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Alex Carpenter

Staff UI Engineer at Clerk

Grand Rapids, MI.

Staff UI Engineer building composable interfaces for humans and agents.

I’m currently on the core team at Clerk, working on UI components, theming infrastructure, and developer tooling for authentication interfaces. My work is mostly about making customization easier, improving component APIs, and giving developers more flexible primitives to build with.

I do my best work on small teams that collaborate closely and ship often. I care deeply about design and craft, and I’m especially interested in how AI tools can help designers and engineers build better interfaces together.

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Projects

  • I Brew My Own Coffee

    A curated collection of home coffee setups. Built with Astro, Tailwind CSS, and Base UI.

  • Curated

    Weekly curated items including design inspiration, tools, and resources. Built with Astro.

  • RESILIENT—UI

    Resources for building resilient user interfaces. Built with Next.js, Tailwind CSS, Base UI, shadcn/ui, and Fumadocs.

Experience

  • Clerk

    Staff UI Engineer

    –

    UI Engineer apart of the core team, working on UI components and theming infrastructure-building systems for customization, improving component APIs, and creating developer tooling.

    Next.js, Tailwind CSS, React Aria Components, TypeScript, Motion, and Floating UI

  • Watershed

    Lead Web Engineer

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    Web Engineer apart of the marketing department, built and maintained everything across watershed.com.

    Next.js, Sanity CMS, CSS Modules, and Framer Motion

  • HashiCorp

    Senior Lead Web Engineer

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    Lead Web Engineer on the core web team, helped build and maintain public-facing HashiCorp websites and web applications with Next.js.

    Next.js, Dato CMS, Reach UI, TypeScript, CSS modules, and Framer Motion

  • NationBuilder

    UI Engineer

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    UI Engineer working on the design team, collaborating closely with engineers implementing new features and building out our design system Radius.

    React, Rails, and Bootstrap

  • Mighty in the Midwest

    Senior Web Engineer

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    Senior Developer building and maintaining client websites built with Craft CMS, ExpressionEngine, and Shopify. Lead front-end initiatives to improve CSS and JavaScript architecture and implement an atomic deployment pipeline for our projects.

    Craft CMS, Shopify, SCSS, and jQuery

  • Masuga Design

    Front-end Developer

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    Front-end Developer building user interfaces for clients like A&E Networks, Image Comics, and Fox Networks Info with ExpressionEngine.

    ExpressionEngine, Craft CMS, SCSS, and jQuery

Latest Work

Recommendations

  • If you are seeking someone with deep expertise in web development, particularly with React, accessibility, animations, and a keen eye for design, then Alex is the perfect teammate. During my time at Clerk, I had the pleasure of working closely with Alex, and I can confidently say that he is an exceptional collaborator. His frontend web UI engineering skills are top-notch, and he is a fantastic human being.

    David Mosher

    Staff Software Engineer, Clerk

  • Alex is an excellent teammate and an exceptionally talented web developer. When he joined the team we gained an incredibly strong collaborator. His thoughtful approach to both producing work and actively reviewing code instantly improved the entire teams workflow. It is clear that Alex is a life long learner and therefore is always sure to bring a new, novel approach to solve a problem.

    Jimmy Merritello

    Web Engineer, HashiCorp

  • Alex and I worked together on the design team at NationBuilder. Alex is a natural problem solver, and a talented visual designer. That combination makes him an excellent front-end engineer. We worked together on a new feature with a complex UI and he was able to interpret the designs with a care and detail that is rare, while also making thoughtful UX suggestions. Not to mention Alex is just a great person, easy to talk to and lovely to work with.

    Amy Stuart

    Senior Designer, NationBuilder

  • I worked with Alex on a variety of different projects. He is excellent at his craft and a pleasure to collaborate with. His attention to detail always resulted in an extremely polished final product.

    Andrew Possehl

    Senior Designer, NationBuilder

  • Alex is incredibly skilled, efficient, and thorough in his work. Perhaps more than any other co-worker I have had, Alex possesses a deep and wide understanding of modern web technologies, while his steady passion for producing best-of-class work inspires his peers to write cleaner, simpler, and more elegant code.

    Kyle Luck

    Developer, Mighty in the Midwest

  • Alex is incredibly thorough and thoughtful with his work and is always seeking out improving in his craft. He’s conscious of meeting deadlines and communicates concerns early so that project teams can be proactive in problem solving.

    Danielle Dunn

    Project Manager, Mighty in the Midwest

  • I would recommend Alex to any forward-thinking web team. His passion for web standards along with his friendly attitude made him an invaluable part of our development team. I`m always especially impressed with his commitment to continuous learning and I hope to have the chance to work with him again!

    Melissa Taylor

    Director Client Services, Mighty in the Midwest

OSS Contributions