I’m thrilled to announce that Chris Jacobs has joined the Origin engineering team. Chris brings a wealth of experience in front-end engineering.
Chris was referred to us by Ed Spencer and we were expecting a high-caliber engineer. We were not disappointed! As part of the interview process, Chris worked on a project to add support for 3D models (GLB and glTF files) to the NFTs that the Story platform can mint. We were impressed with Chris’ speed of execution, and his high-quality code that was well commented on and thoroughly unit tested. He clearly met our high hiring bar.
Some of Chris’ favorite technologies to work with are React, and Node.js — which we both use extensively both in the codebase of OUSD (our DeFi product) and Story (our NFT platform). He is also a strong advocate for TypeScript to increase long-term maintainability, velocity, and overall quality when working on a complex application. Not surprisingly, soon after he joined our team Chris took the initiative to start experimenting with how we could gradually transition some of our codebase from JS to TypeScript.
Example of a 3D model being uploaded to story.xyz
Chris grew up in a small town in Connecticut. Fascinated with computers at a young age. He would play on his father’s commodore 64, old business computers, and mac classic prior to having his own PC. He first got interested in coding by modding his favorite video games like Total Annihilation and Quake II.
After studying computer science Chris later moved to Silicon Valley and started a position as an application developer for OCZ Storage Solutions (later acquired by Toshiba) where he worked with technologies such as .NET, SQL, JavaScript, Java, and later Node.js, Python, and single-page web applications. At Toshiba, he managed a team of 5 to create the manufacturing test workflow for enterprise-grade SSDs which were manufactured in Taiwan. After Toshiba, he moved to Storcentric as a UI Architect where he fell in love with TypeScript while building NAS and DAS management tooling. He later moved to Palo Alto Networks as a Principal Engineer working with React and TypeScript to create interactive applications for security researchers and PANW customers.
Chris and his family hiking by the coast
Outside of work, Chris enjoys learning about history and how the events of the past have shaped the world into what it is today. He loves going for hikes, visiting the coast, and exploring life with his wife and 3 children. He also codes for fun during his spare time where he creates simple games, interactive simulations, and experiments with neural networks. Check out his particle simulator (and the code here). He has been a PC gamer since his youth and he still enjoys playing video games as an adult. His current games of choice are League of Legends: Wild Rift, Hearts of Iron IV, and MechWarrior Online.
Please join me in welcoming Chris to the Origin engineering team!
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