A brief introduction

I'm a web developer and teacher in the lovely city of Chicago, IL. I care deeply about internet privacy and encourage anyone stopping by here to take some basic steps toward securing your digital life. IRL I enjoy distance running and sloppily playing John Mayer songs on the guitar. Someday I hope to see the earth from outer space and the New York Mets win the World Series.

The anatomy of this site

The words on this page are written in Pug and styled using Sass. The code is compiled and bundled using Gulp.js. Everything is version controlled on Gitlab, and pushed to Amazon S3 using Gitlab CI. Traffic here is routed through Amazon CloudFront and secured using Let's Encrypt.

Some work I've done

Senior Developer @ Umojo
```
// Tech things: Node.js, Sass, Pug, JSON Web Tokens, Microservices, Gitlab CI, Docker
```
I built a management portal for Voice 365, a VOIP/PBX platform built on Skype for Business. The system consists of six Node.js microservices, each communicating with an external API or database. On top of those is an API gateway, which handles all incoming requests, ferrying them to the proper microservices for the task. The frontend is a stateless Express app written primarily in JavaScript ES6. User authentication is handled with encrypted JSON Web Tokens (JWTs).
JoshFrontend User Portal
SamFrontend Admin Portal
BartletAPI Gateway
CJVoice Platform Microservice
RonUser Auth Microservice
AmyBilling Microservice
AinsleySfB Microservice
CharlieOffice 365 Microservice
DonnaDNS Microservice
Frontend Developer @ Nativ
```
// Tech things: Ruby on Rails, CoffeeScript, Sass, Slim, d3.js, Middleman, Codeship, Amazon S3
```
I worked with an awesome team at MobileX Labs (now Pairade) on an app builder that enabled artists and small business owners to design and generate their own native iOS app . Our small team (2 backend devs, 2 frontend, 1 designer) worked closely together in a scrum workflow.
Curriculum Architect & Instructor @ Startup Institute
```
// Tech things: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Node.js, Jekyll
```
With the help of educator extraordinaire, Brent Williams, I wrote the curriculum for two part-time classes: Intro to Web Design and Into to JavaScript. I taught those classes to groups ranging from three to fifteen students. We focused heavily on pair programming, live coding as a group, and cumulative projects.
Other Awesome Teams I've worked with:
I helped the amazing folks at BallotReady with some pre-launch features.
I did QA and Design work for The Noun Project during my time at Startup Institute.
I helped launch At The Pool, which was once Hyphos and now Yeti (though the team is now building awesome home automation things at Josh).
I founded TEDxUConn and ran the 2013 conference with my friends at school.

(Do or) Don't @ me

Email me at tom at tjbenneche dot com
Come for the tweets
See what I'm building

Communicate with me securely:

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A brief introduction

The anatomy of this site

Some work I've done

Senior Developer @ Umojo

Frontend Developer @ Nativ

Curriculum Architect & Instructor @ Startup Institute

Other Awesome Teams I've worked with:

(Do or) Don't @ me