Stephan Ellenberger

Website

Skills | Projects | Education | Experience | Interests

Concert pianist turned Junior Developer, I am a recent graduate of Makers Academy May 2020. I invested myself wholly into building a career in Software Development after starting an online tutoring business in 2019, where I was fascinated by the process of creating digital products and automating payments and bookings. This, coupled with my love for problem-solving led me to pursue a career in technology, and I strive to build a career where automation, strategical thinking and working with cutting edge technologies are part of my daily life.

I am currently volunteering my skills at non-profit now-u, leading the Front End Development team and am in the process of writing tests throughout the application.

Skills

Efficient

The attention to detail required to perform the thousands of notes in a Beethoven sonata from memory and under pressure has taught me one valuable skill - working methodically. Transferring this skill to programming has played a vital role in my efficiency when it comes to writing complex code; where incorporating strategies such as Test Driven Development or analytical thinking is essential in order to write scalable and structurally secure code.

Creative and Inquisitive

My love for analytical thinking and problem solving is what made programming appealing to me. I am a logical thinker and fast learner, an attribute that has been well tested during my time at Makers and since graduating. My prior experience as a musician has taught me to be inquisitive and to try many solutions, as it broadens one's creative scope and encourages an educated output.

Communication

During my time at Makers, I was tasked with programming in pairs or teams every day of the course. I now lead the Front End Development team at now-u, communicating with developers from all over the world daily. I am confident in explaining technological concepts with metaphors and non-technical language in order to make it as accessible as possible.

Projects

now-u	now-u is a UK based non-profit encouraging social change with meaningful actions. Started at the beginning of the recent pandemic, they launched on iOS Android and Web in July, and have since had over 500 users for various campaigns. The Web Application is built purely with React, the API in Rails, and native application in Flutter.
Community Video	Makers Academy final project. Inspired by social distancing regulations in the 2020 Covid outbreak, this project brings communities closer by encouraging users to share skills with other members, and get paid through donations from other users. This project was completed remotely in 7 days.
Gabriella Jones Portfolio	Harpist Gabriella Jones' personal portfolio, built in two weeks using React and deployed with AWS. I plan to implement a headless CMS to allow her to control the content on her website in an efficient and easy way.
Gilded Rose | Bank Tech Test	Week 10 of Makers Academy, to showcase solo understanding in OOP and TDD. Unit tests written in a fully decoupled manner with seperation of concerns in mind. Written in Ruby and Javascript.
Instagram-challenge	Makers Academy weekend challenge - Instagram clone using rails, with basic features to produce an MVP. Completed in 2 days, solo work.
Moovie-Choosie	A movie search engine that displays many attributes of chosen movie. Solo project aimed at practising Vanilla JavaScript, using the DOM and creating single page applications with no page reload.
Age UK Volunteer Matching	Completed in just 48 hours as part of a brief submitted by AGE UK for the Hack for Heros Hackathon, June 2020. A team of seven people and created using Ruby on Rails, the app secured the team special mention for second place. The app is now being re-written with React and Rails (can be found here) for the public.

Experience

now-u (May 2020 - present)
Volunteer Lead Front End Developer (July - present)

• Implementing dynamic User Interfaces for hundreds of users with ReactJS.
• Conducting Code Reviews
• Testing the application using React Testing Library, Jest, Enzyme
• Familiarity with GitHub Actions and Docker
• Leading a team of Developers through Agile Sprints
• Onboarding volunteers

Volunteer Back End Developer (May - July)

• Developing a Ruby on Rails API for a React and Flutter front end, managing user authentication, campaigns, donations, blogs, comments, and more.
• Use of Docker and GitHub Actions for deployment and CI
• Mapped out the entire relation table for documentation in a diagram for use in onboarding and debugging.

Self Employed Professional Musician (2015 - 2020)
Concert Pianist

• Performed at prestigious venues across London, such as: Wigmore Hall Barbican Centre St James Piccadilly Blackheath Halls Old Royal Naval College Chapel

Peripatetic Teacher (2015 - 2020)
Self-Employed Piano & Music Teacher

• Worked as a piano and music teacher in multiple schools around London, teaching students from the age of 12 - 18. Responsibilities included taking instrumental and improvisational classes, one-to-one tutoring, accompanying in school shows and international choir tours and assisting in music-related school work.

Private Piano Teacher

• Working as a piano teacher for private students of all ages and experiences - the youngest being 5 years old and oldest 80. Organised private concerts and events for students to partake in, as well as creating new, original and engaging resources for students to use.

Further experience

Volunteer React Developer at coderoots

• Volunteered as a ReactJS Developer, making coderoots tablet and mobile friendly throughout the site (solo), also helping implement new components from Figma designs.

Hack for Heros Hackathon

• Team of myself and six others secured special mention Second Place after creating a FullStack Volunteer Matching application in less than 48 hours, satisfying a brief submitted by Age UK.

Education

Makers Academy (Jan 2020 - May 2020)

• Competent with programming practices such as OOP, TDD, MVC, DDD
• Efficient work using Agile/XP
• Web development with Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript
• Testing frameworks such as RSpec and Jasmine

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (2015 - 2018)

• Classical Performance - Principal Study Piano
• Performed in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre, and St. James' Picadilly.
• Principal Study teachers: Gabriele Baldocci & Philip Fowke (Emeritus Fellow)

Emanuel School (2011 - 2013)

• Sixth Form Advance Level Qualifications
• Music, Maths, Design & Technology

Other Qualifications

• ATCL Diploma (Piano Performance) (2014)

Interests

• Cooking! Working with different ingredients from around the world is an expensive hobby to have. I have always been inspired by the food discovered when travelling throughout the world, and I love re-creating it at home for my family and friends.
• Photography. I have always been a keen photographer. As a child, I used to make stop-motion lego movies and put them on YouTube. My claim to fame was a headshot that I took which made it on the front cover of the quarterly Southbank Centre magazine in January 2019!
• Learning Spanish. Slowly but surely I am working my way through the ranks of Duolingo to improve my Spanish and be able able to order some tapas and a caña in Spain on my holidays.