Ben Hammond
Denver Developer
&& Song Builder

I'm an endlessly curious web developer, with a parallel career performing and operating a tech-forward music business. I am a graduate of McGill University and General Assembly, living in Denver, Colorado with my family.

I am currently employed by the Morehouse School of Medicine, proudly working on the open-source Health Equity Tracker, which was built by Google.org and the Satcher Health Leadership Institute.

I believe deeply in the power of music and technology to uplift our communities, so please reach out if I can help or answer any questions you may have. Let's build something together!

☆ Resume ☆ Email

Ben Hammond selfie holding guitar with a Denver sunset glowing behind

Currently:
Sr. Software Engineer (Team Lead)

HET — Health Equity Tracker

Health Equity Tracker

View Site↗GitHub Repo↗

Free-to-use data visualization platform enabling new insights into the impact of COVID-19 and other social and political determinants of health on historically underrepresented groups in the US; built collaboratively by Google.org and continuously expanded by the Satcher Health Leadership Institute

Role details

Ownership of Health Equity Tracker frontend, coordinating MVP hand-off from Google.org to our small team and continuing development into an award-winning platform.
Personally achieved: 90% reduction in dataset transfer sizes by adding gzip Express middleware, 85% improvement on bundle sizes by code-splitting and lazy-loading React components, and another 84% reduction in data shipped on our slowest reports (100% faster load times) by refactoring Airflow DAGs, setting permissions with Terraform and using SQL to query and export dramatically smaller JSON files.
Personally quadrupled the number of trackable data types, completing research and writing new Python modules that process datasets across disparate sources using Pandas; Docker to containerize and upload for execution on GCP Cloud Run / BigQuery.
Addressed over 170 accessibility audit items, adding screen-reader navigation to our Vega and D3 visualizations and making open-source contributions to NPM packages that improved usability for hundreds of thousands of users
Architected an integrated blog and content management system, utilizing a headless Wordpress dashboard and incorporating content directly using React Query persisted via local storage.
Representing our organization in communications with NPR, CDC, Rutgers and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; collaboration with outside agencies to allow for problem-free insertion of newly designed components.
Created a design system and standardized styling system, refactoring an inconsistent mix of Sass modules, Material UI, and inline styles into a custom Tailwind theme using a design token library. Included expanded tests with all new functionality; identified the lack of “end to end” testing and implemented coverage using Playwright running on CI and against production, added missing Typescript custom typing to expedite development and prevent errors.

Python

Pandas

Pytest

Docker

Terraform

GitHub Actions

GCP

Airflow

BigQuery

React

TypeScript

Vitest

Playwright

MUI

Tailwind

Vega

D3

Pre-Commit

Biome

Monday

Sunday

Saturday

Thursday

Wednesday

Tuesday

Monday

Saturday

Friday

Past Project Challenges

Little Cabin: Fullstack Python App with Django and Google Calendar API

Python

Django

PostgreSQL

AWS

GCP

Details

Created this web app to provide my extended family integrated property management tools.
Syncs consensus-based scheduling with Google Calendar API using a Google Cloud Platform service account.
Heroku deployment required customized configuration to generate required credentials file.
“Demo” logs in a pre-authenticated account and programmatically generates additional test accounts with tiered authentication and incoming action requests to demonstrate user-to-user interactions.
Prioritizes responsive design with media queries and CSS variables; persistent dark mode toggle selection.

Blog Post↗GitHub Repo↗

GigBoard: MERN stack web app connecting gig-workers

Node

MongoDB

Express

JavaScript

React

Bootstrap

Details

Uses Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern, user stories, and an internal RESTful API.
CRUD functionality restricted per user status; offers custom encrypted registration or Google OAuth login.
Project-managed team of 6, utilizing GitHub's agile board to delegate and to minimize merge conflicts; provided hands-on assistance on multiple occasions and helped instructor solve another team's bug.
Wrote 3 technical posts, assisting team members with deployments and environmental variables.
Personally contributed across the stack: scaffolding functional React components; dynamic searching; hooks for state management and side-effects; assisted with JWT process.

Blog Post↗GitHub Repo↗

Tanks!: Classic terrain physics strategy game recreation; built in 1 week with Canvas

HTML Canvas

JQuery

JavaScript

Details

Incorporated programmatically generated terrain and collision detection / destruction, gravity, scalable multiplayer mode, and responsive design.

Blog Post↗View Site↗GitHub Repo↗

Family Friendly: Crowd-sourced help for caregivers of all genders

Node

NoSQL

Express / EJS

OAuth

Details

Delegates and restricts users' CRUD permissions with OAuth2.
Plots user location and data with Google Maps API.
Integrates a deployed MongoDB Atlas NoSQL database.
Internally operates a RESTful API backend in Node/Express with EJS templating.

Blog Post↗GitHub Repo↗

Gig Uploader: Boost music promotion with web-scraping

Python

Selenium

BeautifulSoup

Details

Automate gig promotion by programmatically submitting to multiple online event services.
User inputs details into a local .xls spreadsheet, and the data is uploaded publicly to Songkick, BandsInTown, Strumsy, and privately to Dubsado.
Further integration propagates this information to Spotify, Google, a user's Google Calendar, and many more locations.

Blog Post↗GitHub Repo↗

Bluesky Stuff

Current mood: Dad Max: Fury Road

@benhammondmusic.tech 🦋

Oh ya I played a gig recently! in front of this enormous Christma...

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DadWalk

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🍁

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No I claim the swift; I blame the boy band stuff on the new movie...

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