Since working as a game audio designer for Game Closure in Mountainview CA, I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for the past 10 years. During this time, I’ve been taking care of my daughter (10-years-old) and son (6-years-old) to support my wife as she completed her postdoc at Stanford University and became a tenured professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. Concerning frontend development, most recently, I’ve joined the team of scholars working on the RCLM (Richard Cour de Leon Multitext) project as a freelance frontend developer, adding features to the website they’ve established. My hard skills (JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, AJAX, Java) have come from my commitment to always be learning. While taking care of my kids and working part-time teaching private guitar and bass lessons to students from age 6 to adults, I’ve completed certifications in frontend development libraries, JavaScript algorithms and data structures, and responsive web design, with more to come (please take a look at the projects I’ve completed on my LinkedIn page). In addition, I’ve completed programming courses from Edmonds Community College along with Coursera courses in web development, git and git-hub, and cloud computing. My previous work at Game Closure, along with my teaching experience and being a stay-at-home dad, has also given me a wonderful set of soft skills. These skills include knowing how to communicate to a wide variety of audiences, excellent time-management, adaptability, and creative problem solving. At Game Closure, I worked as a team member with software developers who were using HTML5 and JavaScript to make exciting mobile games and technologies. Working adjacent to these awesome developers always made me want to code, and I decided that once my kids were going to school full-time, I wanted to begin my career and find full-time work as an entry-level frontend developer. Thank you for taking the time to read this!-Robert Ellis
