# John S. > Senior Full Stack Engineer & Technical Lead Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/johns2 Senior Full Stack Engineer and Technical Lead (12+ years) building high-scale web systems for digital art, media, and creative platforms. Most recently Lead Engineer at Manifold.xyz, where I joined as employee #1 and helped grow the company from 4 to 25. I built their Studio platform used by thousands of creators, and led high-profile bespoke launches for distinguished artists and organizations like Christie's, Refik Anadol, and Murat Pak — many of our clients have since entered permanent collections at the Whitney, LACMA, and MoMA. Before that, I spent nearly five years at Refinery29/Vice, growing from Front End Engineer to Senior Software Engineer across React, Node, PHP, and AWS. I'm looking for senior and lead roles where I can drive technical strategy, mentor engineers, and ship products at the intersection of engineering and culture. ## Work Experience ### Lead Full Stack Engineer @ Manifold.xyz Jan 2021 – Jan 2026 | Brooklyn, NY Lead Full Stack Engineer building blockchain and web-based infrastructure that enables creators to own, distribute, and monetize their digital work without intermediaries. • Architected high-concurrency systems handling thousands of simultaneous users competing to purchase within seconds, coordinating CDN deployment, performant backend APIs, real-time frontend updates, and optimized smart contracts • Designed and delivered end-to-end product launches for high-profile clients including Refik Anadol, Christie’s, Murat Pak, Julian Assange, Sia, Linkin Park, Steve Aoki, and Jay-Z. Many of our clients work is now in permanent collections at the Whitney, LACMA, and MoMA. • Mentored engineers through challenging assignments, established a culture of thorough code reviews and quality tooling, and ensured teammates spent at least half their time on projects that excited or stretched them • Scoped and managed multiple concurrent high-stakes projects, serving as primary engineering point of contact for partners and balancing technical delivery with client relationships across X and Discord • Built internal tools with Claude, created an AI-powered Discord agent for analytics queries, and collaborated with other leads to design agentic workflows for spec generation and one-shot feature delivery Selected work: • Refik Anadol, Biome Lumina (2025): End-to-end system (smart contracts, collector UX, backend, drop mechanics) for a release where thousands of collectors competed to mint simultaneously, selling out in one minute and raising $5M for Refik's Dataland museum in Los Angeles. • Christie's 3.0 (2022–2025): Core smart contracts, front-end widgets, and minting infrastructure powering Christie's 3.0 digital art sales platform. Stack: Solidity, React/Node, AWS, PostgreSQL, Claude ### Full Stack Engineer @ VICE Media Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Brooklyn, NY Brought on as a contract engineer to help the combined Vice/Refinery29 team ship high-priority projects before year-end deadlines. • Ramped up immediately and delivered across JavaScript, SQL, Node.js, and PHP systems • Triaged and unblocked multiple concurrent work streams under tight timelines • Leveraged deep prior knowledge of the stack gained over five years as full time engineer previously ### Senior Software Engineer @ Refinery29 Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | New York, NY Promoted to Senior in mid-2019. • Led migration of Refinery29's AMP stack from legacy PHP monolith to server-side-rendered React, tripling feature development velocity and unifying both the user and developer experience across AMP and non-AMP surfaces • Partnered with DevOps to migrate front-end and back-end infrastructure to AWS, consulting daily on architecture for both the CMS and all user-facing applications ### Software Engineer @ Refinery29 Jan 2016 – Jan 2019 | 225 Broadway New York, NY 10007 Full stack engineer on one of the largest women's media brands on the web. • Led development of content experience and storytelling features that empowered editors to publish rich and interactive stories • Collaborated closely with product, design, and editorial stakeholders to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions across PHP, JavaScript, and Node.js systems • Made significant innovations and improvements to ad rendering system, increasing ad revenue and leading to my promotion to Senior ### Front End Engineer, Mobile @ Refinery29 Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | 225 Broadway New York, NY 10007 Owned the entire mobile front-end experience for Refinery29's website. • Built and shipped features across JavaScript, Node.js, Ruby, and PHP • Maintained and optimized CI pipelines for reliable, fast delivery of mobile web applications ### Full Stack Web Developer @ Agence MA3 Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | New York, NY Built a responsive microsite for Trimona Yogurt on behalf of Agence MA3. • Built with vanilla JavaScript, HTML5, and SASS, backed by a custom WordPress CMS and supplied DNS setup ### Creative Technologist & Full Stack Web Developer @ A Silent Film Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Brooklyn, NY Designed and built an interactive web experience for A Silent Film's single "Lightning Strike." • Built with Three.js, HTML5 Video, and custom GLSL/WebGL shaders, allowing users to manipulate real-time visual distortions and capture screenshots • The effects proved so compelling that screencasts from the site were used as the final official music video ### Full Stack Web Developer @ mtheory LLC Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | New York, New York Managed a full domain migration for mtheory LLC, relocating the company website and email systems to a new domain with zero downtime. • Executed DNS and email infrastructure migration while keeping all business systems operational • Designed and built a new client-facing website from scratch on a custom WordPress stack ### Live Visual Artist & Projection Designer @ Sick Visual Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Brooklyn, New York On-call VJ, projectionist, and projection mapping artist for Sick Visual, led by Max Nova. • Designed and performed real-time visuals for live events, synchronizing video to music through large-scale projection mapping • Performed at venues including Best Buy Theater in Times Square (now PlayStation Theater) ### Full Stack Web Developer @ Agence MA3 Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | New York, New York Built a marketing site for Nava Companies' new rental property in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. • Custom WordPress backend for property content management paired with a mobile-friendly responsive frontend ### Founder, Developer, Designer @ Guardian Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | New York, New York Conceived, built, and shipped Guardian, a personal safety iOS app that automatically alerted emergency contacts via SMS when it detected route deviation, sudden movement, headphone removal, or phone shaking. • Built natively in Objective-C and low-level C with custom sensor logic • Shipped to the App Store and maintained across iOS 7–9 from 2014 to 2017 ### Full Stack Web Developer @ Agence MA3 Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | 550 Broadway NY NY Built and redesigned the Energyfruits marketing site across two iterations on behalf of Agence MA3. • Frontend and backend development across both versions of the site ## Education ### Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science New York University ### High School Diploma Horace Greeley High School ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/johnnyshankman - GitHub: http://www.github.com/johnnyshankman --- Source: https://flows.cv/johns2 JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/johns2/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-31