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Staff Software Engineer

Josh Magness

Sites adopting the design system in year one
100+
Reduction in partner development costs
70%+
Accessibility scores across adopter sites — up from below 40%
90%+
Delivery velocity through an agentic engineering practice — held to the same review and testing bar
10x

Summary

Staff engineer with 15+ years building for the web, from award-winning agency work to platform architecture. I work at the design-engineering intersection — TypeScript, React (10+ years), Next.js, and Web Components on one side, Figma fluency on the other, and design tokens as the contract between them. At the University of Maryland I serve as Principal Architect of the open-source design system now live on 100+ of the university's 1,680+ websites. I lead a 3-year technical roadmap with a 5-year vision. Behind the system was an 18-month initiative I led with a cross-functional team of 9.

Hands-on depth where the frontend is won or lost: accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA, 65% reduction in violations), performance (90%+ Lighthouse scores, Core Web Vitals), and interface decisions grounded in user research — usability testing, A/B experiments, eye-tracking studies. Reliability sits underneath: 80% fewer production incidents at 99.9% uptime on AWS, with GraphQL content APIs and CI/CD doing the unglamorous work. I apply an agentic engineering practice as a first-class discipline — agents that build software, and runtime agents shipped in the product path — redirecting the velocity gains into design reviews, architectural documentation, and engineer mentorship.

Alongside full-time work, I run side ventures end-to-end: CTO of Macro Meals (2016 bootstrap meal-delivery startup, profitable in year one on 20% margins before exit), and founder of Draft Slot — a multi-sport draft-prediction game evolved from a graduate-school thesis (2019) into a production platform. I rebuilt its Laravel codebase 100% with Claude through an orchestrated agent loop — contract-bounded modules, each validated by its own tests, 1,800+ commits deep — running on Laravel Vapor with seasonal scaling profiles. This site is a work sample of the same bar: hand-built on Next.js 16, CSS Modules over design tokens, GSAP motion gated on prefers-reduced-motion.

Core Expertise

  • Design Systems & Design Engineering:

    Principal Architect of UMD's open-source design system — 50+ Web Components consumable across React, Angular, Vue, and Salesforce host frameworks, published as 9 independently versioned NPM packages from a Lerna/pnpm monorepo, with design tokens as the contract between design and code. Ran a Figma-to-Storybook design-to-code workflow at Under Armour, laid the groundwork for automated Figma-to-code token sync at UMD, and led inclusive-design workshops for designers and developers

  • Agentic Engineering:

    Rebuilt Draft Slot's Laravel codebase 100% with Claude through a requirements → build → validation loop, delivering 10x without lowering the merge bar — and on the runtime side, LLM alt-text and marketing-copy generation at UMD on Google's Python ADK

  • Accessibility:

    Drove WCAG 2.2 AA compliance with a 65% reduction in violations through automated testing — ARIA patterns, keyboard navigation, and screen reader support as core platform features, on a practice that started with Section 508 federal compliance work

  • Performance Optimization & Scalability:

    Hit 90%+ Lighthouse scores and Core Web Vitals targets through code splitting, lazy loading, caching, queueing, and autoscaling. Architected a burst-traffic platform on AWS for a national televised contest

  • Reliability Engineering & Observability:

    Reduced production incidents 80% at 99.9% uptime for business-critical applications through Jest testing, visual regression automation, and monitoring infrastructure

  • Technical Roadmaps & Mentorship:

    Lead a 3-year technical roadmap with a 5-year vision, translated into tangible 1-year goals. Led a cross-functional team of 9 through an 18-month initiative, and set the bar on design reviews, engineering standards, and engineer mentorship

Skills

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Next.js
  • Web Components
  • CSS
  • HTML
  • Design Systems
  • Design Tokens
  • Figma
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA)
  • Localization (i18n)
  • JavaScript (ES6+)
  • Node.js
  • GraphQL
  • REST
  • Agentic Engineering
  • LLM Agents
  • Claude
  • Google ADK
  • Python
  • PHP
  • Laravel
  • AWS
  • Docker
  • CI/CD Pipelines
  • Jest
  • Storybook
  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL

Work Experience

October 2021 - Present

The University of MarylandCollege Park, Maryland

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Web Components
  • Node.js
  • GraphQL
  • AWS
  • Python
  • Jest
  • CI/CD
  • Claude
  • Google ADK

Staff Software Engineer

  • Served as Principal Architect for the design system initiative while in the Staff Software Engineer title — set the SOLID-based package architecture, governance model, and adoption strategy for the open-source design system, with components consumable across React, Angular, Vue, and Salesforce host frameworks as building blocks for 1,680+ sites of differing stacks
  • Accelerated development velocity 10x through an agentic engineering practice, shipping production LLM agents for alt-text and marketing-copy generation — reviewed, security-checked, and tested like any other code
  • Architected full-stack tooling including a component library of 50+ Web Components, a GraphQL API layer on AWS, and automated CI/CD pipelines. Built Node.js microservices consuming disparate data sources (CSV, REST APIs, content feeds) with caching infrastructure
  • Built six content APIs — News, Events, Alerts, Academic Calendar, People, and President's Messages — on GraphQL, Node.js, and AWS Lambda, and serve as product owner of the data-aggregation platform behind them, including the Experts API. Outcomes: 85% less duplicate content and 60% faster time-to-publish
  • Designed a layered monorepo using Lerna and pnpm workspaces, publishing 9 independently versioned NPM packages (tokens, icons, utilities, model, builder, styles, elements, feeds, components) so teams can consume the right abstraction level — from low-level design tokens to high-level Web Components — without paying for what they don’t use
  • Led a team of 9 through an 18-month initiative that drove adoption to 100+ sites in the first year, reduced partner development costs 70%+, and lifted accessibility scores from below 40% to above 90%. Consulted with cross-functional partners (designers, developers, content managers), conducting workshops and stakeholder presentations
  • Drove accessibility compliance achieving WCAG 2.2 AA with a 65% reduction in violations through automated testing. Implemented ARIA patterns, keyboard navigation, and screen reader compatibility as core platform features
  • Led performance optimization achieving 90%+ Lighthouse scores. Implemented code splitting, lazy loading, and Core Web Vitals optimization enabling fast, efficient experiences at enterprise scale

July 2020 - October 2021

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Jest
  • Lighthouse
  • CI/CD

Staff Frontend Engineer

  • Modernized legacy internal applications through TypeScript refactoring and modern React patterns, reducing bugs 70% while maintaining zero downtime for high-availability business-critical systems
  • Established testing infrastructure with Jest and React Testing Library, and created Lighthouse CLI automation in CI/CD pipelines — performance and accessibility standards enforced across internal tools

July 2019 - June 2020

Under ArmourBaltimore, Maryland

  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Redux
  • Apollo
  • GraphQL
  • Storybook
  • Ramda
  • Scala
  • PostgreSQL
  • Kubernetes
  • Terraform

Software Engineer

  • Built internal B2B customer service portal enabling support teams to manage orders, process returns, and handle escalations for a $1B+ e-commerce platform. Collaborated with service teams to optimize workflows and reduce ticket resolution time 35%
  • Implemented GraphQL integrations with headless commerce architecture using Apollo and Redux for state management — a read layer handling tens of thousands of concurrent requests at 99.9% uptime — and cut the clicks and steps reps took across the three core support workflows in React
  • Built a React-based localization system serving translated content across 20+ languages
  • Shipped across React, Redux, Apollo, Ramda, PostgreSQL, Scala, Kubernetes, and Terraform to deliver B2B tools on a polyglot platform
  • Established component API standards and prop validation enabling rapid feature rollouts. Mentored junior engineers on TypeScript best practices and modern React patterns

November 2011 - March 2019

ALEX+TOMBaltimore, Maryland

  • JavaScript
  • React
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Django
  • Python
  • Swift
  • Node.js
  • AWS
  • EC2
  • RDS
  • Jenkins

Full Stack Developer, UX Designer

  • Architected a platform handling thousands of concurrent requests for a national televised contest. Designed for burst traffic with caching, queueing, and autoscaling on AWS
  • Architected AWS infrastructure with automated CI/CD using Jenkins. Evolved from manual FedRAMP-compliant deployments to Infrastructure as Code, managing EC2, RDS, and load balancer configurations across multiple environments
  • Developed an internal customer service application for regulated financial services handling credit card offers and support workflows. Implemented secure authentication, authorization controls, and audit logging for sensitive financial data
  • Shipped native iOS applications from concept to App Store deployment, serving as Product Owner across roadmap, release cycles, and cross-functional collaboration with design, engineering, and client stakeholders
  • Drove Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 AA compliance across federal client engagements. Established semantic HTML, ARIA patterns, and keyboard navigation as baseline requirements, and led workshops for designers and developers on inclusive design and usability
  • Grounded design decisions in user research — usability testing, A/B experiments, and Tobii eye-tracking studies — turning observed behavior into interface changes clients could measure
  • Built 20+ full-stack production applications including customer support tools, contest platforms, and data aggregation systems. Rapidly prototyped solutions using Ruby on Rails, React, and Python, iterating based on user feedback and business needs

Education

Master of Engineering

Project Management · Graduate Certificate in Robotics

University of Maryland (Expected May 2028)

Master of Science

Applied Information Technology · Certification in Database Management

Towson University

Bachelor of Science

Sports Management

Towson University

Awards

11 Addy and WebAward wins for agency client work, 2011–2019 — including six Gold Addys.

NPS site capture

Park Points 2011

Addy · Gold