Christo Grabowski

Full-Stack Software Engineer
Ferndale, MI • christo.grab@gmail.com
View Resume

Hey there! My name is Christo Grabowski. My fascination with tech began at a very young age, gleefully failing in the Oregon Trail on my family's clunky, obsolete Macintosh Performa. Although my studies led me to choose a career in the arts, I maintained a hobbyist's enthusiasm for tech throughout my life. When I finally decided to take the plunge and try my hand at an introductory coding course, I made the wonderful discovery that the world of coding is absolutely teaming with creative potential. I never looked back, and have since learned to work with some of the industry's top languages and frameworks. I'm a fun-loving, enthusiastic problem-solver with a strong belief in the power of the collaborative process. I'm particularly passionate about frontend development, and love building interactive, intuitive UI.

Projects

Orksy

Full-Stack E-commerce Web App

Orksy is a full-stack clone of popular e-commerce site Etsy, set in the comically grim world of Warhammer 40K. One of the bigger challenges I faced was learning how to implement AWS S3 storage for quick and easy image uploads. I'm particularly proud of the user interface for viewing each product, which although minimalist, includes some customized animation for toggling dropdown boxes, as well as programmatic logic to randomize estimated delivery dates based on the current date.

Tech stacks used: Flask, WTForms, SQLAlchemy, React, Redux, HTML, CSS, AWS S3

Live Site || Github

Travel-Inn

Full-Stack Travel Web App

Travel-Inn is a full-stack clone of Airbnb. This was my first ever full-stack project, and marked a huge milestone in my journey as an aspiring developer. Learning how to set up and use Redux for frontend state management was a particularly stimulating challenge. I learned a number of ways to approach conditional rendering with React, allowing me to add extra functionality to pages based on factors such as user authentication.

Tech Stacks used: Express, Sequelize, React, Redux, HTML, CSS, AWS S3

Live Site || Github

Solarium

Static Solar System App

Solarium is a frontend-only solar system explorer. I built this app primarily as a playing ground for developing my CSS skills. As a huge nerd, and fan of all things space-related, it seemed like the perfect match for creating a responsive, visually stimulating interface. I particularly enjoyed the challenge of using the box model and CSS calc funtionality to create to-scale representations of various planetary body properties, from relative orbital speeds to size comparisons.

Tech Stacks used: React, HTML, CSS

Live Site || Github

Skills

Programming Languages & Tools

Soft Skills

Agile Development & Scrum Methodologies
Strong Communication Skills
Customer/Client-Facing Background

Education

App Academy

24-Week Software Engineering Course - Web Development Focus

July - December 2022

Middlebury College

Bachelor of Arts, Theatre

Magna Cum Laude

Class of 2012

Interests

Apart from my fascination with tech, I have a whole slew of interests and passions! For one, I am an avid traveler. In early 2022, I spent four whole months backpacking through all of Central America, starting in Mexico City and winding down through 45 destinations in 8 countries before finally reaching Panama City.

At home, I tend to be quiet and introspective. Some of my many preferred activities include reading (especially history and science fiction), playing video games, music composition and cooking. I've just begun dabbling in figure painting, and am absolutely in love with it!