Inspire Fest YYC.
Fun Fact
Before transitioning into technology, I was partner in a landscape construction company. In just 5 years I transformed a handyman repair sole-proprietorship into an incorporated contracting company specializing in custom landscaping design with net yearly revenue of $100,000.
While running Wicked Earth Contracting, I gained valuable experience leading teams, scoping and pricing projects, overseeing and participating in construction, and managing marketing and sales.
Profile Photo
Summary
I am driven by creating order out of chaos and am constantly searching for opportunities to leverage technology in new and interesting ways.
My core competencies lie in web technologies and I am passionate about projects that exist at the intersection of art and technology.
I'm on a mission to create collaborative, accessible, interactive, and immersive experiences leveraging various mediums both tangible and intangible.
I thrive in environments where I can collaborate closely with business stakeholders, UX designers, and developers to implement design system driven user interfaces.
Education
Bachelor of Computer Information Systems
Mount Royal University
2011 - 2016
The CIS program teaches the fundamentals of object oriented and functional programming, server and database administration, QA, and project management. During my time at Mount Royal I developed applications using various languages including Java, C#, .Net, Javascript, and Python. In addition to my studies, I participated in numerous extra curricular activities including serving as an executive on my program's student society where I helped coordinate and host events for the students and faculty including hackathons, AR playground fundraisers, and student showcase events.
Experience
I started my journey at Deloitte as a Senior Consultant in the Front End Engineering practice and was promoted to Engineering Manager in June 2022. I am currently staffed on a personal online banking project. My team is responsible for re-writing legacy code to implement a fresh design system and achieve functional parity with the legacy system. I'm also volunteering on a side-of-desk project for Ignite Calgary building their website and blog using NextJS and Prismic. In my previous engagement, I worked on a project for a global oil & gas company helping the team iterate on new features of their mobile app in the role of Product Owner.
Live Art Director
Various Music Festivals
Summer 2022
This summer I am working with Wicked Woods Festival, Feral Festival, Inter.Sect Arts and Music Festival, and Inspire Festival as the Live Art Director. In this role, I plan, coordinate, and facilitate live art installations including live painting, murals, and physical installations. I act as the liaison between the festival production crew and artists to help reach the event's artistic direction in alignment with each artist's creative vision for their contribution. This role is a part-time engagement during evenings and weekends.
My role as an Senior Product Engineer at Versett had me switching between strategic consulting and UX development as I help design and build solutions for clients in enterprise, startup, and venture domains. I leverage the most modern Javascript web technologies to build accessible, secure, and performant, web and mobile applications. Together with my team, we have delivered scalable customized solutions including cryptocurrency exchange platforms, business travel tools, custom ecommerce platforms, rich data visualizations, mobile career coach applications, and many more. The wide range of projects I have been exposed to at Versett has broadened my toolbealt and honed my ability to learn new skills and deep dive into new problem domains with ease.
It started as a volunteer position as Art Director at a small charity music festival and turned into a mission to bring together a community of artists and creatives to collaborate on massive live art installations. I work as the Creative Arts and Technology Director of Mixed Manifest, teaming up with various event production companies to create live aerosol art installations at public events, implement festival stage production, and design and implement murals in private residences and businesses.
I'm creating a digital presence and contributing as a writer for Calgary's newest arts, music, and culture magazine. I've built the website leveraging NextJS and Prismic CMS for an easy to update and SEO friendly online experience.
My mentorship role was a part time evening position where I assisted students as they progressed through a 10 week intensive web development bootcamp. The curriculum was iterative and new technologies were frequently introduced requiring me to quickly familiarize myself in order to best assist the students. Calgary is a satellite office from the Toronto based operations so there was ample opportunity for me to help coordinate and facilitate events such as demo days, showcase events, and employer meet-and-greet sessions.
I was brought on as a contractor to help a local student crowdfunding startup pivot to a freelancer marketplace aiming to connect local startups and small businesses with student freelancers. I made extensive customizations to the automation and workflow features of an existing marketplace framework build on Wordpress. I was given the opportunity to pitch RCKTSHP to the A100 and land us a finalist position in Startup Calgary's Launchpad Accelerator pitch competition with just two days notice to prepare.
To fulfill a requirement of my degree, I completed a four month internship as a technical support analyst for a the password and identity management branch of Hitachi. During my time there, I set up a large virtual network to mimic a complex client setup and went through the process of intentionally breaking, debugging, and repairing for the most in-depth understanding possible.