Schalk Johan Keun

Returned to full-time front-end engineering, joining Warp Development to build and ship production web applications.

• Build and maintain responsive, component-driven front-end features for client and product web applications in Angular.
• Collaborate with back-end engineers and product stakeholders to deliver work to spec and on schedule.
• Contribute to code quality through reviews, testing and shared front-end standards.
• Help drive an initiative to raise code quality by introducing and enforcing better coding practices and proper coding standards.
• Assisted in moving many front-end code projects into a single monorepo managed with Nx.
• Helped set up Jest so that unit and integration tests can be written, and created the first tests to show the value of testing on a large-scale product.

A business I started and still run: accommodation management software for South African guest houses and camp sites, first built for my wife, who manages a guest house.

• Designed and built the platform as an installable Progressive Web App that brings bookings, guests, the room calendar and cleaning schedules into one dashboard.
• Syncs bookings from Airbnb, Booking.com and LekkeSlaap through iCal links to prevent double-bookings.
• Issues tax invoices, credit notes and pro formas as branded PDFs, with WhatsApp message templates and income and occupancy reports.
• Runs on Supabase with row-level security, PayFast subscription payments, multi-property support and team access.

A temporary venture set up to renovate a family property into a guesthouse. With the project complete and the BnB running well, I returned to IT and software development.

• Planned and ran all phases of construction from start to completion, keeping site operations productive and on schedule.
• Sourced and purchased materials, tools and equipment within budget; managed staff and subcontractor hiring, training and performance reviews.
• Applied quality-assurance processes and conducted site inspections to manage risk, safety and standards of work.
• Troubleshot on-site problems with practical, fast solutions and coordinated closely with property owners and tenants.
• Configured routers, switches and firewalls and maintained network hardware and software across multiple sites.

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work abroad in the energy and oil industry. After four years in Norway, the family chose to return to South Africa for a stronger support structure.

Front-end engineering

• Built a custom floor-plan viewer in Pixi.js that imports customer SVG plans, letting clients navigate a 3D model of a given oil rig or vessel.
• Delivered the application on Angular and worked on the v2 rebuild in React, transforming Figma designs into functional, customised interfaces.
• Wrote clean, error-free, responsive code; improved usability through UX and A/B testing and acted on the results.
• Participated in code reviews and tested and debugged with Selenium and Jest to keep code quality and reliability high.
• Researched emerging web technologies and recommended implementations to keep products current.
• Coordinated with cross-functional teams to deliver projects within deadline and budget.

Joined as the company's first developer, tasked with stabilising a website that was crashing daily under traffic of 2,000+ visitors per minute. Re-architected it off a monolith and grew from Full Stack Developer to Senior Front-end Developer to Lead Developer over a four-person front-end and back-end team.

• Led and mentored four front-end and back-end developers (junior to senior), breaking projects into agile workstreams and protecting critical stakeholder deadlines.
• Re-architected parts of the PHP monolith into cloud-based, pre-processed HTML using AWS Lambda (Step Functions, Kinesis Data Streams), DynamoDB and S3 with CloudFront, cutting cost and stabilising peak-season load.
• Specified new projects with the marketing team, then planned, estimated and assigned work across the team.
• Owned and maintained the front-end framework (Gulp/NodeJS builds) and a large library of mostly self-authored private NPM packages, vetting third-party libraries for use.
• Set up repositories, CI/CD pipelines (Bitbucket), QA/test environments and CloudFront/S3 configuration for every project.
• Integrated Braintree Payments via the Braintree JS SDK across the AWS Lambda back-end and the website front-end during the migration from PayPal.
• Maintained the legacy PHP monolith and its EC2 servers, and championed conferences and meetups to grow the team's skills and network.

• Built bespoke websites and back-end systems (PHP/MySQL, JavaScript, jQuery) from Photoshop designs.
• Maintained the in-house framework, ran client support and hosting, and prepared newsletter campaigns.
• Trained developers while estimating and protecting delivery timelines.

• First in-house brand role as sole developer, building and maintaining the company's web presence.
• Maintained a portfolio of 250+ websites, built a new web application and supported a site serving 800+ concurrent users at peak.

• Sliced pixel-perfect HTML, CSS and JavaScript (jQuery) from Photoshop designs.
• Built PHP/MySQL back-ends on the company framework, designed databases and handled basic SEO and newsletters.
• Provided client support and researched web trends alongside delivery.

• First full-time role: vehicle servicing, engine and gearbox overhauls, and electronic fault-finding on passenger vehicles while studying.
• An early grounding in disciplined, methodical problem-solving.

• Temporary night-shift stock-room work straight after school: sorting stock and marking bins.