Peter Wong

Skills

Ember.js

Rails

UI Design

User Experience

Business

I specialise in building full-stack tech products and user experiences. Having worked with Javascript frameworks for over 10 years, I bring with me a deep understanding of frontend subtleties, best practices and shortcomings.

At the same time, I like having a hand in a broad base of disciplines. Apart from creating mobile or web apps, I've created and scaled backend APIs and services, and also enjoy UI design and UX. As a Business and Economics graduate, I also like to work with statistics and finance, and cannot help but consider real-world business needs and human psychology even while solving technical problems.

I am comfortable crafting entire apps, user experiences, and systems on my own — from conceptualising, researching, designing, building the full-stack, deploying, monitoring, and integrating with third party services.

I take pride in creating enjoyable user experiences and derive satisfaction from seeing users easily pick up an app, become more awesome, and then tell us how much it changed their lives.

2019 – 2024

NOVI Health

I served as CTO of a local health-tech startup, doing everything from design & coding, to hiring & product management, to devops and even financial analysis & data science

Crafting a Native Mobile Experience

Ember, Cordova

As CTO, I designed, built, and laid the groundwork for an interaction-rich Javascript mobile app with near-native animations, gestures, and performance.

As with any new project and startup, thousands of design and architectural decisions had to be made with regard to audience, UX, design language, frameworks, plugins, services, code structure and organisation, etc.

You can download and try the app at the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. For purposes of hiring, I even created a microsite to explain the product offering from a more tech / product angle.

API and Admin Web App Designed for Efficiency

Ember, Rails, node.js, devops

The customer-facing mobile app is paired with a fully-featured admin web app that is optimised for efficiency.

Together with an API, I had to lay out a complex system of backend jobs, integrations with 3rd parties and various microservices with node.js, Puppeteer, AWS Lambda and Firebase.

Although historically not my forte, I also had to dive into devops, set up services, optimise for performance, fix memory leaks, etc.

Data Science &
Co-Authoring a Paper

Statistics, Domain knowledge

Healthcare is probably the most complex vertical I've been exposed to, being deeply personal yet also having a huge breadth of issues and stakeholders.

In the course of the work I got to pick up knowledge from an entirely new domain, and also had the chance to apply statistics and econometrics knowledge to nibble away at data science topics, build financial models, and even contribute in a small way to a research paper publication.

Hiring, Management, Mentoring

Management, Communication, Mentorship

Management is always the biggest challenge and an area where I am continually learning the most. Figuring out a product direction and roadmap is difficult enough, and project management complex enough, but hiring, mentoring, and managing a team is one of the hardest (but most rewarding) parts.

In this role, I am very grateful for the opportunity to have managed and mentored engineers, product designers, and data analysts, of varying seniorities.

2018 – 2019

Sabbatical + Freelance

Inspired by Stefan Sagmeister, I decided to take a sabbatical to learn new skills, explore the projects I’ve always wanted to do, and further my other passions, while taking on the occasional contract & freelance work.

Notion-style editor before Notion

Personal painpoint, Javascript

Before Notion existed, I wanted to solve a personal pain — formatting markdown in Github without having to toggle to preview, so I built a web-based text editor (actually really difficult) that parses Markdown in real-time and in-place.

Messenger Chatbot + Admin System

Freelance, Ember, Rails, Messenger API

An events company sought a way to regularly contact and interact with a pool of talents about their availability for upcoming events. I designed and built a Facebook Messenger chatbot and an accompanying admin interface, to save them a lot of time on a daily basis.

Ember Component Routes

Open source, Ember addon

Based loosely on the Routable Components RFC, I’m authoring an Ember addon that allows routes to render components directly, removing the need for controllers and simplifying routing in general.

View Demo / Docs

2015 – 2017

Ticketsolve

I worked remotely for Ticketsolve, an established SaaS startup based in the UK and Europe, modernising a family of legacy ticketing apps with Ember.js

Modernising Ember & Building a Seat Selection Tool

Ember, SVG, Performance

Early on, I helped migrate a legacy app to ES6, Ember CLI, and ember-cli-deploy, and appreciated the chance to implement new processes, coding styles, and best practices from my experience with Ember.

One interesting feature I created was a seat selection tool, which had to be performant on both desktop and mobile and handle a variety of scenarios and business needs.

Soloing a Mobile App Redesign

Ember, Design, Mobile

I then took on the conceptualisation, redesign and development of a small legacy mobile app into a performant Ember mobile web app — complete with “Offline Mode” using AppCache, WebSockets sync, and barcode scanning.

I appreciated the freedom to design and build, as well as the challenge of creating a native-like experience for the mobile web.

Leading a Large Scale Revamp

Ember, Product Management

Finally, I collaborated on a complete revamp of a huge SaaS app — a rare chance to put all my experience into structuring a brand new Ember app with best practices — in a way that scales easily, avoids complexity, is future-proof, yet doesn’t compromise on user experience.

I also played a product manager / lead role — digging up user stories and needs from the customer-facing team, pushing UX further with the designer, debating the API approach, all in addition to leading the frontend development.

2015

Startup Life

Hit by startup fever and surrounded by people working at startups, I wanted to try my hand at starting something too. While it ultimately didn’t work out, I still learnt a lot.

Gym Management SaaS App

Ember, Rails, Startup

I conceptualised, designed and built a gym & dance or yoga studio management app prototype (as an MVP), as the competitors at that time were clunky, legacy systems. I reached out to studios and ran customer interviews with them, before eventually deciding to move on.

2012 – 2015

TradeGecko

While I’ve been coding since I was 7, my first job was being the first employee at TradeGecko, a SaaS startup in the complex order & inventory management industry.

Growing a Team From 4 to 70+

Pre-1.0 Ember, Rails, Startup

I helped design and build TradeGecko’s flagship product — and as the first employee, had a direct influence in the startup’s vision and growth. As part of a small team, customer support was also an integral part of the work.

As the team grew exponentially, I began focussing on restructuring, establishing best practices and processes, code reviews, and mentoring newer developers.

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