Mike Zornek

A freelance consultant, developer, and teacher who can join your project team to:

  • accelerate the delivery of new features or elimination of technical debt
  • plan and break down work for a new project
  • manage a group of individual contributors
  • mentor junior developers
  • level up the documentation, automation, or component systems
  • join the QA team and, with code-level knowledge, improve software stability
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Technology Proficiencies

Expert

  1. Elixir
  2. Phoenix
  3. LiveView
  4. Project Management
  5. GitHub Projects

Experienced

  1. Absinthe/GraphQL
  2. Tailwind
  3. GitHub Actions
  4. Postgres
  5. CQRS/Event Sourcing
  6. Oban

Beginner

  1. Ash Framework
  2. Rust
  3. Docker
  4. Svelte
  5. SvelteKit
  6. React
  7. React Native

Upcoming

  1. OpenTelemetry
  2. Advanced CQRS/Event Sourcing
  3. Advanced GenServer/Supervision

Historical

  1. Objective-C
  2. Swift
  3. MacOS
  4. iOS
  5. Ruby on Rails
  6. PHP
  7. Perl

Recent Client Outcomes

  • Worked with product owners to define, break down, and execute a proposal approval workflow system for a company in the accounting space.
  • Integrated interactive chart components into LiveView experiences for accounting software.
  • Built OAuth and API consumption logic against Google and Microsoft Graph for a company in the security observation space.
  • Ongoing maintenance and enhancements to a HIPAA-compliant healthcare platform spanning mobile apps, admin web, and GraphQL.
  • Helped a text and voice communications team replace an Ember UI with LiveView, including a stepped wizard experience, client-side S3 uploads, and CSV processing.
  • Contributed to a large e-commerce platform's migration from Java to Elixir, including individual contributions related to Facebook API integrations alongside heavy mentoring of previous Java team members new to Elixir.

Rate and Availability

I am available and looking for new projects; ideally in the 15-32 hour per week range.

My rate is $130-$180 per hour, with discounts available for open-source initiatives or long-term commitments.

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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 via LinkedIn

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 via LinkedIn

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 via LinkedIn

More background and testimonials on LinkedIn.

Examples of My Work

Articles

Open Source

The following are some side projects I've tinkered with in my spare time. They aren't explicitly prepared as a polished technical demonstration, but if you look around, you can get a feel for how I like to work (consistent contexts, detailed documentation, broken down issues/pull requests, etc.).

  • Flick is a work-in-progress app built using Elixir and Phoenix LiveView that allows for ballot creation and captures ranked votes. We use ranked voting to help pick books for Elixir Book Club, and this is what we use.
  • Franklin is 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.

Videos

Creating Your First Elixir/Phoenix CI Check with GitHub Actions

YouTube — This talk is for people curious about the basics of GitHub Actions and how they can utilize this automation tool to better verify code changes within their Elixir projects. The presentations consisted of of a lecture, live audience exercises on GitHub, and closed with time for questions.

GitHub Actions enables you to build custom automations right within your GitHub repo. These automations can be used for Continuous Integration checks (verifying the app builds with no warnings, all the tests pass, etc), Continuous Deployment (package your app for release, execute the release, etc.), and many other creative workflows. The service is free for public repos and has a generous allocation for free-account private repos.

GitHub Projects to Help You Organize Your Side Project TODO List

YouTube — During this presentation, I introduced and demoed GitHub Projects to help you track and manage issue status alongside custom fields related to your GitHub issues.

Exercism Elixir Track

YouTube — Exercism is a platform that provides a learning experience for programmers. It provides a series of exercises that you can work through.

I recorded myself working through the Elixir track and created a video series to help others learn Elixir.

Community

  • Elixir Book Club (admin) biweekly book club reading and discussing topics of Elixir and general programming.
Reach out via email Create a calendar meeting