James Mejia
Hi!
Hello! I’m a Frontend and UI Engineering leader of 13+ years. I've built fast, accessible systems that transform the way industries build and maintain digital products. I have a collaborative, curious approach to leadership, and I genuinely enjoy learning from the people around me.
Experience
Bixal
Principal Frontend Engineer
October 2024 - PresentLead teams in delivering accessible, fast, and user-friendly digital products. Outside of code, I mentor and manage engineers, help with hiring, and establish best practices.
Recognized by stakeholders for proactively improving work culture and raising engineering standards.
Lead Frontend Engineer
February 2023 - October 2024Led engineering for Digital.gov and USWDS, turning product goals into technical roadmaps and raising engineering quality through documentation, standards, and testing.
Frontend Engineer
September 2018 - February 2023I ensured the websites we produced were accessible, mobile-friendly, and fast. We mainly worked for the Federal government. We apply the best tech for the job, some of those might include Drupal, React, or both.
Third & Grove
Frontend Engineer
September 2015 - September 2018Part of a distributed team for a leading Drupal agency, designing and building mobile-first products for clients across industries using Drupal, WordPress, React, and React Native.
The work was fast-paced and being remote you have to be disciplined, take initiative, and especially communicative.
Spectrum Brands
Web Designer
2012-2015Part of a small dev team managing 30+ sites serving hundreds of thousands of users monthly. Collaborated with teams to deliver mobile-first designs and progressive enhancement techniques.
Specialties
- Semantic HTML5, CSS/SCSS, JavaScript
- Accessibility (Section 508 & WCAG AA)
- Design Systems
- Performance & SEO Optimization
- UI & Mobile-first design
Style & Design
- Tailwind
- Browser-based prototyping
- Figma, Photoshop, Sketch
Tools & Frameworks
- Frameworks: React, Lit Web Components
- Build: Vite, Webpack, GulpJS, ESBuild
- Component libraries: StorybookJS, Fractal
- Static Sites: AstroJS, Hugo, Jekyll, 11ty
- Testing: Vitest, Mocha, Pa11y
- Templates: Twig, Nunjucks, Liquid
- CMS: Drupal, WordPress, Headless (w/ GraphQL API's)
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions, CircleCI
Project Management
- Agile, Scrum
- Trello, Jira, GitHub Projects
Languages
- English
- Spanish
Outreach
- Drupal GovCon 2025
- Led a half-day workshop on creating your own design system.
- Drupal GovCon 2024
- Led a half-day workshop on rapid prototyping in Drupal with USWDS, StorybookJS, and Twig.
- Drupal GovCon 2023
- Presented a session on advanced USWDS techniques and led a half-day workshop that taught both basic and advanced USWDS techniques.
- Drupal GovCon 2021
- Presented on the future of the USWDS.