Chris Kirkham

Chris Kirkham

Senior Software Engineer · Salt Lake City, UT

I'm a software engineer with 12 years of full-stack and front-end experience in TypeScript, React, Next.js and Python, with Go on the backend. I've built consumer applications at scale for Fandango, Bluehost and Shift, where I was promoted from Senior Software Engineer to Engineering Manager over a team of eight.

Today I'm building AI-agent systems and full-stack products, with a focus on code that stays readable and maintainable, even when an AI wrote it.

Get in touchView my resume on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)

  • 12 years

    building production software

  • Team of 8

    managed as Engineering Manager at Shift

  • 1000x

    faster Python services than the legacy Perl at Bluehost

  • 30+

    engineers trained in JavaScript and React

Live projects

Screenshot of the TrulyFreePress.org home page

TrulyFreePress.org

A news platform that pulls coverage of the same story from multiple sources, then uses AI agents to find the most accurate information in each and synthesize a single article.

My role: Co-developer. My focus is code review and guardrails: keeping agent output correct, on-brief and maintainable.

  • We built the agent framework. Agents run on Claude Opus through the Anthropic API, alongside self-hosted LLMs.
  • Monorepo with a Python backend and two TypeScript frontends.
  • Stack chosen on purpose: popular, well-documented technologies, so LLM-written code stays readable and a person can take over if the agents or a developer drop out.
  • Python
  • TypeScript
  • Claude API
  • Self-hosted LLMs
  • AI agents
  • Monorepo
Visit TrulyFreePress.org (opens in a new tab)
Screenshot of the 31for31 film list for October 2025

31for31

A Halloween-season site with 31 horror, spooky and Halloween films to watch every October, with sets for 2024 and 2025 and 2026 coming.

My role: Solo developer. I built it in 2024 and have used Claude Code on it since summer 2026.

  • Svelte frontend, Python/Flask REST API and a Supabase database, plus a service that pulls streaming availability for each film.
  • Svelte
  • Python
  • Flask
  • Supabase
  • REST API
  • Vercel
Visit 31for31 (opens in a new tab)
Screenshot of the chriskirkham.com home page

chriskirkham.com

This site.

My role: Solo developer.

  • Google Calendar API powers the live event listings.
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Tailwind
  • Jest/RTL
  • Vercel

Experience

From 2023 to 2025 I took a sabbatical to make Diverted, a Student Emmy–winning documentary.

  1. Independent / Freelance Developer, chriskirkham.com

    Jan 2026 – Present · Salt Lake City

    • Building TrulyFreePress.org, 31for31 and chriskirkham.com (see Live projects).

  2. Engineering Manager, Shift

    Sept 2022 – Jan 2023 · Remote

    • Promoted from Senior Software Engineer to manage a team of 8 engineers and a $1M budget, overseeing scheduling, planning and delivery for React e-commerce client applications.
    • Tracked expenses, capital expenditure and paid contracts; consulted on software and technology adoption.
    • Coached and mentored direct reports to help them grow in their careers.

  3. Senior Software Engineer, Shift

    July 2021 – Sept 2022 · Remote

    • Led a team of four developers building marketplace solutions and marketing technology for used-car sales.
    • Maintained and improved the company's core Go application, and built a server-side rendered front-end client on its API to cut page load times.
    • Rebuilt the main consumer application from a legacy monolith into a modern Rails 7 application, and helped improve and maintain the AWS SQS/SNS event pipeline.
    • Owned front-end standards across client applications; worked with GraphQL.

  4. Senior Software Engineer, Bluehost

    Nov 2018 – June 2021 · Salt Lake City

    • Built containerized Flask microservices in Python that ran up to 1000x faster than the legacy Perl implementation, helping break apart a legacy monolith. The team deployed these microservices on Kubernetes.
    • Co-led JavaScript/React lunch-and-learns, training 30+ engineers moving off Perl.
    • Full-stack: client features, REST API endpoints, Business Intelligence rules, server-side logic; worked with GraphQL.

  5. Senior Front-End Developer, Clearlink

    Aug 2017 – Oct 2018 · Salt Lake City

    • Introduced CircleCI-integrated deployment and led the Bedrock migration for 5 of the team's 12+ WordPress sites, then scaled CircleCI across 30+ sites.
    • Used Redis to speed up WordPress and PHP applications.
    • Trained junior developers and built CLI tools for the wider dev team.

  6. Front-End Developer, Fandango

    Jan 2015 – Aug 2017 · Los Angeles

    Full-time in Los Angeles through Dec 2016, then the same work as a remote contractor through Yoh, Jan – Aug 2017.

    • Improved the purchase flow with new features and bug fixes; ran A/B tests with Adobe Target.
    • Built Chrome extensions and automation scripts in JavaScript, C# and PowerShell.

Earlier

  • Front-End Developer, Spark Networks (2013–2015): Mobile web JDate in jQuery Mobile
  • WordPress Developer, Analog Creative (2012–2013)

Skills

Primary
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • React
  • Next.js
  • Svelte
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Node.js
Backend
  • Python (Flask)
  • Go
  • Ruby on Rails
  • PHP
  • REST
  • GraphQL
Data
  • SQL databases and data architecture design
  • Supabase
  • Redis
AI
  • Anthropic Claude API
  • AI agents
  • Self-hosted LLMs
  • Retrieval-grounded generation
  • Claude Code
Testing
  • Jest
  • React Testing Library
  • Cypress
DevOps / Cloud
  • AWS (SQS/SNS)
  • Docker/containers
  • Kubernetes
  • CircleCI
  • Vercel

Get in touch

I'm open to senior and lead engineering roles: remote, hybrid, or on-site anywhere from Layton to Lehi, Utah.