Objective
My name is Mike Zornek, and I am a software developer with 25 years of experience building and selling digital products.
I seek a full-time tech lead / principal-level job opportunity to guide and nurture a team delivering customer-led products. My peers describe me as a detail-oriented and pragmatic project manager with deep technical skills. I am excited about joining or assembling a team that can deliver products they are proud of and that solve real problems. Open-source projects and upstream contributions opportunities are a notable plus.
Proficiencies
In recent years, my technical stack has primarily been Elixir, Phoenix, and LiveView to deliver web software and APIs. These are wonderful technologies, and while I will continue to use them, I am open to other stacks for the right fit. Other timely experiences have included Rust and Svelte and a history building for Apple platforms.
Expert
- Elixir
- Phoenix
- LiveView
- Project Management
- GitHub Projects
Experienced
- Absinthe/GraphQL
- Tailwind
- GitHub Actions
- Postgres
- CQRS/Event Sourcing
- Oban
Novice
- Ash Framework
- Rust
- Docker
- Svelte
- SvelteKit
- React
- React Native
Upcoming
- OpenTelemetry
- Advanced CQRS/Event Sourcing
- Advanced GenServer/Supervision
Historical
- Objective-C
- Swift
- MacOS
- iOS
- Ruby on Rails
- PHP
- Perl
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.
"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!"
"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."
More background and testimonials on LinkedIn.
Employment History
December 2023 - Current
Senior Elixir Developer for Allovue (K-12 Accounting Software)
Contributions to product front and backend needs, including advanced web interfaces and interactive charts.
Well-known within the team for deep code review and continuous improvement of code organization.
March 2017 - Current
Self-Employed Elixir Consultant via Zorn Labs LLC
Contract-based employment with a role mix including individual contribution, mentoring, and tech lead
responsible
for managing a small team. Client work included:
- 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.
Examples of My Work
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 close 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, Mike
Zornek will introduce and demo GitHub Projects, which helps you track and manage issue status alongside
custom fields related to your GitHub issues.
Using GitHub Projects, you can use it better break down and schedule the work of your side project.
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.