Senior UI Developer Federal Health Tech

Building the web
public health runs on.

Over a decade crafting interfaces at the intersection of federal infrastructure, accessibility, and design systems. The work shows up in disease surveillance dashboards, veteran benefit portals, and the design system behind every page on CDC.gov.

20+ years front-end
3 federal agencies
~1,000 govt sites impacted
100% Section 508
Career Timeline
Current Role Federal Veterans Affairs

Front End Developer

Peraton → U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — MVP Platform

2026 – Present
"The digital front door for 9 million veterans navigating claims, health services, and benefits — where an unclear UI isn't an inconvenience, it's a barrier to care."
9M+ veterans served
USWDS 100% compliant
Adopted platform-wide

What I built

  • Architected the MVP platform's next-generation component template — a composable React / Next.js system that unified USWDS and the VA Design System under a single coherent token hierarchy adopted across all VA digital properties.
  • Designed and built benefit discovery flows — the critical pathways veterans use to find and apply for compensation, pension, education, and healthcare benefits — with a relentless focus on reducing cognitive load.
  • Conducted systematic assistive technology regression testing with NVDA, JAWS, and VoiceOver across all new component releases — a first-class QA step, not an afterthought.
  • Standardized design tokens across the component library and built Storybook documentation that became the living contract between design and engineering teams.
  • Operated across distributed Agile sprints spanning multiple teams and time zones — a reality in federal contracting that demands clear async communication and strong written documentation.
React Next.js TypeScript USWDS VA Design System Tailwind CSS Storybook WCAG / 508 Jenkins CI/CD
Federal CDC

Senior UI Developer

Kaiva Tech → CDC / OPHDST

2024 – 2026
"Building interfaces epidemiologists rely on to understand disease in real time — visualizations where speed and clarity aren't features, they're requirements."
AI+ data components
330M Americans served
100% Section 508

What I built

  • Engineered choropleth outbreak maps and multi-variable filter UIs that give CDC epidemiologists real-time geospatial insight into disease spread — components that render correctly even when the data is telling a grim story.
  • Built AI insight interpretation panels that surface model predictions in human-readable form — bridging the gap between data scientist outputs and the public health analyst's workflow.
  • Modernized a legacy codebase to Vue 3 + Vite, cutting cold-start build times significantly and enabling TypeScript adoption across the component library.
  • Established Lighthouse CI gates in the deployment pipeline — automated accessibility and performance budgets that block regressions before they ship to production.
  • Drove code review culture and mentored engineers on component API design, WCAG 2.1 implementation patterns, and maintainable CSS architecture.
Vue 3 Vite TypeScript D3.js Tailwind CSS WCAG / 508 Lighthouse CI Figma Storybook
Federal Design Systems CDC

User Experience Engineer

Peraton → CDC.gov Design System

2008 – 2024
"The foundation every CDC public health communication rests on — the template, the component, the accessibility rule that ensured COVID guidance was findable, readable, and trustworthy for every American."
~1,000 CDC sites
200+ page templates
100% 508 target

What I built

  • Built and scaled CDC.gov's Web Content Management System (WCMS) design system — the shared component library, page templates, and pattern library that powers every page across CDC's public digital presence.
  • Worked through the COVID-19 pandemic shoulder-to-shoulder with CDC communications teams — the components I was maintaining became the literal vehicle for delivering life-saving public health guidance to 330 million people.
  • Drove Section 508 compliance across CDC's full public health infrastructure — authored accessibility standards documentation, conducted training sessions for the CDC publisher community, and made WCAG conformance a core review criterion.
  • Collaborated with CDC information architects and content strategists on site taxonomy and navigation patterns — the invisible infrastructure that lets users find what they need when they need it most.
  • Mentored junior front-end developers and served as the accessibility subject matter expert for a distributed team — building internal capacity for accessible development rather than being a quality gate others worked around.
HTML5 / CSS3 Sass / SCSS JavaScript ES6+ Bootstrap 4–5 WordPress / Drupal WCAG / 508 Gulp / Grunt Figma / Axure

Earlier Career

Pre-2019 · Commercial, agency, and product work

Commercial & Agency Web Dev

Built marketing sites, landing pages, and interactive experiences for clients across retail, healthcare, and media. First exposure to production accessibility requirements and cross-browser debugging.

CMS & Platform Work

Deep WordPress and Drupal development — custom themes, plugin architecture, and multisite deployments. Built a foundation in server-side templating and content management patterns that proved essential later.

Toolchain & Build Process

Early adopter of Grunt, Gulp, and Bower-era automation. Established repeatable build processes and asset pipelines at a time when that wasn't standard practice. Led to a natural evolution into modern bundler expertise.

Design & Visual Work

Photoshop comps to HTML/CSS — working directly from design files before Zeplin, Figma, or Sketch existed. Developed an eye for pixel precision and a deep appreciation for the designer-developer handoff problem.

Core Capabilities

What shows up across every engagement

Front-End Engineering

  • CSS / Sass, modern JavaScript & TypeScript
  • React / Next.js, Vue 3, Tailwind CSS
  • Vite / Webpack build tooling & optimization
  • D3.js data visualization

Accessibility & Federal

  • WCAG 2.1 AA / Section 508
  • NVDA, JAWS & VoiceOver regression testing
  • USWDS implementation & customization
  • Lighthouse CI, axe, ARIA patterns

Design Systems & Process

  • Design token architecture & theming
  • Component API design & Storybook DX
  • Figma handoff & design collaboration
  • Agile / Scrum, Jenkins CI/CD

Let's connect

Whether it's federal contract work, open source collaboration, or a conversation about accessible design systems — reach out.