About

Hello! I'm Melinda Golden, and I'm based out of Asheville, NC. I have over 9 years of experience in front-end development. I currently work full-time as a Senior Front End Developer. I'm also the founder of Root Elements Labs. I offer part-time consulting for front-end architecture and design systems.

I've always been talented at creating art. I attended Kennesaw State University, where I studied with a concentration in painting and drawing. I originally thought I would study graphic design, but I didn't like that the courses focused on packaging design. I took courses in drawing, painting, ceramics, typography, and black-and-white film photography. I considered pursuing an MFA and becoming a college art professor.

After college, I got married. My husband had been working in portrait studios, but wanted to break out on his own. Since I already had an interest in photography from my college courses, we decided to team up and start a photography business. We specialized in photographing weddings and did that for a few years. My interest in web development started when I built our website using WordPress.

Eventually, we both decided to pursue different career paths. My husband started working for craft beer breweries. I got a part-time job working for a group of surgeons. They needed help with their websites and marketing. I started diving deeper into learning to code. I ended up getting a job working for a small web design company. I was still mainly customizing templates at this point, but my coding skills were growing.

I had a great experience in my first junior software developer role. I was in an office working with a small group of engineers, and I believe this greatly accelerated my learning. I learned a lot on the job, including React, TypeScript, and GraphQL. From there, I decided to pursue a remote position at an early-stage startup. They were using Vue, so I had to switch tech stacks and learn a new JavaScript framework. I was part of a small team of developers, and the pace was incredibly fast. As a result, my front-end development skills grew exponentially. After only a few years, I was promoted to Senior Front End Developer.

Currently, I am a Senior Front-End Developer for a company that provides online OSHA training. I was hired as the first front-end developer on the team. They were migrating their legacy tech stack to a new one built in Django and Vue. I was tasked with creating a Vue codebase from scratch, including deciding on the front-end architecture and libraries, developing a Vue style guide, establishing guidelines for CSS and styling, and creating a strategy for unit tests. I documented all of this and helped train the other developers on how to use Vue.

I regularly attend local tech meetups and have even organized a local meetup for women in technology. I've also volunteered to speak and give presentations to share my knowledge. Outside of work, I enjoy traveling, hiking, kayaking, and painting.