James Kerr
Founder at Tend Cash
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJames Kerr is a founder and product-minded software engineer with 12 years of experience building user-focused web and desktop interfaces from San Francisco. He built front-end UI at Brim Data, contributing significant features to open-source projects like react-arborist (a complete React tree view) and Zui (the Zed lake desktop front end), demonstrating strengths in usability, keyboard navigation, and session-driven data presentation. Prior roles span full-stack and backend work in Ruby/Rails, Node, and Postgres, with a history of shipping production systems at startups and higher-education institutions. James now leads Tend Cash, a finance app that prioritizes simplicity and rapid clarity over category-driven budgeting—an example of his knack for turning complex data into approachable, decision-ready products. He pairs hands-on engineering with product design sensibilities and a bias for simplifying workflows that typically over-index on complexity.
12 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science Computer Information Systems, Bachelor of Science Computer Information Systems at Chapman University
English
Stackoverflow
326reputation
35kreached
9answers
4questions
Github Skills (22)
javascript10
component-development10
typescript10
user-interface10
ui-design10
redux10
uid10
front-end-development10
typescript-types10
typescripts10
react10
graphical-user-interface9
state-management9
html6
flowtype6
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
brimdata/react-arborist
Sep 2021 - Jan 2023
The complete tree view component for React
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:32 releases, 24 reviews, 111 commits in 1 year 4 months
Contributions summary:James primarily contributed to the development and refinement of the React-based tree view component. Their work focused on implementing and enhancing the user interface, including features such as selection, keyboard navigation, and the ability to customize the drop cursor. The commits demonstrate a focus on improving the component's usability and overall user experience. Their changes reflect the creation of the UI, the event handlers and the underlying component structure.
view-componentreacttreeviewwindowingtree-view
brimdata/zui
Aug 2018 - Jan 2023
Zui is a powerful desktop application for exploring and working with data. The official front-end to the Zed lake.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:2 releases, 738 reviews, 2322 commits in 4 years 5 months
Contributions summary:James contributed significantly to the Zui project by implementing and refactoring several features related to the user interface and underlying data management. Their work included moving columns into tabs, relocating space names into search, and reorganizing the codebase to manage session history and data presentation. They also introduced features like the new tab page and the ability to select data from a set of data.
desktop-applicationreactdataelectronstructured
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