Kevin Groat

Software architect & engineer

I am a driven software architect and engineer. I believe in writing maintainable code and user-friendly experiences. I am familiar with everything JavaScript and TypeScript, and am constantly striving to better my trade through new projects and code katas. I aim to bring psychological safety to every team I am on, and feel open communication is key to having a high-performing team.

Experience

Brandi AI

Nov 2025 – Present · 1 yr 1 mo

Staff Engineer

Expanding capabilities for Generative Engine Optimization sentiment extraction & measurement. Building and maintaining a shadcn/ui based design system. Building an in-app editor to allow for effortless content optimization and fast feedback.

React · TypeScript · Next.js · Playwright · Storybook · AI SDK · TanStack Query · Vercel · GitHub

Disqo

Nov 2022 – Sep 2025 · 2 yrs 11 mos

Lead Frontend Engineer for the Customer Experience Platform

Working alongside Principal Engineers to build automated sampling into the CX platform in order to reduce the workload for customer support and survey programmers.

Vue · TypeScript · Jest · GitLab Duo · Python · Pandas · DuckDB · Argo Workflows

Lead Frontend Engineer for SurveyJunkie

Led the frontend team transitioning SurveyJunkie from an Angular and PHP monolithic codebase to a modular React codebase. Devised new architectural patterns for the React project that allow for more code reuse and maintainability. Introduced new technologies to the stack, including Cypress for end-to-end testing and SWR for interacting with REST APIs. Refactored large swaths of code to make them more maintainable and cleaner.

React · TypeScript · Vitest · GitLab Duo · Cypress · Storybook · SWR · Vite · GitLab · Figma

Oracle Data Cloud / Oracle Advertising

Nov 2018 – Nov 2022 · 4 yrs 1 mo

Senior Developer for custom App Gateway

Designed and implemented an App Gateway sitting in front of and managing multi-tenant applications. Created tooling to allow each tenant to have their own identity domain and segregated data.

React · TypeScript · Java · Spring Boot · JUnit · Kubernetes · nginx · Oracle Cloud Infrastructure · Oracle IDCS · GitLab

Senior Developer for BlueKai DMP (acquired)

Rebuilt the frontend of BlueKai from a Ruby on Rails thin client to a React and TypeScript project. Worked closely with designers to implement a re-usable React component framework, including a complex tree-structure component.

React · TypeScript · Java · Spring · JUnit · Kubernetes · nginx · GitLab · Figma

Excella Consulting

Apr 2012 – Nov 2018 · 6 yrs 8 mos

Voice of America

Single-handedly built mobile applications in over 10 languages using a single codebase. Integrated a VPN tunnel for discreet access to news from areas where such information might be limited. Designed and integrated with a serverless GraphQL endpoint.

React · TypeScript · Cordova · Java · Swift · GraphQL · Serverless · AWS Lambda · i18next

USCIS - myUSCIS application suite

Maintained two applications and led effort to bring React, Redux, and GraphQL into projects. Served as surrogate to UX team to help build a better user experience using React and more effective microinteractions.

React · Redux · Ruby on Rails · GraphQL · Jenkins · GitHub

USCIS - Civics Test Study Tools

Architected and developed a React Native application to allow immigrants to prepare for the US citizenship test. Created strong testing framework, pipeline, and build tools to ensure high quality code and easily publishable product.

React Native · TypeScript · Redux · GitHub

NRECA - Retirement, Payment & Distribution

Led a team of 4 developers to build an application to manage the payment and distributions of a $200M pension fund. Architected a .NET application backend and Backbone/AngularJS front end with more than 1 million lines of code.

C# · ASP.NET · Angular · RequireJS · MS SQL

NRECA - Online Projections

Built a web application to interface with Cobol mainframe in order to serve clients a projection of their eventual retirement or death benefits from a $200M pension fund.

C# · ASP.NET

Projects

Sound Color Project

soundcolorproject.com

Featured at the Smithsonian's SoundScene2020, Sound Color Project explores the accessibility of sound through color, light, and texture, offering an opportunity to experience the sound spectrum visually. Though it began as a way to offer D/deaf or hard of hearing individuals an opportunity to visualize the feeling of music, the project has evolved into a system for exploring the ways that sound and color relate to each other.

React · TypeScript · WebGL · Web Audio API · Progressive Web App · Heroku

Planning Poker

planning.kgroat.dev

A simple, intuitive way to collaborate on pointing stories during SCRUM backlog grooming or planning. Each member of the team gets to select their estimate, and the facilitator flips all of the cards at once to view all of the votes. Clear indicators show what users have chosen their estimates, and which members are still thinking.

Qwik · TypeScript · Supabase · QwikCity · PostgreSQL · Vite · Google Cloud Run

Quote Explorer

quotes.kgroat.dev

A fun little app which lets you submit and explore quotes from famous people throughout history. Built with Next.js, Prisma, and Next Auth, this project showcases some best practices surrounding using server-side rendering and server actions.

React · TypeScript · Next.js · React Query · Prisma · PostgreSQL · Vercel

AI Game Master (in progress)

An AI RPG game master, built with the Vercel AI SDK to support multiple AI backends, including Mistral and Gemini. It allows for a large range of scenarios, even allowing custom stats available to the player. Still very much a work in progress, but getting closer to a playable version every day.

React · TypeScript · Next.js · React Query · Vercel AI SDK · Mistral Large · Google Gemini · Supermaven

Skills

Languages & frameworks: TypeScript, React, NodeJS, Next.js, TanStack Start, GraphQL, tRPC, React Query, React Native, Gleam
Build & test: Webpack, Vite, Jest, Vitest, Cypress
Platform & delivery: Docker, Kubernetes (k8s), Vercel, Fly.io, GitLab CI, GitHub, NixOS
AI & agentic tools: T3 Code, OpenAI Codex, Claude Code
Tools & play: VSCode, bash / zsh / fish, Godot