Stephen Blades
Senior Software Developer at UL Solutions
New Bern, North Carolina, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolStephen Blades is a senior software developer with 15 years of experience specializing in modular UI architecture, UX-driven component libraries, and large-scale front-end migrations. Based in New Bern, NC, he leads UI framework strategy and automation at UL Solutions, having migrated 120+ repositories to GitHub and implemented GitHub Advanced Security across the organization. He mentors teams, shapes UX direction, and publishes developer tooling such as CLIs and VS Code snippet libraries to standardize and accelerate development. An active open-source contributor, Stephen has improved high-profile React components like react-big-calendar and react-select—upgrading Storybook, theming docs, and modernizing styles and examples. His background in both legacy platform refactors and modern web stacks gives him a practical knack for turning complex product needs into reusable, maintainable interfaces.
15 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Computer Science, Computer Science at University of Maryland University CollegeHonor Graduate, Russian Studies, Honor Graduate, Russian Studies at Defense Language Institute
Russian
Stackoverflow
5,247reputation
655kreached
315answers
12questions
javascript
top-5%
react-redux
top-5%
extjs
top-5%
Github Skills (19)
javascript10
storybook10
async10
component-development10
sass10
user-interface10
react10
react-redux9
extjs9
front-end-development9
documentation9
css-modules6
react-router6
coldfusion6
ecmascript6
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
bigcalendar/react-big-calendar
May 2019 - Jan 2023
gcal/outlook like calendar component
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:31 reviews, 123 commits, 222 PRs in 3 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Stephen primarily worked on improving the user interface and functionality of the calendar component. Their contributions included upgrading Storybook to enhance the component's documentation and examples, updating dependencies related to UI components, and switching from Less to Sass for styling. They also made changes to the layout and event display within the calendar, and addressed issues with the time grid and date selections. Additionally, the user implemented a theme for Storybook, improving the overall user experience.
gcal
JedWatson/react-select
Oct 2018 - Nov 2018
The Select Component for React.js
Role in this project:Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:7 commits, 4 PRs, 43 comments in 3 days
Contributions summary:Stephen primarily focused on enhancing the documentation and examples within the React Select component repository. Their contributions included adding links, clarifying the usage of default options in asynchronous loading, and updating various examples to reflect recent changes. Additionally, the user addressed a forgotten use case and implemented minor code adjustments, specifically adding semi-colons, to maintain code quality.
react
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