Ben
Lorantfy

Summary

  • Skilled staff frontend software engineer and leader, avid OSS contributor, a11y specialist, lean engineering fan
  • 9+ years of professional software engineering experience
  • 4+ years of technical leadership experience

Contact

Awards

Skills Canada Web Development Gold Medal (2015)

Conestoga Co-Op Student of the Year Award (2016)

Open Source

Experience

ApplyBoard Inc.

Staff Software Engineer (Dec 2021 - Present 路 3 yr, 8 mos)
Senior Software Engineer (Dec 2020 - Dec 2021 路 1 yr)
react
redux
typescript
nodejs
nestjs
nextjs
reactflow
zod
  • Staff frontend engineer for two teams: Application Processing, the organization's core business domain; and UI Engineering, which shapes the organization's frontend platform, tooling, and standards
  • Provide technical oversight, mentorship, and guidance
  • Collaborate cross-functionally and cross-team to unblock work and move the business forward

Key Accomplishments

  • Led a UI/UX revamp project for a 10-year old business-critical page, increasing conversion rate by 13%, developer productivity by 3-4x, and reducing WCAG violations by 90%
  • Led frontend projects to integrate AI systems in our product, including building an in-house workflow designer and a dynamic form engine, automating application processing and reducing processing time by 50%
  • Co-created and led maintenance of the organization's design system, increasing developer productivity by 2-3x and improving WCAG compliance by ~80%
  • Founded the organization's accessibility community of practice, helped write our accessibility standards, and rolled out and administered accessibility training across the organization to 40+ people
  • Decreased bundle size by 60% and build time by 66%, while working on an ad hoc org-wide performance task force

Conestoga College

Professor (Part-time) (Jan 2023 - Dec 2023 路 1 yr)

Taught courses called "User Experience Evaluation" and "Software Engineering Fundamentals"

Lorantfy Inc.

Consultant (Full-Time) (Jan 2020 - Dec 2020 路 1 yr)
Consultant (Part-Time) (2015 - Present 路 10 yrs)
react
redux
typescript
WCAG
SEO
PHP
MySQL

Consulted with various clients on interesting projects, including a11y audits, SEO audits, performance investigations, mobile responsiveness, and building full products from scratch

Postmedia Network Inc. (Postmedia I/O)

Frontend Tech Lead (Oct 2018 - Dec 2019 路 1 yr 3 mos)
Frontend Developer (May 2017 - Oct 2018 路 1 yr 6 mos)
react
redux
typescript
nodejs
mongodb
  • Led front-end development of highly depended-upon web applications
  • Worked closely with product and design teams to create responsive, accessible, well-tested, and performant user experiences
  • Maintained frontend infrastructure, including webpack, babel, jest, eslint, and other tools
  • Also worked on back-end services and deploy pipelines using node.js, docker, AWS, ECS, CircleCI, and other technologies

Key Accomplishments

  • Built an internal ordering system that reliably handles hundreds of orders a day
  • Built an advertising analytics platform, providing insights for salespeople and a few thousand Postmedia clients
  • Created and maintained an internal component library for use across projects
  • Reduced bundle size from 25mb to 4mb
  • Initiated and oversaw long-term technical initiatives, including migrating a project to typescript, upgrading from react 15 to react 16, and others

Brose Canada Inc.

Software Developer (Jun 2015 - May 2016 路 1 yr)
C#
.Net
MSSQL
typescript

Independently designed, built, deployed, and maintained QPT (quality process tool), including frontend, backend, database, and infrastructure. This tool streamlined and optimized the QA process in the London plant's production line, and has since been expanded to multiple plants

Key Accomplishments

  • Saved the plant an estimated $100k/year in increased efficiency
  • Won "Co-Op Student of the Year" Award

Other

Additional experience includes co-ops and early roles at SixFactors Inc. and Rivison Inc. (~7 mos)

react
angular
cordova
nodejs
PHP
MySQL

Education

Software Engineering Tech. (B. Tech)

McMaster University, Hamilton, ON (2019 - 2024)

Business Management (Certificate)

Mohawk College, Hamilton, ON (2024)

Software Engineering Tech. (Adv. Diploma)

Conestoga College, Kitchener, ON (2013 - 2017)