Portrait of Alexander Khost

hi, i'm alex.

Head of Development,
Code Guru / People Person

With decades of experience as a technical project manager, tech lead, and frontend web developer, I bridge the worlds of complex architecture and clear communication. I don't just write clean code— I build clean systems, guide strong teams, and make sure we never lose sight of the humans on both sides of the screen. By night (and often by passion), I'm a youth rights activist, visual artist, and poet. I believe in creating with purpose—whether it's a digital platform, a social movement, or a line of verse. I live part-time in Brooklyn, NY, USA and part-time in Cluj-Napoca, România with my wife and our four unschooled children. I'm a vegetarian, world traveler, and snowboarder.

Skills

Project Management:

  • Notion
  • Asana
  • Jira
  • Zoho
  • Trello
  • Zenhub
  • Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban)
  • Problem solving
  • time & team management
  • organization
  • empathy
  • risk assessment
  • creative strategy

Frontend Development:

  • HTML 5
  • TailwindCSS
  • PostCSS
  • Sass
  • LESS
  • BEM
  • responsive design
  • accessibility standards (WCAG, WAI-ARIA)
  • (or, you know, just view source...)

JavaScript:

  • Vanilla JS
  • Node.js
  • jQuery
  • Ember.js
  • Vue.js
  • React

Templating & Tools:

  • Liquid
  • Nunjucks (Eleventy)
  • Mustache
  • Handlebars
  • Pug (Jade)
  • Figma
  • Sketch
  • Zeplin
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • InDesign

Version Control & Miscellaneous:

  • Shopify
  • Git
  • npm
  • gulp
  • WordPress
  • PHP
  • MySQL

Spoken Languages:

  • Fluent in English
  • intermediate in Romanian
  • beginner in Spanish and Turkish
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I started building websites back when modems screamed at you. My first site was a Geocities masterpiece, handcrafted on a Commodore 64. I topped the Ask Jeeves charts in '82 — before the web even existed, which just made it more impressive. I got the <blink> tag working inside a <marquee>, cross-browser, on IE4 and Netscape Navigator 2.0. People used to email praise to my Pine inbox, but I'd already moved on to Hotmail via AOL 3.0. For analytics, I counted the guestbook entries. Spacer GIFs held my layout together better than duct tape. And yes — I deployed updates via floppy disk. I optimized every image in MS Paint and named my files with 8.3 filenames, because Windows 95 couldn't handle anything fancier. I wrote CSS before we called it CSS — just inline <font color="lime"> and a dream. Clippy tried to help, but I told him to talk to the hand. My hit counter was stuck at 9999 and I liked it that way. I once broke a layout by resizing a table border. I had an HTML book thicker than a phonebook and used Netscape Composer like it was Dreamweaver Pro. Back then, if your site didn't autoplay MIDI and sparkle, were you even online?

Experience

Fully remote, 2023 - present

Lead on all development for startup agency Freshwater.dev, responsible for writing and managing the codebase and creating a customizable Shopify theme for all clients.

Launched 45+ websites, including relaunches for Apple Bottom Jeans, Avantera, and Urban Moonshine.

Developed custom Shopify themes and checkout flows using Liquid, web components, vanilla JavaScript, jQuery, CSS, and HTML, cutting development time by 50%.

Lead and remotely manage junior developers and QA engineers across three continents, ensuring high-quality project delivery.

New York, NY, 2013 - 2022

Worked as Director of Engineer Operations (2020-2022) and as Principal Frontend Engineer (2013-2020).

As Director of Engineer Operations, managed the operations of two Agile development teams in the USA, South America, and Asia, overseeing the Engineering Team's development velocity and Agile sprints. Reported to Business Team, managed releases, progress, and timeliness of projects while maintaining the team's deployment process, PRs, code quality, and testing. Provided training and mentoring to new and junior engineers. Created the development standards and QA process for the company.

As Principal Frontend Engineer, built user interfaces for hotel and restaurant hospitality websites using TailwindCSS (PostCSS), vanilla JS, Eleventy with Nunjucks templates, and NodeJS on the backend. Began as the sole frontend engineer and built up a team of a dozen engineers.

New York, NY, 2010 - 2013

Designed and built interfaces using JSTL, JSP, Sass, jQuery, mustache, and AJAX.

Worked in an Agile environment using scrum and kanban practices on small, rotating teams. Rebuilt member home and member details pages, rebranding of New Meetup home interface. Developed Perks and Sponsorships applications, the RSVP Flow, and Email for Mobile projects.

New York, NY, 2013

Designed and taught advanced web development course to undergraduate seniors.

Coursework included responsive-design portfolio website building with HTML, CSS, jQuery; and preparation for entry into workforce as frontend web developer.

New York, NY, 2007 - 2010

Sole frontend developer for InStyle.com, What's Right Now and Celebrity Babies Wordpress blogs.

Frontend developer for People.com, rebuilt dynamic photo galleries pages, at the time, the most highly trafficked pages at Time Inc., rebuilt special issue packages for automated publishing.

New York, NY, 2005 - 2006

Rebuilt online financial publishing company's publication websites, CMS, intranet, job board and fulfillment application; developed company's front-end development standards; used Agile process

New York, NY, 2004 - 2005

Created interactive online K-12 and higher education classes for McGraw-Hill's Higher Education engineering team; developed online classrooms and content / site management systems.

New York, NY, 2002 - 2004

Built and maintained a custom PHP / MySQL application for the nonprofit art education organization's accounting system of over one hundred employees, intranet, and digital image archive of over 25 years of children's artwork.

New York, NY, 2000 - 2003

Designed and taught Introduction to Interactive Media course in associate's degree program.

New York, NY, 1999 - 2003

Designed and taught pre-college, undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education courses in art education, New York State teacher certification, English as a Second Language, web development, and various fine art subjects.

Worked as Teacher Certification Administrator in Art Education Department. Served as Admissions Advisor in Design & Technology Department.

Portfolio

Apex - Shopify site redesign for snowboard and ski brand
Apple Bottoms - Shopify site redesign for jeans brand
Commbi - Shopify site redesign for shoe brand
Fly Mamas - Shopify site redesign for outdoor appael for women brand
Freshwater - Shopify dev agency
Life Really Socks - Shopify site redesign for sock brand
Sync Botanicals - Shopify site redesign for tea subscription for menstrual cycle brand