James Heaney
Co-Founder, CTO at Grade (YC W26)
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJames Heaney is a pragmatic founder and full‑stack CTO with 7 years building production systems that scale—currently leading Grade (YC W26), an API for performance‑based payroll that automates compliance, tax reporting, and global payouts for companies paying creators and AI agents. He combines hands‑on engineering (front and back) with product instincts honed by shipping consumer apps—one of his studio projects reached 200K+ downloads and a top App Store rank—and by optimizing cryptographic primitives sold to a blockchain buyer. Prior roles include building high‑traffic healthcare infrastructure used by over a million patients weekly, giving him deep experience in secure, auditable systems. Based in San Francisco and trained as a mechanical engineer, he brings a mix of rigorous engineering, regulatory savvy, and entrepreneurial grit to payments and creator monetization.
7 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
Toronto Metropolitan University
Github Skills (28)
image10
image-viewer10
sdwebimage10
react-native-image10
active9
tinder8
react8
java8
react-native8
javascript7
progressive7
data-structure7
python7
cpp7
data-structures6
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
Jvheaney/accomplish
Oct 2021 - Jan 2022
A simple todo list app made for one person. Made in PHP, React-Native-Web, React.js, and using Postgres.
Contributions:19 PRs, 28 pushes, 2 branches in 3 months
react-phpreact-jssimple-todo-listreact-webreactjs
Jvheaney/identify-json
Dec 2022 - Oct 2023
Contributions:4 pushes, 1 branch in 10 months
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