Hey there đź‘‹ my name is Ryan C. Collins! Thank you for visiting my website to learn more about me!
My Career
I am a passionate and innovative front-end focused software engineer and people leader. My focus is on building best-in-class user experiences for the web through modern engineering practices, customer obsession and data-driven decision-making.
While my expertise is focused on the front-end, I bring a wealth of experience and educational background in all parts of the stack: design, systems, cloud, data and leading high performance engineering teams.
I have a wealth of experience working in multiple industries including:
- Real Estate & Insurance Tech
- Financial Technology
- Cloud Computing
- Education Technology
- Internet of Things
What’s important to me
- Best-in-class user experiences
- Performance
- Accessibility
- Responsiveness
- Scalability
- Building a front end architecture to support:
- Easy maintenance of code through organization and design patterns
- Code and feature sharing
- Great developer experience
- Accelerated feature delivery
- Minimal operational overhead
- Building high performing teams
- Maintaining a healthy team culture
- Continuous improvement through agile process experimentation and measuring outcomes
- Taking calculated risks and celebrating both wins and failures
- Advocating for everyone to be owners
- Growing myself and my coworkers through constant self improvement and life-long learning
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Please find me on LinkedIn if you have an opportunity that would be a great fit for me!
Things I use
Tech Stack
- Web Components - I’m a big fan of lean web apps and web components have come a long way. My take, React isn’t right for everything.
- TypeScript - JavaScript is the language of the web and TypeScript makes it even better! I’m a big fan!
- React JS - Still one of the best Front End frameworks, even after 7+ years!
- GraphQL - GraphQL adds type safety to your APIs and provides a best-in-class developer experience. When GraphQL isn’t right, my fallback is React Query.
- Serverless - I’m a big proponent of using serverless technologies to build back ends. Infrastructure management is hard and I prefer to build on the shoulder’s of giants whenever possible.
- Docker & Kubernetes - Containerized applications and deployment orchestration for when serverless isn’t enough (i.e. multi-tenant cloud solutions).
Coding
- VSCode - Many have tried to convince me otherwise, but I still always come back to VSCode as my editor of choice.
- Hyper - Highly customizable web technology based terminal. Big fan!
- Github Copilot - AI auto completion for the editor.
- Homebrew - Package installation management.
- FireFox - My main browser these days, along with Brave Browser. Privacy is in!
Data Science
- Python
- Numpy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Tensorflow, etc.
- Jupyter Notebook - An amazing tool to tell stories with data.
Investing
- TradingView - Technical analysis, charting, watch lists
- Koyfin - Market overview & data
- Finviz - Stock screener
- The Retirement Tracker - Shout out to my buddy Alan Souza, great investing tool for tracking your whole portfolio and competing with your friends to reach early retirement!
Desk Setup
Computer: 16” Macbook Pro
- M1 Max - 10 core CPU, 32 core GPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD
Chair: Autonomous Ergo Chair
Desk: Autonomous Smart Desk
Mouse: Logitech Vertical Mouse
Microphone: Blue Yeti
Camera: Depstech 1080p Webcam
Monitors: Dell Ultrasharp U2720Q 27” 4k monitor
Personal Background
Family is #1 for me! I have a huge one and I love every minute I spend with them. After that, my focus is on growing my knowledge, enjoying my life and finding my ultimate purpose.
I am naturally a builder, but unique in the sense that I am also an artist. Perhaps the only downside to that is that instead of focusing on one area of growth, I tend to focus on growing myself in every area! With that said, I do try to go deep into whatever topic I’m focused on before moving onto the next thing.
Education is a huge part of my life and I consider myself a life-longer learner. I literally always have a book or course that I am working on.
Personality Type
Academic Interests
Currently my main academic interests are:
- Computer Science
- Engineering
- Finance
- Music
- Leadership
My Hobbies
When I’m not learning, working or investing, you can find me enjoying the outdoors: hiking, cycling & kayaking, spending time with my amazing friends and family and playing my guitar on my back porch.
Baking
I love cooking and baking of all sorts. Some of my favorites are homemade pizza in a wood burning oven and homemade sourdough bread. Also, checkout the Paella we made last year in Sonoma!
My Guitars
I’ve been playing guitar most of my life and I’ve never been very good, but I still love it!
What kind of music do I play you ask? Guitar for me is not an intellectual pursuit, it is about enjoyment and meditation. I play whatever I feel like in the moment, usually songs that I’ve learned or jams. For a while, finger-style was my main thing, but I’ve been branching into blues and rock on the electric lately.
I am a minimalist when it comes to most things, but especially with guitars. I have one acoustic and one electric plus a small practice amp.
