I'm Jake Chitel. I live in Milwaukee, and I build cool stuff.

I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I have always had a deep interest in math, science, and technology, which led me to enroll in engineering classes in high school (thus breaking the fourth seal of STEM and fulfilling the prophecy). In my junior year I took a class on Digital Electronics, which gave me a solid foundation of how computer hardware works and pointed my interest solidly in the direction of computers. As a senior I taught myself Java to start the next generation of enterprise software learn how to make Minecraft mods. Learning how to code sealed my fate as a software junkie.

I got a BS in Computer Engineering at Marquette University in Milwaukee (class of 2015). I was extremely fortunate at the beginning of my freshman year to get a job as a Software Developer at the GasDay Lab (now called Marquette Energy Analytics). It was here that I learned practical software development (C#, SQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and even some good ol' VB6) over the course of my 4 years in college, in parallel with learning theory (data structures, circuits, operating systems, computer hardware, networks, embedded systems, compilers, etc.) in my classes.

My first summer internship was at Quad/Graphics in Sussex, WI, in 2013, where I continued to use a lot of the same tech that I was using at GasDay. I decided to shoot big for my last summer internship and landed a gig at Amazon (yes, that Amazon) in Seattle, WA. As an intern at Amazon I worked on an ingestion system for wireless plans, utilizing SQL, Java, and Ruby.

My mad skills as an intern landed me a full-time position at AWS after graduation, where I worked on the console (web UI) for the Lambda service. It was here that I was exposed to the wide and wonderful world of web development. I learned Angular (the old one), REST APIs, Grunt, and Gulp, and began a passionate tryst with JavaScript that has blossomed to a loving relationship today.

I started getting into web development at the perfect time, as 2015 was right when web tooling and frameworks underwent a complete overhaul. Our codebase started as a typical old-fashioned Angular app with manually managed vendor scripts and a large Gulpfile. By the time I left AWS just a year later, I had seen the entire app converted to ES2015, React with Redux, NPM for managing dependencies, and NodeJS, Babel, and Webpack for builds. My team was among the first AWS console teams to embrace React, and our project set the stage for other teams to adopt it not long after. I learned more than I can possibly list while working at AWS, and my short time there established my still-growing passion for web development.

After attempting to set my own roots on the other side of the country, I decided that my home was still Milwaukee, so I moved back in June 2016. I was unable to take the AWS job with me, but I absolutely would have if given the opportunity (if I had left in 2020, things would likely have gone quite differently...). It took a while to find my footing in MKE, and I tried a few different companies (D+H, now called Finastra, and GE HealthCare). It was at Direct Supply(my current employer) that I found a good fit. I was brought back to my .NET roots, and was introduced to TypeScript (as the adage goes, I cannot go back).

Over the course of the last few years, I have been able to mature as an engineer. I have faced significant challenges and have grown from them. I have built confidence as a team member. I have had the opportunity to provide mentorship to junior engineers. Perhaps the most significant project I have worked on at Direct Supply was a complete rewrite of a legacy mobile application, which provided many learning opportunities, both technical and non-technical.

As I look to the future of my career, I plan to deepen my web development skills, try new technologies, work with people from all walks of life, engage more in open source, and continue to grow as an engineer and as a person. Look for big things from me and those with whom I work!