benhammondmusic.tech

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)

Health Equity Tracker Project
HET — Health Equity Tracker
View SiteGitHub 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

Recent Posts
Read the tech blog ↗

A `diff` Alias That Shows, Copies, and Skips the Noise
Uninstall (don't just disable) Codeium from your VSCode extensions if Copilot inline suggestions aren't working
Making E2E Tests Harder, Better, Faster, and Stronger
Eliminating over 3,000 DOM elements and improving accessibility along the way
Shaving hours off a Pandas script
Ignore GitHub Whitespace Diffs

Ongoing Side Projects

benhammondmusic.com Professional Musician Site Project
Dev Portfolio — benhammondmusic.tech
View SiteGitHub Repo

My web dev and software engineering online presence. Using Astro as a meta-framework for server side generated pages, with React function components. Dynamically pulls in my recent blog posts with GraphQL at build time, along with GitHub events rendered as emoji 💪.

Astro
React
TypeScript
Tailwind
GraphQL
benhammondmusic.tech Project
Music Site — benhammondmusic.com
View SiteGitHub Repo

Refactored my professional music site to incorporate modern web best-practices and allow seamless CI/CD with Netlify and GitHub; filterable song search for improved user experience.

SvelteKit
TypeScript
Tailwind
benhammondmusic.com Data Visualization Playground
Data Viz — Music Career Visualization Playground
View SiteGitHub Repo

Low-stakes place to experiment with visualizing the meta-data behind my other career as a professional musician. Configured multiple components using secure server page routes to authenticate access to Spotify API and answer the question "So what kind of music do you play?".

SvelteKit
TypeScript
MongoDB
D3

Recent GitHub Activity

Thu
21
💪Push
Fri
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💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push
Sat
23
💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push
Sun
24
💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push💪Push

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 PostGitHub 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 PostGitHub 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 PostView SiteGitHub 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 PostGitHub 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 PostGitHub Repo

Bluesky Stuff

It's already back up! Thanks!

screenshot of the Health Equity Tracker website with an open modal showing a frowny face icon and the words verify.vote.org refused to connect

@votedotorg.bsky.social it looks like your "Check Your Registration" widget is down; FYI. Thanks for providing such a gr...

Shared on Twitter and spotted in Stuttgart. Link here: x.com/louniki_?s=21

Do you work in tech and want to rebel against this administration? Integrate accessibility into your product work, no m...

You're not overwhelmed. You're under attack.

@benhammondmusic.tech 🦋

Borrowed from Denver Public Library

Reading History (Sep 2018 - Jan 2025)

Hyperion

Dan Simmons

ebookJan 2025

Dust

Hugh Howey

ebookDec 2024
sheriffsunderground areasrevolutionssubterranean civilizationfictionfiction, science fiction, generalfiction, dystopian

Ready Player Two

Ernest Cline

ebookDec 2024
new york times bestsellerfiction, science fiction, action & adventuretechnologyfictionregression (civilization)virtual realityutopias

Dust

Hugh Howey

ebookDec 2024
sheriffsunderground areasrevolutionssubterranean civilizationfictionfiction, science fiction, generalfiction, dystopian

Shift

Hugh Howey

ebookDec 2024
underground areassubterranean civilizationamnesiafictionscience fictionromandystopiasamerikanisches englisch

Wool

Hugh Howey

ebookDec 2024
scifidystopiapost apocalypticapocalypticscience fictiondystopiassubterranean civilizationfiction
Let's build together!

Email me, or connect on GitHub and LinkedIn.

Email me
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