Jacob Ikola

Full-stack engineer with 7 years shipping web and mobile products end to end. Solo-built a native iOS/Android app on an Apollo GraphQL and PostgreSQL backend; built and open-sourced a design system generator; led a company's first design-system effort. Client-facing from requirements through architecture to delivery. Range across React, TypeScript, React Native, Node.js, GraphQL, and PostgreSQL.

[ Experience ]

Independent

Full-Stack & Design Engineer · Aug 2025 – Present · Remote

  • Built Taulu (taulu.net) — a native iOS/Android social-coordination app (Expo / React Native). Solo full-stack build: an Apollo GraphQL API over PostgreSQL (Drizzle) with JWT auth + token revocation, row-level security, and server-signed image uploads. Hardened through dedicated Security, Accessibility, and Performance agentic review gates. Owned the codebase conventions end to end — what earns being a shared type, a shared utility, or a reusable component.
  • Built and open-sourced Loom — a token-driven design system generator. One config source produces a populated Figma library, a pick-what-you-need React component catalog, and a NativeWind preset for native — eliminating Figma↔code drift structurally across web and native. Doubles as a constraint layer for agent-assisted development — a closed, proven value set the model must select from rather than improvise against. Validated in production through multiple downstream projects.
  • Shipped JAMIE — a hand-built agent harness for daily engineering work: identity, memory, sessions, and routing as version-controlled markdown. Anthropic Agent SDK integration; runs across Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini.
  • Shipped Paperboy — a daily news dashboard in continuous personal use — built end-to-end on Loom's output as a design-system proof.
  • Frontend motion craft — Three.js / React Three Fiber hero scenes, IntersectionObserver-based scroll-reveal, prefers-reduced-motion discipline, individual transform properties for atom-level animations.
  • Expo
  • NativeWind
  • Next.js
  • React
  • React Native
  • Tailwind CSS
  • TypeScript
  • Apollo
  • Drizzle
  • GraphQL
  • Node.js
  • PostgreSQL
  • Supabase
  • Figma Plugin API
  • GSAP
  • Motion.js
  • React Three Fiber
  • Three.js
  • Agent Harnessing
  • Agent SDKs
  • Claude Code
  • ComfyUI
  • Context Engineering
  • Gemini
  • Prompt Engineering

Spectrum Net Designs

Full-Stack Developer, UI Designer · Feb 2022 – Jul 2025 · Grand Rapids, MI

  • Made the case for design systems to company ownership with no in-house Figma capability, secured budget for a dedicated effort, and led a four-person group — onboarding two frontend developers with no prior Figma or design-system experience into the tooling and conventions.
  • Built the company's first design system — Figma components, and living docs — that cut style drift and duplicated CSS across the team's output.
  • Operated as a 1:1 client-facing developer, leading engagements from requirements through technical architecture and delivery; balanced multiple concurrent client timelines and stakeholder relationships.
  • Contributed full-stack to Auctioneer Software (SaaS) — React/TypeScript UI, GraphQL resolvers, and PostgreSQL schemas handling bidding data, user management, and auction lifecycle. Shipped through PR-based code review and GitHub Actions CI/CD.
  • Brought into a client engagement to work alongside the client's externally hired designer, planning how their design system would be implemented in delivery.
  • Held cluster access on the company's Kubernetes deployments to monitor releases — watching node health and verifying services came up cleanly and stayed stable post-deploy. Operational/observability scope; cluster configuration was owned by the infrastructure admin.
  • HTML
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • Pug
  • React
  • SCSS
  • TypeScript
  • Docker
  • GitHub Actions
  • GraphQL
  • Kubernetes
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQL
  • Figma

Independent Contractor

Design & Development Consultant · Mar 2021 – Jan 2022 · Remote

  • Built a single-page digital year-in-review for Hino Trucks, a Toyota subsidiary — documenting the engineering department's accomplishments — as a subcontractor to a Detroit development firm.
  • Ran concept research and prototyping in Figma, pitching approaches for iterating on the client's existing web pages.
  • Owned the design-to-development lifecycle — wireframing in Figma, iterating directly with the project's PM and designer, hosting working prototypes on Netlify for stakeholder review, and flagging technical constraints during design before they became expensive rework.
  • CSS
  • HTML
  • JavaScript
  • React
  • Netlify
  • Figma

PropelUp

Full-Stack Developer · May 2019 – Jul 2020 · Indianapolis, IN

  • Sole full-time developer on a B2B learning platform built for engineering-team upskilling and retention — organizations enrolled their junior developers, admins curated the material they consumed and practiced against, and progress fed into 1:1 reviews. Grew it from zero to a product real companies beta-tested in production, including a community college IT department.
  • Traveled on-site with the sales team to conduct user interviews and deliver live product demos, directly shaping the roadmap from real feedback.
  • Served as the connective thread between design, engineering, and sales — the only team member with full context across all three.
  • CSS
  • HTML
  • React
  • Express
  • Heroku
  • Node.js
  • PostgreSQL
  • REST APIs
  • Figma

[ Education ]

Eleven Fifty Academy(now Blaizing Academy)

Full-Stack JavaScript Cohort · Jan 2019 – Apr 2019

  • Completed 500+ hours of hands-on training in full-stack development using React, Angular, Node.js, and PostgreSQL.
  • Collaborated on multiple team projects — clean code, version control, and UI/UX fundamentals.
  • Awarded the Teamwork Award, voted by peers — arrived having self-studied ahead of the cohort and spent the program mentoring classmates through material they were stuck on.
  • Angular
  • React
  • Express
  • Node.js
  • PostgreSQL

[ Skills ]

// Frontend & Code

  • CSS
  • Cypress
  • Expo
  • HTML
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • NativeWind
  • Next.js
  • Pug
  • React
  • React Native
  • SCSS
  • Tailwind CSS
  • TypeScript

// Backend & Data

  • Apollo
  • Docker
  • Drizzle
  • Express
  • GitHub Actions
  • GraphQL
  • Heroku
  • Node.js
  • PostgreSQL
  • REST APIs
  • Supabase

// Design, Motion & Craft

  • Figma
  • Figma Plugin API
  • GSAP
  • Motion.js
  • React Three Fiber
  • Three.js

// AI

  • Agent Harnessing
  • Agent SDKs
  • Claude Code
  • ComfyUI
  • Context Engineering
  • Figma Make
  • Gemini
  • Prompt Engineering