Farzad Yousefzadeh
farskid@gmail.com
Helisnki, Finland
Public technical speaker.
Professional mentor on Mentorcruise.com
Find me on Farzadyz.com / Twitter / GitHub / Stackoverflow / Linkedin / Medium
Main focuses
UI engineering, DX and tooling, problem solving
Professional Experiences
Lead Engineer at Stately.ai
June 2021 - Current
Full stack, focused on frontend and developer experience
Topics I can expand on: Studio architecture, Studio canvas implementation, VS Code extension architecture, AST extraction, Lint diagrams and graphical data structures, Studio rendering performance strategies, Stately code editor (Monaco, TS lang server and web workers, compile in browser), test, code and documentation generation based on logical graphs, integrating AI (LLM output) with graphical data structures
- Lead engineer of Stately Studio, a platform and a visual builder for application logic, workflows and AI agents. Complex UI: canvas, SVG, accessible diagram, contextual interactions, embedded application. React, TypeScript, Next.js, XState, tRPC, Chakra UI
- Core contributor of Stately VS Code extension. Stately Studio embedded in webview, bidirectional codegen and diagram generation, event base architecture
- Core contributor of Stately code extractor (extract arbitrary JS/TS into graphical data structure), Stately Typegen (TS type generation) and Stately CLI (code generation). Babal and TypeScript AST, Recast, ESLint integration, VS Code integraion
- Maintainer of Stately component library. React, TypeScript, Storybook
- Core contributor of other Stately open source libraries: XState, Code extractor, Actor visualizer, Actor inspector
Lead Engineer at Epic Games
Nov 2019 - Nov 2021
Full stack, focused on frontend and developer experience
Topics I can expand on: Testing, Automated tooling, UI engineering
- Lead engineer of Epic game services under Epic online services (Tech lead and Team lead (70%+30% cap) of a team of 45, horizontal structure). React, Next.js, TypeScript, Nest.js, Storybook, Vitest, PlayWright
- Maintainer of Epic UI, Epic’s in-house component library. React, Vitest, Axe, Storybook
- Maintainer of Epic’s engineering excellence tooling: Danger.js plugins, Markdown renderers of legal documents, Query monster (An early prototype of an idea similar to React Query)
- Lead engineer of Epic’s internal test framework project (1 year span): Testing library, Jest, PlayWright
- Drove the feature lifecycle initiative with the purpose of standardizing the lifecycle of a feature from the ideation stage to the delivery and maintenance stage, optimizing for documentation/edge case exposure early on/cross team syncing
Senior Software engineer at Futurice
Nov 2018 - Nov 2019
Full stack, focused on frontend
- Built mobile payment solutions for Smartum Oy, a payment solutions company in Finland. React Native, TypeScript, Redux, Redux observable, RxJS
- Lead engineer of a team of 10 to rebuild 2 of the most popular news delivery platforms, Ilta-Sanomat and Helsingin Sanomat, (with the scale of about 5 million unique visitors per day) in Finland. React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Next.js, Storybook
- Built a recording studio management system for Supercell, a gaming company in Finland. React, TypeScript, Next.js, Express.js, Websockets, XState
Senior Web Engineer at Smarp
May 2018 - Nov 2018
Frontend focused
- Software engineer of a social network acting as the knowledge hub local to enterprises. React, Angular.js, TypeScript, Node.js, Jest, Enzyme
- Created the web API Client library on top of Smarp’s core API for central API data models, schema based data validation, data transformation and Testability
- Helped drive the new localization initiative across web and mobile products
- Planned the new design system initiative, working closely with the Design and the UX team
- Project manager of the Engineering blog
[CONTRACT] Consultant at Beeptunes
Oct 2017 - May 2018
Frontend focused
Topics I can expand on: Audio streaming on client side, Audio extraction and fade effects using the Audio context API, Audio caching strategies, User event hijacking for autoplay on Safari, Shared React across web and mobile
- Lead frontend developer of a music streaming product (Similar to Spotify). Web desktop and PWA, React, CRA, Redux, Jest, Enzyme, Web audio API, cross browser PWA
Senior Frontend Engineer at Talos Digital
Jul 2017 - May 2018
- Frontend engineer of the US and Mexican based company’s online digital service for managing the Real Estate properties industry including legal access roles, legal document management, and legal process audit. Angular.js, Phantom.js, Karma, Jasmine
- Frontend engineer of Passenger1 flight and accommodation booking system. React, Redux, Firebase, Jest, and Enzyme
Frontend Engineer and ScrumMaster at PersianGig
Sep 2016 - Sep 2017
- Reworked multiple B2C and B2B cloud services (cloud storage, cloud-ware) from Dojo Toolkit to React and Redux
- Because of better UX, being responsive for mobile users and increase in performance, our customers grew up to 1 million and 450 thousand (45% growth)
- Upgraded a direct HTTP upload service to a Node.js, concurrent, chunk enabled uploader
- Since the service is more reliable and supports link resumes, drag and drop and folder upload, our upload instances grew up to almost 20,000 instances per day and decreased the number of tickets complaining about failed uploads, hence caused a better situation for our customer support team (logs indicate a 60% growth in upload usage)
- Add testing to projects up to a reasonable code coverage to increase consistency and avoid common mistakes. Before that, the codebase didn’t have any
- Introduced Git Flow to the dev team that decreased the number of conflicts and increased development speed on the codebase
- Gathered a small team of developers to run daily workshops on tech topics such as CI, DevOps, etc to make sure everybody learns as a team.
- Mentored a junior frontend developer through a solid educational program (which I designed) and prepared them for team projects
- Enhanced the CI pipeline to cache none-updated assets that decreased the frontend build duration up to 50%
- Integrated upload interface with the native camera to increase UX
- Designed and developed an embedding system for cloud-based files
- Came up with an ACL system on projects that helped the company to reuse code base and extend its business model from B2C to B2B that eventually led to a 200,000 Euros worth contract with the main telecommunication service in Iran called Irancell
- Reworked file preview/download service to Node.js server-side rendered pages
- Member of the hiring processs
Web Developer at Bertina Co.
Dec 2014 - Sep 2016
- Developed Employees Portal using AngularJS, a service to manage employees, request for vacatons, etc
- Developed Minisite, a service to provide minimal, responsive personal portals with various themes and live editing using AngularJS, jQuery, and SCSS
- Developed Chia, an Android application with a gamification approach to learning the English Language, including different levels, payments, live competitions using jQuery, Cordova, Socket.io and Node.js
- Developed Hamkalam, an IM application for Android devices providing an anonymous chat service to the public using AngularJS, Node.jS, and MySQL
- Developed CartoonLand, an Android application providing cartoons for kids, streaming online videos with multiple qualities, download manager to cache downloaded videos, user management, IAB for payments using jQuery, Cordova, PHP, MySQL
- Developed multiple enterprises and personal responsive websites using Wordpress, jQuery, AngularJS
Junior web development freelancing
Aug 2011 - Dec 2014
Main Tech
HTML , CSS , JavaScript/TypeScript , React , React Native , Next.js , Node.js , Svelte , Rest APIs , GraphQL , tRPC , Serverless , Redux , XState , Cloud (AWS mostly) , CI/CD , Firebase/Supabase , Testing (Cypress, PlayWright, Testing library, Jest) , SCSS/Styled components/Tailwind/Chakra UI/Radix UI , Build system and bundlers
Mobile Development
React Native (Android and iOS), Cordova (Ionic & Phonegap)
Desktop
A few experiences with Electron.js
Databases
MySQL , PostgreSQL , DynamoDB
Others
I excell at: problem solving, communication, scope breakdown and prioritization
I’ve worked as: product engineer, consultant, DX engineer, open source contributor, mentor, individual contributor and tech lead
I’ve worked in various software industries: Education, Music, Fintech, Gaming, Cloud and hosting, Diagramming, low-code and AI
Education
- BSc in Aerospace Engineering, Sharif University of Technology in Tehran
- Python programming, Duke University
Public speaking (conferences, meetups, podcasts, YT shows, books)
- Time travel with JavaScript @ Helsinki JS 2023
- State orchestration using State machines @ Supermetrics Tech 2023
- Visual programming and executable models @ Turku Frontend 2023
- State machines meet component libraries @ React Finland 2022
- Visual programming and executable models @ Web dev and sausages 2022
- The Actor Model: a new mental model for React @React Finland 2021
- So you think you know state management? @Turku frontend 2020
- Experiments with State machines and Overmind @Christian Alfoni
- A hitchhiker’s guide to Svelte JS @HelsinkiJS Meetup 2019
- In Pursuit of Finite States @SkyHacks Poland 2019
- The art of explicit and consistent user interfaces v2 @HolysJS Moscow 2019
- Tackle React component complexity using Reactive Statecharts @ReactJS Day Italy 2019
- The art of explicit and consistent user interfaces @404Fest 2019
- Introduction to modeling with Finite state machines @GDG Helsinki 2019
- Explicitness and Consistency in UI @Futurice Tech weeklies 2019
- React Hooks vs Reactive Statecharts @TampereJS 2019
- React Hooks vs Reactive Statecharts @React Helsinki June 2019
- Abstract component modeling in React @React Finland 2019
- Statecharts driven UI development @ReactJS community 2019
- Boost state containment with Redux Observables @React Helsinki 2019
- Headless React @ReactJS Community 2018
- React without React @Futurice Tech weeklies 2018
- Test Driven Development @Software Talks 2018
- The state of Frontend development @Software Talks 2018
- The life of a software developer in Finland @CoderConf 2018
- Benefits of diagramming and state machines in software modelling @ DIALOGUE 2023
- Episode 3: Building a Draggable Panel using XState and Stately @ Chakra UI Stream 2023
- Episode 2: Building a Draggable Panel using XState and Stately @ Chakra UI Stream 2023
- Building a Draggable Panel using XState and Stately @ Chakra UI Stream 2023
- useState or useReducer? @ Stately Stream 2023
- Creating a Command Palette @ Stately Stream 2023
- Adding resizable panel features @ Stately Stream 2022
- Building a resizable panel @ Stately Stream 2022
- Modeling an editor feature @ Stately Stream 2022
- Let’s explore Stately @ This is Tech Talks 2022
- Experiments with State machines and Overmind @ Christian Alfoni 2019
- Guest at @webbidevaus podcast
- Guest at React Roundup
- Guest at My Javascript story
- Technical reviewer of Learn React Hooks book by Packt publications