Ron Theis
Software Engineer at Grammarly
Ron Theis
Software Engineer at Grammarly
Seattle, Washington
Overview
Work Experience
Principal/Staff Software Engineer
2021 - Current
One of a handful of engineers assigned thorny challenges across the company, a few months at a time. Tackled several projects, moving them from zero to one, including: the inaugural MacOS client, Tone Detector, Server-Driven UI, GrammarlyGO, GrammarlyOS, and some yet-to-be-announced features. Some of these projects are well-defined with hand-crafted UX meticulously designed ahead of time, some are general directions in close collaboration with Design and Product folks, others are hand-wavy "is this even possible?" scenarios. Work includes coding on MacOS, Windows, and backend systems, collaborating across multiple teams and disciplines. Tech: Swift, C#, Rust, Python, and a long tail of other tech/languages as needed. The Grammarly work environment is honestly pretty drama-free--I love it!
Partner
2015
Investor/Advisor on over a dozen projects, including Old Man's Journey, Hollow Knight, and Tunic.
Principal/Staff/Senior Software Engineer
2013 - 2021
• Helped wrangle Tableau's multiple mobile offerings on the technical side, from concept through ship. • Spearheaded several self-motivated cross-company projects, e.g. The Lunch Shuffle, The Room Wrangler, seat maps, etc. • Mentored 4-6 engineers at a given time • Tech: Objective-C, Swift, Java, Kotlin, TypeScript; often using 5-7 different languages in a day
Founder, Software Engineer
2004 - 2013
• Designed, developed, and shipped 21 games and apps for Danger’s Sidekick/Hiptop smartphone. Apps included several casual puzzle games, a menstrual cycle tracker, a unit converter, a workout assistant, and a turn-based strategy game. Managed pricing and monetization strategies: approaches included one-time purchase, subscription, and free-to-play with in-app purchase (IAP). Overall units sold: over 500,000. • Developed an IAP solution for Danger’s platform. Worked with the Danger developer relations team to implement it, as IAP wasn’t natively available in Danger’s App Store equivalent. • Licensed, developed, and shipped the Business Traveler’s Passport series of iOS apps (no longer available in the App Store). • Continue to develop cross-platform turn-based strategy game for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. • Tech: Java, C++, Objective-C, PHP, Perl.
Senior Software Engineer (contract)
2012 - 2012
• Took over development of Captricity’s iOS app. Made UI responsive, sped up picture-taking process from 5s to ~200ms while decreasing bytes transmitted to 15% of previous levels. • Tech: Objective-C, RESTful JSON.
Senior Software Engineer (contract)
2011 - 2012
• Guided Valant’s mobile strategy for their flagship cloud-based Electronic Medical Record system; recommended and implemented a HTML5-based solution. • Designed, co-developed Valant’s Mobile Notes, their solution for doctors to take clinical notes on an iPad/tablet during a patient session. • Tech: C#, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, jQuery.
Senior Software Engineer
2000 - 2004
• Designed and implemented the server side of Danger’s App Store equivalent: the Download Catalog. This service supplied the catalog data to the device, tracked purchases in an auditable manner, interfaced with telecom companies’ billing systems, and provided an interface for Danger’s internal staff to edit multiple telecom companies’ catalogs, in multiple languages, across multiple hardware and device OS releases. • Designed and implemented the server side of Danger’s Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Todo apps, including solutions that kept users’ Sidekick/Hiptop smartphones seamlessly synchronized with Danger’s cloud service. • Tech: Perl, PHP, C, SQL.
Co-founder, Software Engineer
1999 - 2000
• Designed and implemented the entire site: a web interface to clients’ email discussion lists. • Tech: Perl, PHP, MySQL.
Software Engineer
1996 - 1999
• Designed and implemented Be’s web presence, including store with credit card processing. • Managed a three-person team alongside of development responsibilities. • Tech: Perl, SQL
Engineer
1994 - 1996
Helped build, design, and analyze regenerative life support systems: machines that would keep plants alive on the Moon and on Mars.