Zach Barton

Background

About Zach Barton

I'm a web developer and former mechanical engineer/project manager with experience in the automotive and renewable energy industries. I graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering with the hopes that I could design and build physical products that could make people's lives a little bit better. During my career, I've worked on quality control and assurance for a major Toyota production line, helped build life-saving retrofits for US Army ground vehicles, designed components for a new product line of wind turbines specifically built for the North American market, and managed a multi-million dollar project for the third largest transit system in the US. After my career shifted away from technical engineering towards project management, I realized that my heart and soul lies in solving creative, technical problems and leading from a managerial perspective wasn't the right path for me.I chose to change careers into web development because it reflects everything I hope to have in a rewarding career. I love working in small teams of collaborative, forward-thinking people. I love coming up with creative solutions to challenging problems. Although the applications I might develop aren't physical products, they are products that others can directly interact with to help solve problems. It's a field that requires constant learning and I'm eager to continue improving myself. My "formal" software education comes from Dev Bootcamp, a 19-week intensive course focusing on Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript. As I've grown into a senior developer role in my current position, I've become intimately familiar with Python in both Flask and Django frameworks and developing custom solutions primarily using Google Cloud products. The wide breadth of client-facing work has allowed me to work with a wide variety of tools, and more importantly, has given me the opportunity to pursue life-long learning in dedication to my craft.