My role
I joined the News Engineering team in May 2020 as a Software Engineer. I primarily worked on the front-end Next based app that consumed incoming election results data from SQS and generated static builds of all election pages. I helped create React components such as the Balance of Power, a live visualization of the electoral college count, and contributed towards the maintainence of other existing components in the app. I also wrote tests for visual components and the underlying logic, with robust testing for all edge cases. In addition to my contributions to the frontend I also contributed to the backend data pipeline, helping patch bits and pieces.
Background
This project formed the backbone of the Washington Post's 2020 General Election coverage, including party primaries, for arguably one of the most consquential election of our lifetimes. Our team was tasked with creating a fast, reliable and responsive experience for our readers.
Key Goals
- Create robust re-usable React components that could be deployed on our election pages as well as on the homepage.
- Communicate uncertainty for the votes remaining model through various graphics
- Create and maintain a robust pipeline, from ingestion of third-party vendor data to a blazing fast static build of all pages
