Joshua Gilmer
⚡️

Joshua Gilmer

Founder, CEO in Birmingham, AL, He/Him/His

Luau just got accepted into the Voltage program.

13 days ago

About

Working diligently ... one party at a time.

Work Experience

2024 — Now
Birmingham, AL

Luau is the AI-powered party planner that turns hosting headaches into effortless soirees. From invites to potlucks, we're making small gatherings a big success. Luau: Let's party!

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2021 — 2024
Birmingham, AL

As Linq's inaugural full-time designer and pivotal early team member (#17), I had incredible impact on the company.

At Linq I helped:

  • Build out a world-class design and experience team. My team was consistently praised and regarded as indispensable to the company. I write job descriptions, review applications, interview candidates, create and administer design challenges.

  • Quadruple our ARR (4.5x 📈)—in under 2 years, and during a time when most start-ups were shifting from "growth at any cost" to "default alive" strategies—and proving the ROI of good UX design.

  • Craft the first version of our design system. Provided engineering with AWD (Align with Design) cross-functional collaborative feedback. Documented and trained our team on design system use and iterative improvement. Created a scalable and replicable product aesthetic grounded in the Linq brand. The results of these efforts were highly cohesive experiences built on faster product development cycles.

  • Add countless product features and customer journeys. In my first year alone I was involved at a high level on over 44 features shipped, requiring me to personally design more than 550 screens.

  • Perform research in sources like amplitude to identify data-driven design insights, and directly link our work to enhanced user engagement, stickiness and product performance.

  • Lead internal multi-disciplinary brainstorming workshops to understand department needs, foster company-wide culture of innovation and earn stakeholder buy-in for future feature recommendations.

2018 — 2021
Birmingham, AL

Embedded UI/UX (User Interface / User Experience) partner on SAFe Agile team responsible for modernizing all digital account origination in an omni-channel solution built primarily in React with Redux/MobX.

■ Product design and product management.
■ Early front-end developer responsible for creating React-based UI form components as well as some stateless functional components.
■ Helped bridge strategic partners, solution experts, UI/UX, legal, risk, compliance, product owners, scrum masters and other stakeholders into formation of approved prototypes through direct leadership, communication, problem solving and teamwork.
■ Delivered designs meeting all regulatory and policy hurdles, including readiness deadlines for development and production release.
■ Crafted product designs including interactive prototypes for new products and application flows primarily in Sketch and Invision.
■ Attended product demos, stand-ups, backlog refinements, retrospectives and ensured development stayed true to the look and feel and to the intended interactions previously designed.
■ Advocated persistently and with empathy for our end-users (bank customers) using our account origination applications, and both directed and provided feedback to other UI/UX design team members.
■ Conceptualized solutions that were the product of research and solid design thinking which in many cases exceeded usability and ADA (Accessibility) requirements.

2016 — 2018
Birmingham, AL

Primarily developed very highly scrutinized and legally reviewed websites for the ViiV brand of GlaxoSmithKline. Responsible for completing self-management chores that aided project managers,
including working in Jira, connecting Git commits to tickets, and deploying code via the same commits in Jenkins. Created in-house solutions to streamline project workflows within our SOC2 compliance. Used libraries and tech stacks including Ember, Vue, Express, Axios, lodash, React and Redux.

■ Developed websites for prominent brands including GSK, Little Debbie, the SEC, The Civil Rights Trail, Schönox and Brasfield & Gorrie.
■ Helped bridge project managers with partnering agencies such as McCann to better understand project goals, time tables and limitations.
■ Highly leveraged GTM (Google Tag Manager) to track a myriad of events, ad conversions and external analytics scripts.
■ Consulted with co-workers outside my department to help with deployment, analytics and UI/UX.
■ Used site generators such as Hugo to build sites legally required to abstain from using any CMS or dynamically generated content.

2015 — 2016
Birmingham, AL

Supported over 300 active, primarily WordPress client websites and added new features and functionality to existing client websites. Converted older websites to WordPress and/or responsive designs and tackled all project overflow from production team. Clients included Coca-Cola United and Tazikis.

■ Blazed a trail for staff adoption of SASS/SCSS and orchestrated move from Hybrid theme development to a proprietary Underscore theme build.
■ Built numerous WordPress websites from various stages of design and development to production deployment and beyond.
■ Teamed up with other support and production staff to whitelist 3rd-party plugin use, brainstorm project workflows and educate on new coding techniques and solutions.
■ Balanced multiple development projects against incoming support tickets weighted by estimated turnaround and urgency.

2014 — 2015
Web Developer at Education Corporation of America
Birmingham, AL

Worked with a small team within the marketing department of ECA which handled design and development of all the web properties in-house for the websites of Virginia College, Culinard, the New England College of Business and Ecotech.

■ Lead designer and developer , Ecotech and Golf Academies of America websites.
■ Created design wireframes, mock-ups and interactive designs for websites, responsive sites and micro-sites.
■ Worked within ECA’s tech stack which relied heavily on Adobe software, including ColdFusion.
■ Completed design for digital advertising and social media ads and posts.

2013 — 2014
Creative Director & Senior Web Developer at Labyrinth Holdings
Birmingham, AL

Provided creative and art direction, talent recruitment and web app development for a holding company housing numerous digital properties including over a dozen digital magazines and a real-estate cloud marketing SaaS application.

■ Crafted service offerings around content marketing packages.
■ Established project workflow protocols to seamlessly execute client jobs.
■ Built a team of highly talented designers, copywriters, marketers and IT professionals from the ground up.
■ Directed the design of high-profile outdoors and sports magazines for Okuma and Mossy Oak.
■ Built an internal intranet and company sales portal with supporting sales collateral in WordPress.
■ Managed over a dozen web properties and their corresponding social media presence.

2010 — 2011
Birmingham, AL

Completed internship with a focus on project management—with duties including WordPress web design and development—all completed under the tutelage of owner, Jay Brandrup.

■ Attended client meetings, and drafted requests for proposal from meeting notes and internal follow-up meetings.
■ Guided client projects through Kinetic’s detailed process gauntlet.
■ Created an augmented reality interactive display for the Kinetic open house.

2009 — 2009
Graphic Designer at Melior, Today's Class
Birmingham, AL

Responsible for hair and cloth computer generated simulations. Created supporting graphics for user interfaces and e-learning modules.

■ Simulation VFX and computer generated modeling, texturing and rendering for cloth and hair graphics.
■ Created a cloud lecture builder for teachers using Adobe Flash merging Actionscript 2.0 and 3.0 SWFs.

2004 — 2006
Student Work Study at Virginia College
Birmingham, AL

Professor’s aid, lab instructor and monitor while attending VC for a degree in game design, before transferring to Full Sail University.

■ Taught classes on material editing and rendering in 3D Studio Max.
■ Environment modeler, texture artist and renderer on a college commercial which increased program enrollment over 25% in one semester.

2000 — 2000
Drive Thru Attendant at McDonald's
Gardendale, AL

Mopped, cleaned bathrooms, grease traps, fry hoppers, took orders and was employee of the month.

Education

2010 — 2010
Winter Park, FL

Earned Course Director's Award.

Volunteering

2021 — 2023
Homewood, AL

Member of the development committee and finance committee.

Awards

2000
Eagle Scout from Boy Scouts of America

Certifications

2019
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt from ICGB

Contact

Twitter
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Figma
GitHub
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