let name = "Jax DesMarais-Leder"
let pronouns = "he/him/his"
var title = "Tech Lead / Staff iOS Engineer"
var location = "Oak Park, IL, USA"
var interests = ["swimming", "University of Michigan and Detroit sports", "home renovations", "coffee", "tattoos"]Before moving into tech, I worked for a decade in the specialty coffee industry as a trainer and educator. I went to University of Michigan on a swimming scholarship (500 and 1,650 freestyle were my events), but eventually dropped out of school for personal reasons. I love mentoring other developers from non-traditional backgrounds as I do not come from a CS background and am self taught in mobile development. While I mostly focus on iOS (Swift/Objective-C) I have also built a number of features on Android (Kotlin/Java).
My wife and I own a 1920s dutch colonial revival home in Oak Park, IL that we are lovingly renovating/restoring mostly ourselves. We have a little one (6) as well as 1 dog (Sadie) and 3 cats (Wednesday, Pugsley, and Bonnie). When we aren't working on our house, we can be found gardening, walking around Oak Park admiring the Frank Lloyd Wright houses, visiting museums, hanging out with friends, at Disneyland (way too often), or traveling.
Typically 8am - 4pm Central. I tend to do my deepest work in the morning and enjoy starting with a high level of focus right after our daughter goes to school. I am most efficient in remote environments but enjoy moments of focused in person collaboration. I typically line my time off up with when our daughter is out of school, typically this means 1-2 weeks off a quarter to reset. I also believe everyone should have their birthday off work!