Erin Alexander
Hi, I'm Erin! I'm a software engineer, writer, and visual artist from Portland, Oregon. Whether I'm building something at a startup or making art for myself, my work tends to be cross-disciplinary and driven by systems thinking. I'm drawn to explore what science fiction author Rudy Rucker terms the gnarl—the zone of complexity between order and chaos, where interesting things happen.
Career
I've worked since 2013 mostly in frontend developer roles at small businesses and startups. I've been responsible for complex visualizations, system and cloud architecture, project management, and team leadership. Currently I'm seeking new directions in my career, because I love breadth and a holistic understanding of how teams and businesses work.
An unordered list of my skills
React | TypeScript | Next.js | AWS CDK | GitHub Actions | Google Cloud Platform | Mentorship | Developer Experience | Cross-functional Collaboration | Agile/Scrum Facilitation | Roadmap Development | WebGL | Three.js | WebGPU | Canvas | SVG | D3.js | Recharts | Redux | TanStack Query | Webpack | Babel | Storybook | Vite | GraphQL | Technical Discovery | A/B Testing
Résumé - Choose your path!
Art
I graduated from college in 2009 with a degree in art and art history. After school I was deeply involved in the Net Art scene and the art collective dump.fm, exhibiting work and rubbing shoulders with new media artists and GIF-makers. I started to find myself more drawn to the web itself as a medium, and translated my skills into an engineering career.
These days I mostly paint from photos with paint markers on board, and design vector art for shirts and stickers to share with my friends.
Writing
I came out as transgender in 2022, and since then I've been writing essays on my blog Human Kibble about my experiences in transition. I write to engage with the (excessive amount of) queer theory, history, literature and media I devour in order to better understand myself and what it means to be trans.
Some favorites
- Common Ally Slurs—when truisms hurt, and what to say instead
- Visibility Tanking—a strategy for taking space
- My Dolls—a machinima essay on reclaiming my past
- EPE, baby—an interactive exercise in absurdism
Play
Outside of web dev and writing and art, I dabble in electronics, graphics technologies, and game development. Here are a few random accomplishments:
- Competed in 4 Ludum Dare 48 hour game jam competitions
- Designed two light field renderers, a toy rasterizer with a scene graph, and a realtime WebGPU raytracer
- Hosted too many custom Minecraft servers to count (my way of microdosing Linux)
- Once wrote a Duck Hunt-style game for my cats that detected their pounces on the TV
