Zach Vollink | Frontend Engineer

Hi, I'm Zach Vollink 👋

I'm a Frontend Engineer with a background in Graphic Design. I enjoy building pleasing relationships between applications and their users through code.

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About Me

Originally hailing from the delightful streets of Grand Rapids, Michigan 🌆, I've also spent six wild years in the Rocky Mountain state—Colorado! 🏔 There, I honed my skills while teaching kids to code and soaking up the sun. ☀

When I'm not crafting pixel-perfect interfaces, you'll find me mountain biking down rugged trails, 🚵 gaming with friends online, 🎮 or disc golfing with the fam. 🥏 While Frontend work happens to be where I shine, disc golf is.. well, not. 😅

Contact Details

Zach Vollink

Grand Rapids, MI

616-550-2266

zvollink@gmail.com

Work

Bitsbox Frontend Engineer • November 2016 - July 2024 • Boulder, CO

Bridged the gap between design and development, translating wireframes into user-friendly and functional web pages in collaboration with designers, marketing, and operation leads.
Crafted responsive and accessible UIs for Bitsbox and two of their key partners, STEMscopes and Highlights Kids. Leveraging HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, I ensured a seamless experience for over 1.5 million users across any device, including 500k Bitsbox users, 50k STEMscopes students, and more than one million Highlights subscribers.
Delivered high-performing web experiences utilizing Google Cloud Functions. Key achievements include automating cancellations, saving the support team 30 seconds per cancellation (~1200 man hours per year), accelerating shipment processing, dynamically serving social and SEO meta tags for Bitsbox user pages, and managing users' custom images.
Led project to enhance user experience and system efficiency by merging child coding accounts with adult subscription accounts on Amazon and Cratejoy. This improved the parents' user experience dramatically by giving them more control over their kids' coding accounts, letting them have multiple child accounts under the umbrella parental account, and enabling a password reset option for kids accounts that goes to the parents email.
Managed data flows and external APIs such as Google's Place Autocomplete API, to facilitate address completion at checkout. Oversaw data flow between front-end and back-end systems through data-manager scripts and Google Cloud functions.
Championed code quality by conducting regular code reviews, maintaining high coding standards, and remaining passionately dedicated to continuous learning, seeking out emerging technologies, best practices, and industry trends.

CU*Answers GUI Developer • May 2014 - August 2016 • Grand Rapids, MI

Responsible for developing and maintaining GUI panels for core and custom screens, as well as developing XML scripts and program code to extend the base functionality of the company's core software product.
Worked with interdisciplinary teams to assess client needs, determine project requirements, and iteratively develop the GUI to meet those specifications.

Education

Northern Michigan University Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design • May 2014

Tools

Coming Soon!

Projects

Highlights Kids Collaborated with designers to turn pixel mocks into engaging, interactive experiences for children, enhancing educational content with intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and significantly improving the digital presence of Highlights Kids.

Bluprint Contributed to frontend, backend, and core system development for Bluprint by Bitsbox, a 3D coding platform where kids can graduate from the original 2D Bitsbox product to code, build worlds, and play games together online.

STEMscopes Coding Led the frontend development for the STEMscopes Coding product, transforming pixel mocks into interactive elements in collaboration with the lead designer, ensuring a fun and engaging experience to enhance STEM education for students.

Bitsbox Managed the Bitsbox site over 7 years, balancing efforts between designing and developing engaging frontend experiences within the kids coding environment, and crafting attractive landing pages in collaboration with marketing and other designers to attract customers and boost sales.

Bitsbox Store Designed and developed the Bitsbox Store page, creating a visually appealing and user-friendly interface optimized for desktop and mobile devices. Collaborated with the marketing team to align the page's design with campaign goals, driving higher engagement and conversions.

Skoolie Locker Rentals Built a single-page application (SPA) using React for a local mobile locker service, leveraging Vercel for deployment, Tailwind CSS for styling, and Google Analytics for performance tracking. Worked closely with the client throughout the project to ensure site functionality and design aligned with their vision.

Blogs

Bitsbox Builds a Weather App!

Goodbye scrolling (and scrolling). Helloooo SEARCH!