“Helping Elixir teams scale faster, reduce technical debt, and ship with confidence.”
Team Leadership • Staff Augmentation
Testing Enhancements • Documentation Refinement
Technical Debt Cleanup • Mentoring
Testimonials
Michael’s worked with us on multiple projects as a fractional engineering leader and I couldn’t recommend him more highly. He’s excellent at working with non-technical stakeholders and junior engineers alike, he’s a great engineer, and a deep appreciation for context permeates all the work he does. He’s also a really nice guy and very easy to work with. You should work with Mike if you get the chance.
~ Peter Berg, Founder at Forward
Zorn is a great Software Engineer, but also a great mentor to other Engineers on the team and an amazing partner and resource for Product teams. I would love to work with him again!
~ Robert Prehn, Fractional CTO & Tech Lead
We would highly recommend Michael to anyone who would benefit from a senior software developer with an excellent technical approach, wide and deep knowledge as well as a great attitude.
Michael was a valuable contributor to our startup project. His feedback during code reviews was invaluable. He dramatically improved the quality of our code base. As if that wasn’t enough, Michael did an excellent job leading by example in software development best practices, while demonstrating excellent initiative, and self management. We would gladly work with Michael again.
~ Taun Chapman, CTO & Co-founder at ROAR for Good
More testimonials available on LinkedIn.
Recent Client Projects
🥇 Budget Proposal Approval System
My role and work: Collaborated with product leadership to refine and document a complex business logic tree request, shaking out many edge case concerns. Crafted the full-stack execution of this vision in Elixir and LiveView.
Product Impact: Added a powerful feature to the client’s budgeting product, allowing their customers to create custom rule-bound approval flows.
📊 Revenue and Expense Interactive Charts
My role and work: Transformed custom chart concepts from the design team and executed them using the Highcharts charting library. Reworked internal data fetching modules to define new data shaping patterns and testing approaches.
Product Impact: With the addition of expressive and interactive visuals, customers have a greater sense of where the money is going.
🔒 Third-party Integrations for a Security Dashboard Platform
My role and work: A security platform wanted to expand its integrations with popular vendors, including Zoom, Google, and Microsoft. I added OAuth authentication workflows and various platform API consumption to centralize a security vision for customer accounts.
Product Impact: Increased customer value in understanding what tools housed insecure accounts. Provided direct guidance on improving security and keeping it secure over time.
🧑⚕️ Ongoing Maintenance for HIPAA-compliant Healthcare Platform
My role and work: Took ownership of a platform (web and mobile apps) previously built by a separate development agency. Shepherded it through a down development cycle, addressing bugs and adding features as needed. Nothing too sexy but honest work using a spread of tech, including Elixir, GraphQL, and React Native.
Product Impact: Maintained customer delivery of product during a major developer handoff. Provided confidence and relief to the non-technical founders who could rely on someone when problems arose.
🛠️ Ember.js to LiveView Conversion
My role and work: Augmented a development team building SMS communication software and took ownership of converting some historic corners of the app that were still using Ember.js to a modern LiveView implementation. Some of these pages were rich CSV import flows, and care had to be taken related to maintain speed and stability.
Product Impact: By employing me as a consultant focused on technical debt, the full-time staff was able to focus on more involved and structural platform initiatives. By removing Ember.js, the build and delivery tech stack was greatly simplified.
🎓 Elixir Mentor to Java Converts
My role and work: Augmented a full-time team that recently embraced Elixir and was actively converting the entire platform from Java to Elixir. I joined a team and helped mentor Java developers to master functional programming and Phoenix LiveView patterns. I also owned threads of work related to Facebook Marketplace API integrations.
Product Impact: The team greatly appreciated having Elixir-experienced people around for questions, feedback, and timely pull request code reviews.
Rate and Availability
I am available and looking for new consulting projects. Ideal engagements are in the 15-32 hours per week range, but happy to be flexible if needed.
My rate is $125-$150 per hour, with discounts available for open-source initiatives or long-term commitments.
Technical Proficiencies
Expert
Experienced
Beginner
Historical
Examples of My Work
Community
- Elixir Book Club (group administrator) biweekly book club reading and discussing topics of Elixir and general programming.
Blog Articles
- Personal Elixir Code Aesthetics
- Potential Consulting Client Questions
- Notes about Technical Debt
- Securing Webhook Payload Delivery in Phoenix
Open Source
- Flick is a simple Elixir / Phoenix LiveView app to help capture ranked votes. You can see this project in action at https://rankedvote.app/. This project was built to help the Elixir Book Club pick books but is open for all to use.
- Franklin was an intentionally over-engineered blog application written in Elixir. It was a project I worked on to get more familiar with event sourcing using Commanded. While I am anxious to use event sourcing in the future, this project did not ship and remains an abandoned historic tinker space.