James Hush is a University of Windsor Computer Science graduate currently living in Los Angeles, California. While studying at the University of Windsor, he interned at Microsoft in San Francisco (Silicon Valley). Shortly after graduating, James joined GoGuardian, an early stage (11 month old) education tech company focused on providing web-filtering software for schools.
He managed GoGuardian’s servers and infrastructure, scaling them to over 200 million requests per day.
After working at GoGuardian, he took the opportunity to work at the National Football League (NFL), where he was in charge of making NFL.com accessible for the visually impaired. He also helped manage community contributions to NFL’s popular open source projects: React Helmet, React GPT, and React Wildcat. Additionally, he led the automation and deployment pipelines for the NFL’s new mobile app.
Currently, James is a Senior Software Engineer at System1, one of the largest digital ad buyers in the world. He helps create trivia experiences for websites like HowStuffWorks by leading the frontend testing and automation initiatives across the company.
The talk will cover:
• Lessons learned post graduation
• The challenges of finding a job and relocating to the United States as a Canadian CompSci major
• What it’s like working at a very early stage startup
• Pros and cons of working at a big company vs. a startup
• Q&A