Kodiak LLC

  • 2024 - Present
  • Senior Software Engineer
  • related link (external)

I joined Kodiak in early 2024, shortly after its official separation from Crowe LLP. The split marked a turning point for many of Crowe’s healthcare products, most of which transitioned to Kodiak. Although I wasn’t part of the initial group that left, I was quickly brought on to continue supporting and evolving the same design system I had built and maintained at Crowe.

Since then, I’ve worked as the sole developer on the UI/UX team - carrying forward the Peak Design System while rebranding, modernizing, and reshaping it to fit the product culture and priorities at Kodiak. That work has involved everything from Angular development and tooling to high-level advocacy for usability, quality, and consistency across all products.

Evolution and Ownership

At Kodiak, I continue to serve primarily as the system’s lead developer - building new components, refactoring legacy ones, and maintaining the broader Angular ecosystem around the design system. But with the move to a smaller, more focused company, I’ve also taken on a stronger role in shaping how the design system fits into Kodiak’s product culture and technical architecture.

In many of our internal conversations, I’ve become a key voice advocating for usability, consistency, and long-term maintainability - especially in spaces where those topics aren’t often prioritized. I’ve worked to establish stronger alignment between products, define clearer standards, and ensure that our frontend technologies and patterns support quality, not just velocity.

The design system itself was forked at the time of the company’s founding, giving me the opportunity to pick up where I left off but with a fresh perspective. I’ve since removed outdated components, introduced modern Angular patterns like Signals and standalone components, and worked to correct early architectural decisions I made when I was still new to Angular. To support legacy adopters, I’ve created compatibility shims and migration paths to ease the transition without breaking existing apps.

Tooling and Documentation

One of the biggest additions to the ecosystem has been a new internal documentation parser. Compodoc no longer met our needs with the adoption of Signals, so I built a custom parser using ts-morph to extract structured documentation from source files. This new tooling allows us to maintain accurate, high-quality docs with minimal manual upkeep - freeing me to focus on development while ensuring teams still get the guidance they need.

I’ve also improved the system’s internal developer experience: adding interactive example pages, standalone routes, and component usage snippets directly into the monorepo. These updates have made onboarding and exploration faster for new developers and improved visibility into the system overall.

Collaboration and Culture

With Kodiak’s smaller size and more focused mission, I’ve been able to play a greater role in cross-functional discussions around architecture and product strategy. In many cases, I’ve served as the primary voice advocating for strong usability, high-quality code, and consistent implementation across products. I’m also working closely with my designer counterpart to improve accessibility and compliance with WCAG standards as a core part of every new or refactored component.

To improve quality and engagement, I founded and now lead the Beta Testers Group, which rotates quarterly in sync with our design system release cadence. Testers act as a QA buffer and feedback channel - helping identify bugs and gaps before a release becomes stable. I’ve also launched Changelog Live, a quarterly webinar to share updates, explain changes, and socialize the system more widely within the company.

Rebranding and Forward Motion

The first phase of Kodiak’s rebrand involved retheming and updating design tokens, which I rolled out carefully to ensure compatibility with all adopting teams. A broader visual overhaul is still on the roadmap, and I’m preparing the system to support that transition cleanly when it arrives.

Although much of my work resembles what I was doing before, the difference at Kodiak is strategic: I’m not just maintaining a system - I’m shaping its future, and helping define how design, usability, and development standards fit into the company’s broader success.