Jessica Carter

Recruiter profile

Jessica Carter, J.D. — I build reliable systems, solve ugly problems, and communicate clearly with both technical teams and business stakeholders. My background spans advanced technical support, infrastructure and operations, and legal/organizational leadership.

Solutions Engineer · Sales Engineer · Technical Account Manager · Customer Success Engineering · Implementation / Onboarding · Technical Program Management

• Customer-facing technical execution: translating complex systems into outcomes, fast.
• Systems troubleshooting: storage/virtualization/networking stacks, incident-style problem solving, and crisp root-cause writeups.
• Cross-functional leadership: aligning priorities, clarifying decisions, and shipping improvements without drama.
• Operational discipline: documentation, process design, and building automation that actually runs.

• Synology: advanced support across storage, virtualization, and networking in high-stakes customer environments.
• Founder, law firm: built and ran a practice with real-world accountability: client outcomes, business ops, and team development.
• Long-running technical services work: hands-on troubleshooting + consulting for small-business environments.

J.D., Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Drexel University · B.A. Philosophy (minor: Classics), Central Washington University

Email: Jess@JessCarter.me · LinkedIn: jesscartertech

How I work

I’m a systems-level thinker with a bias toward shipping. I like clear specs, explicit tradeoffs, and reliability over vibes.

• Structured execution: I break big ambiguous problems into phases, deliver working slices, and keep documentation current.
• Adversarial stress-testing: I ask “how will this fail?” early — then build guardrails and rollback paths.
• Cross-domain translation: I can talk to engineers, operators, and leadership without losing the plot.
• Human-in-the-loop when it matters: automation is only good if it degrades gracefully.

Systems design: the animated background (Gateway UI)

Collaboration + vibe coding. This background renderer was designed and shipped through tight collaboration between Jess (requirements, constraints, taste, and product direction) and Oracle — an AI agent running via Jess’s custom OpenClaw setup (implementation). It’s a concrete example of “vibe coding” done responsibly: rapid iteration with a strong feedback loop and explicit robustness constraints so the result behaves like a production UI element, not a novelty demo.

The idea. Render a calm, atmospheric background that supports the product rather than competing with it: fixed-position clouds that drift slowly, feel natural, and never react to pointer/scroll in a way that makes the page feel unstable.

Why It Matters. This is UI systems design: performance budgeting (simple canvas ops, requestAnimationFrame), accessibility (pointerEvents disabled; decorative canvas is aria-hidden), and product reliability (remove mouse/scroll coupling so the visual layer doesn’t create user-perceived “bugs”).

• Fixed canvas: the background is rendered on a position: fixed canvas (so it feels anchored).
• No parallax: the animation loop is driven only by time (requestAnimationFrame) — no mouse/scroll coupling.
• Organic motion: slow drift + gentle turbulence (sine/cos) to avoid jitter.
• Soft volume: blurred radial gradients (layered “puffs”) instead of heavy effects.
• Doesn’t interfere: pointerEvents: "none" and aria-hidden.

Problem. The background “swam” (parallax-like shifting) and the clouds read as synthetic (too small, too fast, too glowy).

Constraints. Keep it calm and anchored; don’t steal focus; don’t block clicks; keep the rendering model simple and performant.

Solution in code. The renderer below is intentionally built from a few stable primitives: a fixed canvas, a time-driven animation loop (requestAnimationFrame), slow drift + gentle turbulence, and blurred radial gradients for soft volumetric clouds — with no mouse/scroll coupling.

Outcome. The UI feels quieter and more “designed,” and the implementation is tunable (speeds/scales/opacity) without reintroducing instability.

Excerpt from the Gateway’s animated background renderer. Download: animated-background.tsx

// ---
// Gateway UI proof-of-work: Animated background (cloud drift)
//
// Key design points:
// - No mouse/scroll parallax (background should feel anchored, not “swim”)
// - Organic motion: slow drift + gentle turbulence (sine/cos), not jitter
// - Soft volumetric look: blurred radial gradients, no glow/shadow hacks
// ---

function initClouds(w: number, h: number): Cloud[] {
  // A handful of “cloud actors” with different speeds/scales so motion feels layered.
  return [
    { x: w * 0.05, y: h * 0.10, vx:  8, vy:  0.8, scale: 2.2, opacity: 0.40, turbFX: 0.06, turbFY: 0.04, turbAX: 12, turbAY: 6, turbPX: 0.0, turbPY: 1.2 },
    { x: w * 0.45, y: h * 0.22, vx:  5, vy: -0.5, scale: 1.8, opacity: 0.34, turbFX: 0.07, turbFY: 0.05, turbAX: 10, turbAY: 5, turbPX: 2.2, turbPY: 0.5 },
    { x: w * 0.75, y: h * 0.38, vx:  9, vy:  1.0, scale: 2.4, opacity: 0.36, turbFX: 0.05, turbFY: 0.03, turbAX: 14, turbAY: 7, turbPX: 1.4, turbPY: 2.6 },
    { x: w * 0.20, y: h * 0.58, vx:  4, vy: -0.4, scale: 1.6, opacity: 0.30, turbFX: 0.08, turbFY: 0.06, turbAX:  8, turbAY: 4, turbPX: 3.8, turbPY: 1.6 },
    { x: w * 0.90, y: h * 0.68, vx:  6, vy:  0.6, scale: 2.0, opacity: 0.33, turbFX: 0.06, turbFY: 0.04, turbAX: 11, turbAY: 5, turbPX: 1.0, turbPY: 3.5 },
  ];
}

function drawCloud(
  ctx: CanvasRenderingContext2D,
  cx: number, cy: number,
  scale: number, opacity: number,
  isDark: boolean,
) {
  // Cloud “sprite” dimensions (scaled per cloud).
  const W = 420 * scale;
  const H = 220 * scale;

  // Slightly brighter cloud body so it reads against the dark glass background.
  // Note: this is *not* a glow; it’s just the base color of the gradients.
  const [br, bg, bb] = isDark ? [120, 190, 255] : [105, 175, 245];

  ctx.save();
  ctx.globalAlpha = opacity;

  // Soft volumetric look via blurred radial gradients (no shadows).
  // Each puff is a gradient “blob” with alpha that fades to 0.

  // Body: left puff
  ctx.filter = "blur(28px)";
  const left = ctx.createRadialGradient(cx - W * 0.22, cy, 0, cx - W * 0.22, cy, W * 0.38);
  left.addColorStop(0.0, `rgba(${br},${bg},${bb},0.60)`);
  left.addColorStop(0.5, `rgba(${br},${bg},${bb},0.24)`);
  left.addColorStop(1.0, `rgba(${br},${bg},${bb},0.00)`);
  ctx.fillStyle = left;
  ctx.beginPath();
  ctx.arc(cx - W * 0.22, cy, W * 0.38, 0, Math.PI * 2);
  ctx.fill();

  // Body: right puff
  const right = ctx.createRadialGradient(cx + W * 0.20, cy + H * 0.03, 0, cx + W * 0.20, cy + H * 0.03, W * 0.34);
  right.addColorStop(0.0, `rgba(${br},${bg},${bb},0.54)`);
  right.addColorStop(0.5, `rgba(${br},${bg},${bb},0.22)`);
  right.addColorStop(1.0, `rgba(${br},${bg},${bb},0.00)`);
  ctx.fillStyle = right;
  ctx.beginPath();
  ctx.arc(cx + W * 0.20, cy + H * 0.03, W * 0.34, 0, Math.PI * 2);
  ctx.fill();

  // Body: centre mass
  ctx.filter = "blur(22px)";
  const centre = ctx.createRadialGradient(cx, cy + H * 0.04, 0, cx, cy + H * 0.04, W * 0.44);
  const [lr, lg, lb] = isDark ? [150, 215, 255] : [135, 205, 250];
  centre.addColorStop(0.0, `rgba(${lr},${lg},${lb},0.50)`);
  centre.addColorStop(0.5, `rgba(${lr},${lg},${lb},0.20)`);
  centre.addColorStop(1.0, `rgba(${lr},${lg},${lb},0.00)`);
  ctx.fillStyle = centre;
  ctx.beginPath();
  ctx.arc(cx, cy + H * 0.04, W * 0.44, 0, Math.PI * 2);
  ctx.fill();

  // Soft highlight: upper
  ctx.filter = "blur(18px)";
  const hl = ctx.createRadialGradient(cx - W * 0.06, cy - H * 0.16, 0, cx - W * 0.06, cy - H * 0.16, W * 0.28);
  hl.addColorStop(0.0, "rgba(235,245,255,0.42)");
  hl.addColorStop(0.5, "rgba(220,238,255,0.18)");
  hl.addColorStop(1.0, "rgba(200,220,245,0.00)");
  ctx.fillStyle = hl;
  ctx.beginPath();
  ctx.arc(cx - W * 0.06, cy - H * 0.16, W * 0.28, 0, Math.PI * 2);
  ctx.fill();

  ctx.restore();
}

Prose selections

Selected excerpts from my Substack writing (SFW).

This contrasted with my other major social experience growing up — hanging out with our local Star Trek club. Your Oma met your Papa in that club, started dating (the first movie they saw together was James Bond: Goldeneye), and she decided to stay with him because he was the Captain (it also helped that he was always a very kind and gentle soul). In the club, we would watch whatever episode of whatever Star Trek series had just been released that week (your Papa actually bought a very large satellite dish for the house so that he could record them early — before public release — so that the club could watch them on Saturday). We would hold meetings at members’ homes, and eventually, at larger meeting places when the group got too big to host everyone. After the episode, we would have spaghetti (a family tradition that your Urgroßvater on your Oma’s side started), or do a potluck. We would play games, have fun, and engage in lively discussion about the issues raised by the episode we had watched and analogize them to the issues of the day.

Read: That Time I Realized My Childhood Religious Upbringing Was “Star Trek” →

Speckled with blood, and marred in mire,

Read: The War to Come, The War to Pass →