Dean Whillier
Owner at Whillier Solutions
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDean Whillier is a seasoned full-stack web and UX engineer with 11 years building polished desktop, mobile, and web applications, now running his own studio in Kitchener. He blends hands-on front-end expertise in React/Vue and HTML/CSS with back-end and database design, having led web platform teams at Mattermost and contributed substantive fixes and refactors to the widely used Mattermost desktop and web apps. His background includes roles at Google and Docker, demonstrating experience shipping at scale and navigating product-quality tradeoffs. Dean’s work often bridges UX and engineering—implementing features like emoji pickers, keyboard navigation improvements and complex configuration/GPO integrations—showing a knack for both user-facing polish and robust architecture. He mixes agency leadership experience with deep open-source contributions, bringing entrepreneurial ownership and practical problem-solving to client and product work. Unexpectedly, his formal training spans graphic design and theological studies, reflecting a diverse intellectual curiosity that informs his design-first engineering approach.
11 years of coding experience
27 years of employment as a software developer
High School Diploma, High School, High School Diploma, High School at Waterloo Collegiate InstituteGraphic Design, Graphic Design at York UniversityAssociate of Biblical and Theological Studies, Biblical Theology, Associate of Biblical and Theological Studies, Biblical Theology at New Brunswick Bible Institute
Github Skills (16)
mattermost10
css10
uid10
gui-application10
configuration-management10
javascript10
front-end-development10
ui-design10
electron10
desktop-application10
react10
desktop10
webview9
android-webview9
git8
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
mattermost/desktop
Mar 2019 - Aug 2021
Mattermost Desktop application for Windows, Mac and Linux
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:4 releases, 43 reviews, 102 commits in 2 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Dean primarily contributed to the Mattermost Desktop application, addressing bugs and implementing new features. Their work included fixing a black screen issue, preventing the saving of fullscreen state, and opening certain internal paths in the default browser. Furthermore, the user was involved in refactoring the configuration system, including integrating GPO functionality and addressing race conditions, which demonstrates a deeper understanding of the application's architecture. They also made several enhancements, such as changes to the desktop notifications and the main menu.
desktop-applicationelectronmattermost-desktopwindowslinux
mattermost/mattermost-webapp
Jan 2019 - Dec 2021
Archived web app of Mattermost. Moved to the monorepo: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost
Role in this project:Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:235 reviews, 158 commits, 199 PRs in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Dean's commits primarily focus on enhancing the Mattermost web application's user interface. They implemented the emoji picker for the mobile web view, including styling and functionality. This work involved adding React components, updating CSS, and supporting translations. The contributions also encompass bug fixes and refactoring, such as resolving issues with rendering and handling keyboard navigation within the UI.
webapphttps-servermattermostmattermost-server
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