Brandon Graham‘s path to technology is a familiar one — he fell in love with video games at a young age and was highly attracted to the back-end of digital gaming. He completed his degree in Computing/New Media and Sociology at the University of Georgia, and to build on that knowledge, enrolled in Thinkful‘s Engineering Immersion program.
During the program, he tapped into his love of music and fantasy football to make user experience-focused mobile apps in both spaces.
Graham remains a video game enthusiast at heart, but now he’s looking for a startup or mid-size company where he can dive further into app development and expand his skillset in React Native. Meet him below — and then scoop him up while he’s still game!
Why the interest in the technology field?
I’ve loved technology since I first experienced the gem that was Star Fox 64 when I was 7 years old. I couldn’t put the game down, and when I beat it, all I kept thinking was “What lovely soul made this piece of artistic greatness?”
It wasn’t until I got to high school where I discovered that I could start with website development and work my way up to coding video games. To this day, I still play video games, and coming across a great one refuels my desire to make games like that.
What startup or tech projects have you worked on?
The best project I worked on is an app that played a selection of music based on the weather outside. Mood music was a great concept to build around. With a team, we created an app that gives the user the right music to match their environment. Our app allows the user to discover new songs, rediscover old songs, save those songs to a weather-specific playlist, and export that playlist to a Spotify account.
I also took a passion of mine and created a Fantasy Football draft rankings app. This app took data from a fantasy football API and displayed it with a spreadsheet look and feel. Players could be sorted by their ranking and name, and the user can also view detailed projected stats on a player. This would be the perfect tool to use when drafting your elite roster.
What tools are essential to you as a developer?
Definitely Github. It’s perfect for collaboration, and the ability to create branches and tinker with your code or completely create a new dream feature without destroying the already-working code allows me to feel like my coding possibilities are endless.
How do you stay informed and on top of emerging trends?
I read a lot. Between the daily tech briefings I get sent to my email every day, to browsing through LinkedIn articles, to even simply reading my Twitter feed, I spent a good amount of time daily reading up on news in the tech world.
What are your best technical or creative skills?
I’ve grown greatly with my drawing skills. I have always been pretty good at designing artwork on a computer, but now I can sketch my ideas out before bringing them to my computer for finishing touches. I also am pretty good at creating music instrumentals, but I mainly do that because I love music.
What’s next on your list to learn?
I want to learn more React Native. I was working with it for a week and loved the idea of creating apps for mobile devices. I also had some experience with Ruby on Rails and I would like to get more experience with that. Eventually my dream is to learn how to code for video games and I would like to start with Unity.
Are you interested in working for a startup, mid-sized company, or a corporate giant?
I would be interested in all three! Helping a startup or a mid-sized company reach its peak would be a wonderful dream come true. But working with a corporate giant (being in Atlanta, my dream company is Turner/Cartoon Network) would give me experience that I probably wouldn’t get in a startup.
Interested in looking at Brandon’s credentials? Here you go! GitHub, Portfolio, and LinkedIn.
