Jack Jennings
Staff Software Engineer at Smarter Technologies
California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJack Jennings is a Staff Software Engineer based in California with 14 years of experience building web applications and leading full-stack teams across cultural, retail, hospitality, and luxury markets. A RISD-trained graphic designer turned engineer, he blends design-first thinking with rigorous, test-driven backend development to deliver resilient, maintainable systems. He has led engineering at product companies like Leafly and now Smarter Technologies, and previously ran a design-focused studio that partnered directly with creative teams. An active open-source contributor, Jack has made security- and policy-focused contributions to the widely used Mastodon codebase, extracting authorization logic and improving API test coverage. He’s equally comfortable integrating aerospace analysis tools in Python/Matlab as he is architecting user-facing experiences, bringing a pragmatic, design-informed perspective to complex engineering problems.
14 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Graphic Design, Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Graphic Design at Rhode Island School of Design
English, French
Github Skills (13)
rspec10
ruby-rails10
rails10
api10
postgresql10
back-end-development10
apidoc10
ruby10
activitypub9
social-graph8
social-networking8
docker6
dockers6
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
mastodon/mastodon
May 2017 - May 2017
Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:7 commits, 8 PRs, 18 comments in 19 days
Contributions summary:Jack primarily contributed to the Mastodon back-end, focusing on testing and authorization policies. Their work included adding comprehensive specs for the `Status#permitted?` implementation and enabling JSON response tests for the API Accounts controller. Moreover, the user extracted authorization logic into a dedicated `StatusPolicy`, streamlining access control for various status visibility scenarios and refactored the codebase. This involved modifying multiple controllers, services, and policies for efficient control and system security.
social-networkwebfingerpixelfedhosteddocker
standard-library/galvo
Jan 2017 - Jul 2019
Not a slideshow
Contributions:1 release, 20 commits, 11 pushes in 2 years 6 months
kefirjavascriptslideshowfrp
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