CRAIGSHANNON
I build the interface layer for wind turbine fleets, chemical plants, construction schedules, and documentation health at NVIDIA.
Fourteen years of it. The user experience is the part I own: getting close to the problem before there is anything to build, how it works for the people using it, and what finally ships.
- Discipline
- Full-stack · React & Next.js
- Owns
- UX through implementation
- Also
- Applied AI & agent systems
- Led
- Engineering teams, and agents
- Experience
- 14 years
Shipped & measured
40,000+
wind turbines
monitored through Lifespan at GE Renewable Energy
31M+
customers reached
by the Charter design system
9,000+
scholarships awarded
from 24,000+ applications at ACE
500+
construction projects
running on the platform at Homebound
Me
I MAKE COMPLICATED
THINGS LEGIBLE
Every serious system eventually produces more signal than a person can hold. My work is the layer where that stops being a problem. The dashboard read at a glance. The schedule a builder runs a site from. The internal tool that used to be a SQL script.
The part I care about most is whether the person on the other side can actually use it. That instinct came from a fine arts degree rather than a computer science one. Clarity is a design problem before it's a rendering problem.
Outside of that: husband, dog dad, permanently mid-project on something I didn't need to build.
- Based
- Golden / Denver, CO
- Shipping since
- 2012
- Led teams for
- 3+ years
- Came in via
- Design, not CS
Selected work
SYSTEMS PEOPLE RELY ON
Six engagements where the interface was the hard part, because someone had to act on what the screen said.
NVIDIA
Documentation health at platform scale
Senior Software Engineer · via Crux Digital
An executive "north star" view of documentation health, assembled from independently deployable blocks.
- Teams assemble the view they need without waiting on a central roadmap.
- Delivered inside NVIDIA’s internal GitLab environment and review process.
- Works directly with senior stakeholders and engineering leadership on what the platform should measure and surface.
VIZIO
Nimbus — an interface for the systems underneath
Senior Software Engineer
Internal tooling had one interface: hand-written SQL. Nimbus replaced it with something the rest of the company could use.
Routine verification stopped requiring an engineer
- Built a surface layer over VIZIO’s internal tools, turning script-and-query workflows into interactive, self-service interfaces.
- Worked across org boundaries with QA and adjacent teams to understand what each needed access to, then delivered it through one governed interface.
General Electric
Lifespan — renewable energy operations
Lead Front-End Engineer · via Crux Digital
Three years taking a prototype to an enterprise platform monitoring a global wind fleet, with access control at power-grid permission levels.
- Architected and implemented the front end and mid-tier of Lifespan, the operations platform for GE’s renewable fleet.
- Grew it from prototype to enterprise-grade: multi-language support, theming, and security modeling for power-grid level permissions.
- Partnered with design on the dashboards operators work from during an incident.
40,000+ turbines monitored
ACE Scholarships
Shipped in five months against a state deadline
Senior Software Engineer · via Crux Digital
Two products in one: the public application flow families used, and the administrative system staff ran the awards from. Review, assignment, and adjudication all happened in the software, not only intake.
24,000+ applications in, 9,000+ scholarships awarded, all of it adjudicated in the software
- Built the applicant-facing flow and the entire administrative interface behind it in Next.js.
- Designed the assignment and review process itself: how applications get distributed, evaluated, and turned into awards. Then built the software that runs it.
- Owned the AWS Lambda and PostgreSQL backend, deployment, and production debugging.
- Shipped the complete system in a five-month window against a legislated deadline, then delivered multiple follow-on phases.
Homebound
Scheduling for residential construction
Staff Engineer → Engineering Manager
Hired to lead the scheduling system at the core of the platform, then promoted to manage the team building it.
Adoption and productivity gains across 500+ active projects
- Led technical development of the scheduling system that sequences real construction work.
- Promoted to Engineering Manager, leading a team of 5 while keeping technical ownership of key systems.
- Ran 1:1s, reviews, and coaching; partnered with Product, Design, and Operations on delivery.
Axori
A real estate investment platform, built solo
Founder & Principal Engineer · Galloway Digital
Portfolio management, deal analysis, tax organization, and investor networking. Built solo, with a standing crew of agents handling review, testing, and documentation.
- Next.js on TanStack Start, NestJS services, PostgreSQL, and a Turborepo monorepo.
- Playwright end-to-end coverage; shipped across Vercel, Railway, and Cloudflare R2.
- Still in development. The interesting part is not the product yet. It is the system built around building it.
- Next up: a compliance calendar tracking rental licensing and inspections, starting with Denver’s residential rental rules.
Leading
TEAMS, AND NOW AGENTS TOO
Four years of managing engineers, and a couple more running a system that produces work faster than a person can review it. The second one is a different job, and most of us are still working out how it goes.
HOMEBOUND
2022 — 2023Hired as Staff Engineer, promoted to Engineering Manager. Managed five engineers while keeping technical ownership of core systems: 1:1s, performance reviews, coaching, and the conversations about what we were not going to build.
ATLAS ADVERTISING
2014 — 2016Built the engineering team from nothing. Recruited, onboarded, and mentored the developers, and introduced structured 1:1s and career development plans where none existed.
NOW
OngoingA large share of the throughput on my own platform comes from agents rather than people. Staffing that, reviewing it, and setting expectations around it is a different problem from managing a team, and most orgs are guessing at it. I have opinions because I have had to run it, not because I read about it.
With AI
THREE THINGS I BUILT WITH IT
Two client engagements and one of my own. Open any of them for how it worked.
RECONCILING WHAT THE MACHINE FOUND WITH WHAT PEOPLE SAID
Two readings of the same system, run in parallel: eleven people describing it from where they sit, and a structured automated pass over the codebase. The work was in the overlap.
HANDING THE KEYS TO THE MARKETING TEAM
They needed to see several directions for their site quickly, and every content change was queued behind someone technical. So I solved the prototyping and the plumbing together.
A ONE-PERSON TEAM WITH A STANDING CREW
A real estate investment platform I build solo, and the system that makes that possible: twelve skill-specialized agents triggered by CI and schedules, running against a real codebase rather than a demo.
Technical stack
WHAT I ACTUALLY REACH FOR
Ordered by depth of real production use.
FRONTEND
Where most of the last decade went
- TypeScript
- React
- Next.js
- Tailwind
- SASS
- Styled Components
- Redux
- TanStack Query
- Zod
- Angular
- Vue
UX & DESIGN SYSTEMS
Whether the person on the other side can actually use it
- User flows
- Workflow design
- Information architecture
- Prototyping
- Design systems
- Component libraries
- Design tokens
- Theming
- Figma
- Accessibility (WCAG)
- Responsive layout
DATA VISUALIZATION
Dense operational dashboards, built to be read fast
- D3.js
- Highcharts
- GSAP
BACKEND & DATA
Production services, not side projects
- Node.js
- NestJS
- Express
- AWS Lambda
- Serverless
- GraphQL
- REST
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL
- MongoDB
- DynamoDB
AI & AGENTS
Running in production against a real product
- Claude Code agents
- MCP servers
- Prompt engineering
- Multi-agent orchestration
- LLM product features
- Codex
CLOUD & DELIVERY
Shipping, not just building
- AWS
- Vercel
- Railway
- Cloudflare R2
- Turborepo
- GitHub Actions
- CI/CD
- Git
- GitLab
QUALITY
The part that keeps it shipped
- Jest
- Cypress
- Playwright
- Datadog
- Sentry