Paul Esch-laurent
Senior Software Engineer at NPR
Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolPaul Esch-laurent is a Senior Software Engineer with 11 years of full-stack experience, currently enhancing CMS and live media tooling at NPR from Minneapolis. A Michigan Tech Computer Engineering alumnus, he has modernized legacy enterprise systems—migrating .NET monoliths and MSSQL databases into TypeScript, Postgres, and Terraform on AWS GovCloud—and built greenfield platform tooling such as a FaaS runtime at Target. He contributes to open-source projects like Blot and Mattermost’s Focalboard, focusing on both UX polish and backend reliability (caching, custom domains, image optimization, and multi-database support). Comfortable across Python, Go, JavaScript/TypeScript, and cloud infra, he pairs practical engineering with strong attention to developer experience and operational detail. Outside work he brews coffee, rides bikes, and insists on the Oxford comma—small habits that mirror his preference for thoughtful, well-crafted solutions.
11 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor’s Degree Computer Engineering, Bachelor’s Degree Computer Engineering at Michigan Technological University
Stackoverflow
418reputation
67kreached
11answers
0questions
Github Skills (25)
javascript10
typescript10
uid10
front-end-development10
typescript-types10
typescripts10
web-development10
react10
image-optimization9
user-interface9
caching9
ui-design9
graphical-user-interface9
css9
html9
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
mattermost-community/focalboard
Apr 2022 - Dec 2022
Focalboard is an open source, self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana.
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:151 reviews, 55 commits, 76 PRs in 7 months
Contributions summary:Paul primarily worked on front-end components within the Focalboard project, focusing on user interface elements and user experience enhancements. Their contributions include fixing UI issues related to user roles, such as hiding certain features in single-user installations. They also addressed styling issues, implemented features such as copy link functionality, and updated the template selector text, demonstrating a focus on improving the user interface and overall usability. Furthermore, the user added code to a direct card view and modified menu interactions.
golangnotionasanahostedcollaboration
davidmerfield/blot
Jun 2018 - Apr 2019
Turns a folder into a website
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:25 commits, 14 PRs, 6 pushes in 10 months
Contributions summary:Paul contributed to both front-end and back-end aspects of the "blot" project, including fixing typos in the HTML and CSS, merging branches, and refactoring code. The user also worked on implementing features like debug mode, custom domains, and caching/image optimization. They demonstrated a strong ability to maintain and improve the codebase.
turns
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