Joel Kinman

I love to make cool sh*t. Systems thinker, AI-native builder.

Full stack engineer with over a decade of experience, and agent development as the main way I build. The transition has held: agents in production, wired into real workflows, owned from the first design through the software that supports them. I bring product judgment and systems discipline.

Check out my latest project Sugar Glider!

Hiring? Looking for an AI Consultant?

I'm open to freelance opportunities and full-time job offers.

What I Bring

Core competencies and specialized expertise for modern engineering teams

  • AI-native full-stack engineer. Shipped LLM gateways, AI voice services, and agentic workflows in production

  • First-principles systems thinker. Design from constraints, not conventions; find the simple solution inside the complex problem

  • End-to-end ownership, from blank page to production: architecture, implementation, observability, and iteration

  • Frontend depth, full-stack range. 10+ years React/TypeScript, comfortable in Rails, Clojure, Node, Postgres, and wherever the problem lives

  • Builds the infrastructure others depend on: LLM gateways, ETL pipelines, dev tooling, design systems, and data platforms

  • Moves fast without breaking things. Agentic code generation, strong intuition for tech debt, ships clean

Work History

Click a role to see technologies and achievements.

  • May 2026 - Current

    Sugar Glider

    Founder / Principal Developer

    Founder of Sugar Glider, a personal recruiter that watches the job market and judges each role against a person's real history, then writes the application. Built and shipped the product end to end.

  • Apr 2023 - Current

    Highspot

    Senior Full Stack Engineer

    Full-stack engineer at Highspot, a leader in the revenue enablement space, working across a Ruby on Rails/React monolith, a Clojure media service, and TypeScript AI voice services. Contributed to the company-wide AI transformation, shipping LLM-powered product features, hardening AI infrastructure, and building the internal tooling that supports it all.

  • Oct 2013 - Current

    Angry Mob

    Founder / Principal Consultant

    Independent consulting practice and personal engineering lab focused on full ownership projects spanning AI-native product development, self-hosted infrastructure, and contract work. Home to experiments that ship.

  • Jun 2021 - Aug 2022

    Article

    Senior Frontend Developer

    Built automated design-to-code pipelines. Created a Figma-to-code ETL system that exported design tokens and components into multiple themes and TypeScript plugins, eliminating the design-to-code bottleneck for multiple frontend teams.

  • Jan 2020 - Jun 2021

    Appnovation

    Lead Frontend Developer / Client Consultant

    Lead frontend developer and client consultant delivering enterprise web applications across government, tourism, and technology sectors. Led development of COVID-19 healthcare workforce tracking system deployed to four Canadian provinces. Specialized in headless CMS architectures and ETL pipelines for static site generation from Contentful and Drupal.

  • Jan 2019 - Jan 2020

    1Qbit

    Lead Programmer

    Web platform developer at 1QBit, one of the world's first dedicated quantum software companies ($45M raised, partnerships with Microsoft, IBM, Fujitsu, and D-Wave). Built the web portal powering time-shared access to quantum computers and digital annealers for operational researchers.

  • Oct 2017 - Jan 2019

    Vanbex / EtherParty

    Senior React Developer

    Frontend lead building blockchain product experiences during the peak of the Ethereum ecosystem, covering smart contract tooling, identity verification infrastructure, and experimental real-time blockchain visualization.

  • Jan 2016 - Oct 2017

    iQmetrix

    Senior Developer (Full Stack / Mobile / React)

    Senior developer on the R&D team rapidly prototyping and shipping internal and commercial products across full-stack web, mobile, 3D visualization, and real-time communication across retail tech.

  • Dec 2011 - Oct 2013

    Recon Instruments

    Senior Engineer / System Architect

    Architected the Engage platform connecting wearable ski hardware to the web via USB. Enabled firmware updates, data downloads, and social sharing of ski runs. Led from inception through Intel acquisition.

  • Nov 2008 - May 2011

    Responsys

    Technical Consultant

    Technical consultant embedded with enterprise clients of Responsys, a leading email marketing platform, delivering training, integration architecture, and custom high-volume communication programs across EMEA and North America. Based in London, continued remotely on return to Canada.

  • 2007 - 2007

    VideoClix

    Senior Programmer

    Built web SDK and content creation tooling for proprietary media workflows.

  • 2002 - 2007

    Radical Games

    Lead Programmer / Tools Programmer

    Developed console and PC games across lead and tools roles. Contributed to licensed titles generating over 6.6 million in revenue and 1.6 million units sold globally.

  • 2000 - 2002

    Disney Interactive

    Programmer

    Gameplay, tools, and pipeline programmer.