Zach Leatherman
Lead Software Engineer at 11ty
United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolZach Leatherman is a lead software engineer with 15 years building fast, accessible, and responsive web experiences, currently leading engineering at Font Awesome while continuing to maintain the award-winning Eleventy static site generator. He specializes in web performance, fonts, responsive design, and the Indie/Open Web, and has contributed to widely used projects like Eleventy, Respond, and Jamstack.org. Zach bridges practical front-end craftsmanship with tooling and infrastructure work—shipping features like i18n improvements, async CSS loading callbacks, and single-file web components. Known for improving cross-browser compatibility and developer ergonomics, he pairs deep technical chops with public speaking, writing, and community organizing. An unexpected detail: his open-source work ranges from polishing UX of responsive tables to creating a jQuery plugin that dynamically fits text to containers, showing both attention to micro-interactions and large-scale site performance.
15 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS Computer Engineering, Bachelor of Science - BS Computer Engineering at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Stackoverflow
3,328reputation
2.1mreached
8answers
2questions
css
top-5%
svg
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webkit
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git
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git-submodules
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Github Skills (49)
accessibility10
unit-testing10
apim10
json10
eleventy10
javascript10
media-queries10
jquery10
testing10
css10
internationalization10
user-interface10
web-components10
backward-compatibility10
ui-design10
Programming languages (20)
Github contributions (5)
11ty/webc
Aug 2022 - Dec 2022
Single File Web Components
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:24 releases, 268 commits, 22 PRs in 3 months
Contributions summary:Zach has primarily contributed to the development of web components within the repository, specifically focusing on single-file web components. Their work involved modifying the component parsing logic to support top-level elements, template types, and more robust asset handling (CSS, JavaScript). They've also added features related to dynamic attribute handling, and improvements to styling and code reusability with a focus on the usage of slots and component composition.
web-componentsjavascriptwebcomponentsweb-componentwebcomponent
zachleat/BigText
Jan 2011 - Oct 2017
jQuery plugin, calculates the font-size and word-spacing needed to match a line of text to a specific width.
Role in this project:Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:103 commits, 51 PRs, 22 pushes in 6 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Zach primarily focused on enhancing the BigText jQuery plugin, adding new features and fixing bugs. The contributions include implementing contenteditable functionality, adding keyboard shortcuts, and improving the fadeout effect. Additionally, the user addressed IE8 compatibility issues and refactored code for better overall performance and user experience. These commits showcase a dedication to refining the plugin's usability and cross-browser compatibility.
ellipsisjqueryfont-sizewidthfont
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