Ben Isenstein | Technical CV
Calgary, AB, Canada | Open to Relocate
Contact
Call and text in Canada: 403-477-4176
WhatsApp: 403-477-4176
Call and text if abroad: 917-936-1492
Email: ben.isenstein@gmail.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benisenstein
Curriculum Vitae
2016
High school diploma, Crescent Heights High School, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Grade 12 Math award: 100% on the provincial exam
Began a Bachelor of Music at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Music
2020
Achieved Bachelor of Music in Jazz Piano Performance with Honors, University of Toronto
Completed Zero To Hero in Python, Udemy for Business Collection
- Data types in python
- Prompting for input on the command line
- Working in Jupyter Notebook
- Basic games in Jupyter Notebook: Blackjack, tic-tac-toe
2021
Completed JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms on FreeCodeCamp
- Data types in JavaScript
- Advanced methods for strings, arrays, objects
- Roman Numeral Parser, Caesars Cipher, Phone Number Validator, Cash Register
Completed 6-month full stack developer program at InceptionU, non-profit organization
- Built full stack applications with Node.js, Express, MongoDB, React
- Ideated, designed, and implemented several applications from scratch in a small team
- Explored personality strengths and weaknesses via Lumina and Lifepath
Built and released a React component package on NPM, react-hook-superform
- Extensive use of react-hook-form APIs
- Styled-components
- Extensible through custom React components as input fields
- Date picker out-of-the-box with react-datetime-picker
Contracted for Rendezvous Scents, created a Shopify store and custom UI
- Custom CSS styles within storefront source code
- Product page custom UI using Shopify Liquid templating language + CSS + JS
- Custom features including product carousel using Liquid + CSS + JS
- Used Shopify GraphQL API to manage selling plans, product collections and subscriptions
2022
Began consulting for OMERS via DevTheory Inc.
For more than 60 years, OMERS has humbly served as the steward and guardian of the retirement income of more than half a million active, deferred and retired municipal employees from communities across Ontario.
With a world-class team of investors and professionals across offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, OMERS has generated $127.4 billion in net assets, as at June 30, 2023, making it one of the largest defined benefit pension plans in Canada.
Built the Knowledge Exchange application at OMERS:
- Internal data management platform
- Aggregate search over several data platforms within the business
- Employee data via Microsoft APIs: Sharepoint, Graph
- 3rd party data governance API Collibra
- Open government data from Canada and US governments via CKAN
- Financial research articles from the Equity Research project
- Customized and faceted search via Microsoft Cognitive Search
- Database: MS SQL Server, Azure Blob Storage
- Backend: Serverless Azure Functions in TypeScript
- Frontend: React in Typescript
Built the Equity Research application at OMERS:
- Data pipeline for research articles made by financial analysts
- Emails and attachments are turned into flexible documents within Azure Cognitive Search
- UI within the Knowledge Exchange allows search, edit, delete, and download of documents
- Shared Outlook inbox to receive research
- Azure Logic App to take email content through stages of processing
- Pub/sub model for alerting analysts to each other’s research updates
- Email templating with EJS
- Database: Azure Table Storage (NoSQL), Azure Blob Storage
- Backend: Serverless Azure Functions in Typescript
- Frontend: hosted entirely within the Knowledge Exchange
Built a Notion Integration personal project:
- See on Github
- Notion has been the frontend for my notes, journals, todos, and organization since 2022
- Using the Notion REST API to read and manipulate data can vastly extend its use cases
- Newsletter emails pipeline
- Bidirectional sync between Google contacts and a Notion database of my contacts through interval polling
- Deleting empty pages when I didnt write anything
- Youtube viewer
- Database: MongoDB, later migrated to SQLite
- Backend: BunJS + Express, Python + Flask
- Frontend: Notion
- Hosting: Railway
2023
Built the RAPID application at OMERS:
- Extensible dashboard application leveraging PowerBI, Sharepoint, and OMERS internal products
- Built around dashboards, made of widgets
- Widgets feature content from several sources:
- PowerBI Report of choice
- A single page from a PowerBI Report
- A Sharepoint file browser
- Search results from the Equity Research product
- Other internal products
- Libraries to browse and add widgets to dashboards
- Database: MS SQL Server
- Backend: Serverless Azure Functions in Python
- Frontend: React in TypeScript
Built John Conway Game of Life personal project:
- See on Github
- View this project live
- Presenting Conways Game of Life with enjoyable UI design
- An opportunity to practice design principles from the book “Refactoring UI”
- An opportunity to learn the browser Canvas API
- Object-oriented programming, focused on composability
- Prioritize efficient memory usage
Open source contributions:
Built a Demonstration E-Commerce React App:
- See on Github
- View this project live
- Was done in a 72-hour period for an interview process
- React app using vite, tailwindCSS, and redux
- Features products from Fake Store API
- Two pages | Product listing and cart
- Responsive and built with a mobile-first approach
Built a HTTP Job Queue
- See on Github
- Built with TypeScript
- Zero-dependency asynchronous HTTP request queue using Bun JS and Sqlite.
2024
Built the Supastack CLI tool
- See on Github
- Built with Python
- Command-line tool for effortlessly scaffolding your full-stack Supabase application.
- Create a managed backend-as-a-service on the Supabase cloud platform
- Create a React starter project with Supabase Auth UI included
- Create a GitHub repo for your project
- Manage infrastructure-as-code with Terraform from the start
Example Repo for React Unstructured Table
- See on Github
- See a live demo
- React SPA
- Render lists of flexible, schema-less data in React.
Built a mortgage vs renting simulation
- See on Github
- See a live demo
- React SPA
- Find out if you would be better off buying or renting. Simulate your net worth in either timeline and see the data.
2025
Codewars History Bot
- See on Github
- Built with Go
- An experiment in remote CI tools.
- Authenticating and using Git in an automated environment.
- Log new code challenges completed on Codewars
- Commit to a repo on Github.