jcallin.dev logojcallin.dev

JOE CALLIN

  • #DEVELOPER
  • #TECH-LEAD
  • #ARCHITECT
  • #COMPONENT-FRAMEWORKS
  • #SALESFORCE
  • #APEX

Software Engineer & Technical Lead

The Salesforce part wasn't the plan. The plan involved IBM, web development, and something stable. That held for three years before someone mentioned Salesforce in 2016 and the plan got significantly more interesting. Thirteen years later: IBM to Steampunk, web UIs to platform architecture, some of it also managing the people building the platform. Teams from 6 to 30 across federal, insurance, education, and commercial sectors. Co-built a component library that compressed a 3,700-hour delivery estimate down to 200 hours, a number I will keep mentioning until something more impressive happens. I still write code, which my employers find variously charming and concerning. I care about maintainability, test coverage, and building things the next developer won't immediately want to throw out. I document my standards at docs.jcallin.dev for the same reason.

How I work

  • Foundations first

    In a kitchen you learn to chop and season before you worry about gourmet plating; in development, you learn the fundamentals before you skip steps or lean on shortcuts. Same idea at the component level: build core components (text, action, input) correctly and accessibly first; then forms and features come faster and stay consistent.

  • Accessibility forward

    If the product isn't usable by everyone, the experience has failed; accessibility is not an afterthought.

  • Build for tomorrow

    Build today's use case in an extensible way; small tweaks today (e.g. button color or label) should not paint you into a corner.

  • Dev and design together

    Work with design and UX instead of dismissing ideas as too hard or costly. Start from the "blue sky" and let scope, timeline, or budget scale back rather than the developer.

  • Experience over certifications

    Willingness to learn and self-motivation matter more than the piece of paper; doing it the right way is the goal.

  • AI amplifies what you bring

    A developer without strong fundamentals using AI doesn't get better results; they get wrong results faster. Used correctly, with guardrails and a solid foundation underneath, AI tooling removes friction from the work that doesn't need full attention. I design and maintain a cross-stack agent instruction and skill framework covering Salesforce, React/Next.js, documentation, and Git workflows, because you can only catch what AI gets wrong if you already know what right looks like.

Experience

  1. Steampunk

    Lead Salesforce Development Engineer

    – Present

    • Deliver Apex, LWC, Flow, and Trigger solutions for a public-facing Experience Cloud portal and internal Service Cloud app in a high-compliance federal environment; consume MuleSoft endpoints to support Apex-based data operations.
    • Co-established a test quality framework (test data factory, template test classes, Code Analyzer, ESLint, Prettier) that moved team coverage from 70-75% to a 90-100% target in the first quarter; the bar exists now and it's not going back down.
    • Informally leading a 6-person dev team: office hours, 1:1s, onboarding, and best practices enforcement; "informal" because the org chart says one thing and the Slack messages say another.

  2. American Family Insurance

    Lead Salesforce Development Engineer

    –

    • Technical lead and design authority for a 9-person Salesforce squad inside a 30-person, 4-team org; architected the migration of the Personal Insurance Review platform from mainframe to Salesforce using OmniStudio (FlexCards, Data Mapper), Data Cloud, and Service Cloud.
    • Wired AWS-hosted LLM output through Data Cloud into OmniStudio FlexCards to surface AI-generated renewal scripts for agents, an early Agentforce-adjacent pattern built before the Salesforce marketing machine caught up to what we were actually doing.
    • Defined reusable component frameworks, quality standards, and Copado deployment coordination across the org; mentored developers through office hours, pair programming, and PR reviews.

  3. Accenture Federal Services

    Lead Salesforce Developer / Architect

    –

    Progression

    1. Senior Salesforce Developer –
    2. Lead Salesforce Developer / Architect –
    3. Lead Salesforce Developer / Architect, Associate Manager –
    4. Lead Salesforce Developer / Architect, Manager –
    • Progressed from Senior Developer to Principal Developer & Architect to Manager over 5 years; started as LWC lead on a federal Experience Cloud/Service Cloud project and ended up running a 6-person internal development team, which was not in the job description.
    • Co-founded a reusable Salesforce asset library of ~60 Apex and LWC components that cut a client's delivery estimate from 3,700 hours to 200, a 95% reduction from one library.
    • Replaced 140+ Excel-based employee review trackers with a Salesforce-native solution (Experience Cloud employee portal + Service Cloud HR portal), cutting cycle time from 4 months to under 1 month; the spreadsheet graveyard was large and deeply unwell.
    • Migrated the internal org''s release process from Change Sets to Git pipelines with Code Analyzer and Prettier; the number of "oops" commits dropped measurably after.

  4. 7Summits

    Salesforce Technical Lead / Developer

    –

    Progression

    1. Front-End Developer –
    2. Senior Front-End / LWC Developer –
    3. Salesforce Developer –
    4. Salesforce Technical Lead / Developer –
    • Delivered Experience Cloud and Sales Cloud solutions across ~30 projects over 4 years: Google ("Grow with Google" nonprofit portal), Hulu (customer support), Harvard, Penn State, New York Life; progressed from Front-End Developer to Technical Lead for the higher education vertical.
    • Built a Field Service Lightning roadside assistance platform across Central America: Experience Cloud for customer requests and real-time technician tracking, FSL for dispatch and territory management; more international time zones than the kickoff call suggested.
    • Part of the team's LWC adoption at framework launch: investigation, documentation, developer guidance, and co-built a cross-client LWC component library before most shops knew what LWC was; first-mover advantage is real when the framework is actually good.

  5. IBM

    Web Developer

    –

    • Built responsive web applications for enterprise clients over 3 years: Sony, Coca-Cola (live Twitter/Facebook social integrations), Avon (dynamic calendar widget), Walgreens; DataPower engineer on DTE for XML-to-JSON middleware translation.
    • Solid IBM foundation, genuine enterprise-scale exposure, and the institutional knowledge that large-org bureaucracy is a feature, not a bug, at least from the org's perspective.

Projects

  • Portfolio Site

    Built and maintain a personal portfolio site using Next.js, React, TypeScript, and SCSS, including accessible navigation, semantic HTML, and a data-driven content layer backed by YAML configuration files.

    • Next.js
    • React
    • TypeScript
    • SCSS

  • AI Framework

    Designed and maintain a cross-stack AI agent instruction framework using TypeScript and YAML covering Salesforce, React/Next.js, documentation, and Git workflows, including custom skills, hooks, and rules that function as reusable developer automation.

    • Skills
    • Instructions / Rules
    • Marketplace

  • Reusable Asset Library

    Co-founded and led development of modular accelerators to expedite client implementations, reducing reliance on senior staff for common Salesforce solutions.

    • LWC
    • Apex
    • Flows
    • Design Systems

  • Sales Cloud AppExchange Overhaul

    Maintained and enhanced company Sales Cloud implementation with feature development, bug fixes, and an AppExchange-based overhaul with custom enhancements.

    • Sales Cloud
    • Apex
    • LWC
    • AppExchange

  • Employee Review Process

    Transformed the annual review workflow with an Experience Cloud site for feedback requests, an internal CRM for HR, and a separate Experience site for project and account leads to manage performance ratings.

    • Experience Cloud
    • Service Cloud
    • Salesforce CRM
    • Flows
    • LWC

  • Custom Application Review System

    Integrated Service Cloud for reviewers and approvers with Experience Cloud for applicants. Screen flows and custom LWCs streamlined the review process and reduced turnaround time.

    • Experience Cloud
    • Service Cloud
    • Screen Flows
    • LWC

  • Field Service Customer Portal

    Field Service Lightning-enabled self-service portal for customers to request onsite auto repair, track technician location, and manage service subscriptions.

    • Experience Cloud
    • Field Service Lightning
    • LWC
    • Aura

  • Sales Cloud Insurance Solution

    Sales Cloud-based solution allowing customers to obtain policies, manage existing policies, and file claims online.

    • Sales Cloud
    • Experience Cloud
    • LWC
    • Automation