👋 Hi, I'm Charles Jones
Staff Software Engineer based in Virginia
What I Do
As a seasoned engineer, my focus is on end-to-end system delivery across desktop and mobile environments, specializing in React and React Native development. My ability to deliver robust, high-performing apps is underpinned by career-long experience in large-scale infrastructure automation, where I developed and deployed custom applications and scripts to manage provisioning and maintenance for thousands of endpoints and servers.
The Journey
My path into software started with a 486DX and MS-DOS 6.0. By the late '90s, I was hand-coding HTML in Notepad and publishing to GeoCities. Those early experiments taught me that the best way to learn is to build something and put it online.
I moved from desktop applications in VB6 to C# and .NET (shoutout to the RunUO community for the introduction). After five years managing IT infrastructure at a managed services provider, I was ready for a change.
Shifted focus entirely to full-time software development, specializing in Node.js, Angular.js/Angular2, JavaScript, and React.
Began working with React Native and Expo, expanding into mobile development.
Today
I work as a Staff Software Engineer at Varo Bank. In this role, I specialize in the architecture and governance of our front-end applications. My primary focus is on defining the project structure, selecting the optimal tech stack, and establishing engineering best practices so our systems are consistently scalable and maintainable.
I also really enjoy mentoring and guiding other developers, which helps us build technical skill and consistency across the whole team. This blog exists to document solutions to problems I've encountered, share what I've learned and hopefully save others a few hours of headaches.
All opinions and technical takes here are my own and don't represent my employer.