Hello my name is
I solve visual problems.
About Charles
My name is Charles Kantz, and I am a recent graduate of the Rithm School, where I learned full-stack engineering and led large scale coding projects on the front and back end. For the last 7 years, I was a visual designer and art director for Silicon Valley companies like Intuitive Surgical and Nuro, where I led branding and user experience efforts.
As a designer, I loved to solve visual problems. Over the years, I found myself wanting more than what design was providing. I realized what I loved about my work was solving the more technical challenges, as well as building and implementing designs. I admired developers who took my specs and brought them to life, and I realized that I wanted to explore doing just that.
I got my chance to try development when employed at Nuro by creating a virtual reality prototype for an unreleased product. I learned C# on my own, developed the experience in Unity over three months, and loved every minute of the process. When it was complete, I felt proud and satisfied with my work, which solidified my theory that software engineering was the best path for me. I took this as a sign and attended Rithm School to pursue this new venture.
Outside of my career, I have spent most of my life in the Bay Area, aside from a few years in the suburbs of Portland. Besides immersing myself in development and design, you can find me enjoying sci-fi, photography, video games, baking bread, and the company of friends.
Work Experience
Engineering
Design
Fullstack Engineer at Livestack
May 2020 to June 2020
Livestack provides creators and influencers a platform for hosting paid live streaming events.
Revamped React-based MVP by implementing new user workflows and refining key touchpoints.
Revamped form for requesting an event by implementing conditional validation on the front-end and enforcing schema requirements on the back-end.
Developed custom date picking component to give users more flexibility when selecting dates.
Refined key touchpoints by designing and implementing updated visual styling and responsive layouts for components, giving the end-to-end experience a more polished and professional look.
Skills
Technical
Javascript (ES6), Python, HTML, CSS/Sass, React, Redux, Tailwind CSS, Styled-Components, Node, Express, Flask, PostgreSQL, jQuery
Design
Branding, art direction, user experience, web design, print design, UI design, photography, video
Tools
Insomnia, Postico, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Lightroom, Premiere, Sketch, Invision, Figma
Featured Work
Jobly
Javascript | React | Emotion/styled | Express
A fullstack Javascript job hunting app built with React, Node/Express, and PostgreSQL. Jobly allows users to sign up or login, browse and apply for posted jobs and search them by position, browse and search hiring companies by name, and view the jobs posted by each company. It also allows users to edit their profile info. Finally, the authentication and authorization middleware protects certain routes so that only the right logged in users can view certain pages.
Other Noteworthy Work
Jeopardy
Javascript | jQuery
A fun Jeopardy-like trivia game, and one of my first Javascript projects. Click on a question mark to reveal a question, then click again to see the answer. Hit the 'Restart' button to get new categories and questions.
Rap Libs
Javascript | React
Rap Libs is like a mad lib, but it's for a rap song. A simple React-based app where you submit words for a mad lib and see your selected song with your words.
