Hey 👋 I’m Jacob!

Associate Product Owner, UX Developer, QA Lead

I have expertise in business strategy, systems thinking, information architecture, and collaborative problem solving.

What I Do

🚀 Product Management

I integrate design, technology, and business to craft products that are valuable, practical, and user-friendly.

🧭 User Experience (UX)

I specialize in identifying user pain points to develop designs that are easy to use and navigate.

📊 Quality Assurance (QA)

I consistently produce high-quality results and continually refine my process.

‍💻 Community Building

I cultivate highly engaged online audiences through written and video content.

My Skills & Tools

Business Strategy, AI, CRM, Systems Thinking, Information Architecture, Content Design, Technical Writing, Web Accessibility, Community Building, Scrum, User Research, Competitive Analysis, Usability Testing, User Acceptance Testing, Trello, Jira, Confluence, Notion, Figma, HTML, CSS, SEO, JavaScript, React.js, Node.js, Ruby, Rails, Git, Visual Studio, Azure DevOps Server, Data Analysis, SQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Collaborative Problem Solving

My Recent Experience

Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) Associate Product Owner

Jan 2025 – Present

Facilitating the ongoing maintenance and development of the Workforce One (WF1) case management system and its mobile application, WF1 Connect.

Collaborating with stakeholders to identify key business requirements and directing data collection initiatives.

Conducting user acceptance testing and analyzing ways to optimize WF1 functionality to enhance the customer experience.

Creating training videos for WF1 users, providing walk-throughs of major features and functionality.

Self-Employed Freelance UX Developer

Dec 2023 – Dec 2024

Performed evaluative research and exploratory testing for a tech startup’s generative AI platform that designs custom interior spaces using natural language prompts.

Studied and received a certificate on AI fundamentals from IBM after passing a series of final comprehensive exams for all 6 course sections.

Wrote a blog post on accessibility and different testing tools that people can use to analyze web content.

Equisolve QA Lead

Jan 2023 – Oct 2023

Directed all phases of QA, both pre-/post-launch, for every client’s website and closed out projects when all final fixes were completed.

Coordinated with senior developers to address bugs in the template used for all client websites.

Cleaned up the agency’s backlog of active projects with open tasks, scheduled any additional work that was required, and then verified there were no more pending issues.

Web QA Specialist

Jan 2022 – Dec 2022

Tested the agency’s client websites ensuring they adhered to current WCAG standards, provided a straightforward user experience, matched the project’s design, and that no bugs were present in the UI.

Wrote documentation for monitoring recurring errors, SOPs for reviewing websites according to quality requirements, and recommendations for improving existing QA procedures.

Established guidelines to properly track the severity of errors on client websites.

Galvanize Developer Evangelist

Aug 2020 – Aug 2021

Produced/hosted a weekly podcast discussing tech trends, interviewing industry experts, and providing helpful resources for software engineers and data scientists.

Conducted a competitive analysis of other coding bootcamps and used that secondary research to develop a variety of digital content for prospective students.