Chris Escher .

I'm a Senior Application Developer and Lead Front-End Engineer with deep experience modernizing enterprise applications and leading cross-functional teams. I specialize in migrating legacy systems to modern React architectures — improving performance, scalability, and developer experience at every step.

Lately I've been doing a lot of work at the intersection of AI and product development — integrating OpenAI and Claude APIs into real applications, combining LLM responses with authenticated user context, and building mobile-ready experiences with Capacitor for iOS and Android.

I care about clean architecture, performance that users actually feel, and leveraging AI to build things that weren't possible a few years ago.

2018 — Present
Senior Developer · Lead Front-End ↗
Pace Analytical

Led the full modernization of a legacy ExtJS enterprise application into a React architecture using Webpack — one of the largest frontend migrations the company had undertaken. Mentored developers, established code quality standards, and owned the entire tooling chain including NPM, Webpack, Babel, Jest, and Cypress.

Integrated Kendo React and modern UI frameworks, implemented ESLint and Prettier for automated quality enforcement, and built responsive UIs with SASS. Researched and introduced AI-driven solutions including LLM-based APIs to improve application capabilities.

React TypeScript Webpack Jest Cypress Kendo UI SASS GraphQL
Independent
AI & Product Development ↗
Self-directed

Designed and shipped AI-powered features using the OpenAI ChatGPT API — building systems that combine LLM responses with authenticated user context and enforcing data sanitization pipelines before every API request. Applied prompt engineering to improve response quality and used Claude Code and OpenAI Codex to accelerate development velocity significantly.

OpenAI API Claude Code OpenAI Codex Supabase Next.js Prompt Engineering
Independent
iOS App Development ↗
Self-directed

Built and shipped native iOS applications using Swift, working directly in Xcode with UIKit and SwiftUI. Managed provisioning, code signing, and App Store releases end-to-end with a full native stack.

Swift SwiftUI UIKit Xcode iOS
Frontend & Frameworks
React Next.js Vite TypeScript JavaScript HTML5 CSS3 / SASS Material UI Kendo React
AI & Automation
OpenAI API Claude Code OpenAI Codex GitHub Copilot Prompt Engineering LLM Workflows
Backend & Mobile
.NET Azure PostgreSQL Supabase REST APIs GraphQL Node.js Capacitor (iOS/Android) Socket.IO
Tooling & Quality
Webpack Nx.dev Jest Cypress Playwright ESLint Prettier Git
B.S., Computer Information Science Minnesota State University
Diploma, Commercial Art South Central Technical College