Sean Cannon

Sean Cannon | CEO, Entrepreneur, Technical Lead

Hello! I am a veteran full-stack web application developer with over 20 years of broad experience in development, UX, UI, and dev ops. I specialize in consumer-facing applications and enjoy focusing my career on building maintainable, scalable systems in which the UI communicates with the data model through compartmentalized, cacheable APIs and services.

I believe in iterative development, TDD, agile methodologies, pair programming and functional programming practices like currying and composition. I'm able to augment into existing teams, lead teams, and work solo if required, on projects which have tight deadlines and corporate security restrictions such as VPN, leased hardware, and background-check requirements.

My last several projects I've been building microservice architectures using various tools like Docker/ECS to leverage both third-party infrastructure (S3, ElasticSearch, Redis, MySQL/MongoDB..., Vault, RabbitMQ, etc.) as well as my own services which need to be compartmentalized. Python here, Node there, etc. Services all communicate over AMQP or REST, keeps things really organized and easy to scale/manage. Also makes it really easy to deploy and assign tasks accordingly. Projects have been deployed to a wide range of providers including GCS, AWS, Digital Ocean, K8s and client-owned proprietary racks.

I'm fully invested into functional programming patterns; currying, composition, lenses, etc. I opt to use Ramda pretty heavily on both the NodeJS servers and the React/Redux clients which makes achieving 100% unit test coverage much simpler, though I'm open to using any stable/supported tools to get the job done if my clients have preferences.

I've used a lot of technology over the past couple decades. None of it remains popular forever but there are always systems which depend on these legacy libraries and frameworks to stay profitable, and I'm always happy to work with what's implemented and offer suggestions for improvements where applicable. If you have any questions, shoot me a text or email.

Successful Collaborations & Partnerships

Jonathan Mendelson

Was Sean's Client at Conviva

I had the opportunity to work with Sean on a UX revamp project recently and found him to be a terrific partner throughout the engagement. Whether we were discussing green-field possibilities, refining requirements/user stories, or dealing with the complexities of customer-reported bug triage, Sean was quick to respond and provided clear, helpful recommendations on the options available. I especially appreciated that he gave specific (and accurate) LOE estimates and made it clear when scope changes/feature creep would affect our development schedule. I would eagerly work with Sean again on a future user interface project.

Jeff Lee

Worked indirectly for Sean at Mindjet

Sean has a fantastic enthusiasm for software development. His confidence in tackling daunting tasks provided encouragement for the rest of the team during major projects (e.g., building an SDK from scratch). Dev teams will not only find value in his coding skills, but also his excitement for exploring tech and of course his sense of humor.

Ben Stone

Worked indirectly for Sean at Mindjet

Sean is an expert on the MEAN stack who has lead development but also offer guidance to the other engineers on the team. He has done a great job offering up solutions to complex problems and always shows patience when explaining suggestions about implementation.

Jeff Howard

Worked directly with Sean at Presence

Sean was the lead JavaScript (AngularJS) developer on the Salesforce live site. He is a hardworker that is dedicated to applying best practices, writing good documentation and clean, readable code. He also gets excited about technologies and is happy to teach people new skills.

Seth Snyder

Worked directly with Sean at Presence

I worked with Sean on a large web design and development project that went from kickoff to launch in 12 weeks. He expertly translated our design vision into a fully functional site that got 8M unique visitors who had a 20 minutes average view time. The site we delivered was admired by both our client and their constituents. And, thanks to Sean and his team, the experience's performance exceeded our expectations.

Kristofer Sommestad

Worked indirectly with Sean at Presence Sean At Litmus Box

I know Sean to be a very full-stack developer, who's very efficient and quick to deliver. He's not afraid of hard work, but still delivers with quality. I would love to have the opportunity to work with Sean again.

Josh Camire

Was Sean's Client

Sean was brought into an existing project as a Senior Front End Engineer. The project was relatively complex with a distributed workforce and Sean integrated seamlessly culturally and technically. He consistently delivered high-quality critical thinking and creative, achievable solutions.

Ryan Hohag

Worked With Sean At Litmus Box

Sean is an elite web developer with a tremendous aptitude and enthusiasm for quickly learning new skills and staying ahead of the curve. I have worked with Sean at multiple development shops where I have seen him set the bar high and become a role model for his peers in every case. His business acumen is equally impressive with a rare ability to bridge the gap between developers and clients in order to deploy the right tech stack to meet the business needs. At LitmusBox, Sean assisted on sales calls to workshop various approaches, advised project managers on cost, scope, and timelines, and managed development teams to drive best practices and ensure proper architecture implementation. I would highly recommend Sean for any senior- level development role.

Bryan Levenson

Was Sean's Client

My company had the great pleasure to work with Sean in which he executed an AngularJS front-end development project (with a Scala / Play backend). Sean is extremely bright and becomes a domain expert extraordinarily fast. He has tremendous hybrid capabilities in the sense that he is both back and front-end adept. Highly recommend Sean for AngularJS / PHP execution.

Aryn Kelly

Worked With Sean At Litmus Box

Sean's breadth of knowledge—and his commitment to staying at the head of the ever-changing technical landscape—is incredibly impressive. When you combine his far reaching technical acumen with his easy- going nature and effective, friendly communication, the end result is a true gem in the web development realm. I consider it a great asset to be able to work with Sean on any project.

Kate Ciurej

Was Sean's Client

Sean has an infectious enthusiasm for web technologies and problem-solving, which makes him an absolute pleasure to work with. He is generous in sharing his deep subject expertise, and has a rare skill for communicating technical concepts clearly even to non-technical team members. I've been working with Sean and his team at LitmusBox for several years now, and they have always delivered a high quality of work for us at a very good value. They are flexible and creative in overcoming technical hurdles, communicative about status and schedule, and timely with deliverables.

Stuart Tannehill

Worked Indirectly For Sean At Litmus Box

Sean is extremely sharp, focused and quick working. His knowledge of all things code and tech is extremely deep and thorough and this permits him to quickly get his head around just about any technical problem he could ever be expected to deal with. I was blown away more than once when working with him on some thorny problem or another. He is also a very friendly colleague and someone that I enjoyed working with and, on the few occasions we were able to meet face to face, enjoyed socializing with as well. He would make a great member or leader to any team and will end up being worth his weight in gold to whoever lands his talents.

Dennis Tobias

Reported To Sean At Alien Creations

What else can I say about this guys skills other than awe inspiring? He has a mastery of web design and development that I have not come across in all of my dealings with people across the IT spectrum. From his ability to listen to his clients needs to his attention to the most minute details are what separates him from others out there. Whenever I hear of the need for professional looking websites Sean is the ONLY one I will recommend.

Jason Cramer

Was Sean's Client

Sean consistently exceeded our expectations and his talent will be called upon again on our next project.

Cory Vandenberghe

Was Sean's Client

Sean is/was great to work with on www.totalcontrolsolutions.com. He was knowledgeable and efficient on making the needed changes and upgrades to our site. Sean also designed and programmed the initial site for TCS. I would gladly work with him on future projects.

Jay Grenier

Reported To Sean At Alien Creations

I've worked with Sean for the past 7 years on various projects in the web world. He was my mentor of sorts in the field of web development and has always been an incredible inspiration and a huge help on almost every single project I've worked on. Sean is diligent in his work and is constantly striving to develop new skills and techniques. He has authored several of his own scripts that are used by developers world wide. It's always been enjoyable working with him and I look forward to doing so again in the future.

Ben Catlin

Was Sean's Client

Sean was very easy to work with and produced creative web designs. I would recommend his company for anyone looking for complete end-to-end development of graphics, databases, and web pages.

Eric Hauer

Reported To Sean At Alien Creations

Sean is probably the most disciplined web developer I've ever seen. He hand-codes 20,000 lines of PHP code for websites using text-editor apps like Textpad or Notepad and knows exactly what every line of code is doing. I'm not a developer myself, but I've worked with plenty of them in the past and many rely 0 on programs such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage to generate code for them, and I've worked with many developers who insist on using 3rd party CMS applications like Joomla and really don't write any code at all. Seeing a developer create a full-scale E-commerce website from scratch on Textpad and Photoshop is just amazing. Also, if a client ever had an issue where something stopped working correctly, Sean would personally look at the issue, and often pinpoint the bug in a matter of minutes and fix the bug for free to ensure the site got working correctly again as soon as possible. It's usually not the job of the developer to interact directly with the clients and offer customer service, but Sean does that too. Alien Creations is a fantastic company, and to this day I remain friends with Sean even though I've moved on to other areas of work.

Aram Dermenjian

Worked Directly With Sean At Quin Street

Sean was an amazing person to work with during my time at QuinStreet. Not only was he at the forefront of implementing strategies to standardise our code base, but he also actively worked on helping communications between designers and programmers. He was always diligent in his work and always had great documenting skills. He always seemed to finish his tasks with great attention to detail and was usually ahead of schedule even when given complex/difficult tasks.

Michael Mack

Worked With Sean At Quin Street

Sean is an exceptionally talented Web Developer! I had the pleasure of working with him at QuinStreet...what sets Sean apart from the average programmer is that he brings excellent communication skills to the table - while writing great code. Would definitely recommend him to anyone looking for an excellent Developer.

Seth Wessitsh

Worked Directly With Sean At Quin Street

Sean and I worked together at QuinStreet for several months and in that time it was apparent that he was always striving for quality code. He read articles every morning and toyed with new code just as often. He was great to work with and always willing to talk out issues to come up with the best solution, definitely the kind of developer, and person, I like to have on my team.

Thom Hickey

Managed Sean At Quin Street

Sean is a talented and experienced PHP/Javascript/HTML/CSS developer. While working on my team at QuinStreet he exhibited a combination of curiosity and know-how that enabled him to produce clean, working, well documented and robust solutions to some hard-to-solve real world problems we encountered. Sean works well on teams and as an individual. I recommend him highly to any organization for projects of any complexity.

Fran Quinn

Worked With Sean At Quin Street

There's nothing more to say other than that Sean is an exceptional developer fully committed to any project he undertakes. Sean is a designer's dream developer with a keen eye for design and sensitivity to execute on the vision set forth by his team members. I look forward to working with Sean again.

Michael Stearns

Worked Directly With Sean At Quin Street

I worked with Sean on several web redesign/reengineering projects. Not only was Sean extremely detailed in his work, he was also very prideful in creating really quality code and getting things done the right way. Aside from his deep technical knowledge, Sean always brought new and creative ideas to the table to improve design and users experience. Sean was also always one of the best-dressed members on the team, to boot.

Nina Bhanap

Managed Sean Indirectly At Quin Street

Excellent engineer... strong at front-end, architecting as well as implementing... rare to find engineers who can do all three... was a real pleasure having sean on the team...

Prashant Viswanathan

Worked Indirectly For Sean At Quin Street

During my internship at Quinstreet, I was fortunate to have Sean as one of my mentors. Sean developed a javascript framework for the education vertical which allowed for much faster development time. As a peer, Sean's friendly and altruistic nature made him very easy to approach and he was the first to offer a helping hand whenever I had run into challenges. I still adopt many of his debugging strategies to solve my problems today, and even though we don't work together today, I can still count on his help and advice.

Jaime Wheeler

Managed Sean Indirectly At Quin Street

Sean is a very talented and detail-oriented developer. His tenacity and commitment to not only complete a project on time, but do it right the first time, garnered him a great reputation among other developers and made him quite in demand among business users wanting to work with him. Sean has a great attitude and often happy to assist anyone with any questions or issues. Given the opportunity to work with Sean again, I would not hesitate knowing the caliber of a person and developer he is.

Anne Larsson

Worked With Sean At Quin Street

Sean was always one of my favorite developers to work with at QuinStreet. He is an incredibly dedicated worker who is relentless with his own code, only satisfied with perfection, putting in however many hours it took to complete a project within the desired timeframe. Not only was he one of our star coders, but he was easy and fun to work with. When we were working on completely re-imagining one of our major web properties, he contributed many innovative ideas that were incorporated into the final design and function. Sean has that unique quality of being both a standout engineer/developer and also able to communicate with his business-focused colleagues. On top of all this, Sean's fun personality made working with him an absolute 2 pleasure. I would love to have the opportunity to collaborate with Sean on another project in the future, and I strongly endorse his work and work ethic.

Tobia Ziklik

Worked Directly With Sean At Quin Street

Sean is a first-rate web developer whose attention to detail is unparalleled. In the roughly two years we worked together, he demonstrated a sharp and ever expanding skill set. Dissatisfied with the status quo, he pushed for more efficient and streamlined processes and promoted front-end development standardization.

Moses Sison

Worked With Sean At Quin Street

Sean is very objective in assessing all of the candidate I had him review. He's very responsive and would take the time to give detail explanation of his thoughts regarding a current open requisition. I would love to work with him again in the future and I highly recommend him for any technical role in a company.

Ricardo Garcia

Worked With Sean At Quin Street

Sean, is an excellent colleague as well as an all round professional. His work ethic is unmatched, and his attention to detail is superb.Sean achieves all of the goals and responsibilities he is given with a very high level of success! I highly recommend Sean, for any professional opportunities.

Ben Catlin

Was Sean's Client

Sean is a creative professional who is easy to work with and has a wealth of good ideas and experience to draw from. I would work with again if the opportunity arose.

Developing & Delivering Software since 1998

Overview:

Much of my early career was freelancing through a software company I created called Alien Creations. When I relocated from Minnesota to California in 2006, I spent the following few years wrapping up my queue and migrated to salaried and contract positions in the East Bay. I spent some time doing projects and contract work for QuinStreet, Dictionary.com, LitmusBox, and Presence for clients ranging as small as unknown start-ups to as large as Google and Salesforce.

Broader portfolio work:

Visit AlienCreations.com for a more complete portfolio listing which includes a 15-year work span from 2001 2016.

Let's Work Together

Feel free to reach me on any of the following channels:

• [email protected]
• https://www.npmjs.com/~seancannon NPM
• https://github.com/seancannon GitHub
• https://stackoverflow.com/users/353802/alienwebguy StackOverflow
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanpcannon LinkedIn
• https://www.twitter.com/seanpcannon Twitter