John Lange

About John Lange

With over 20 years of experience in the tech industry, I am a seasoned technologist and a passionate educator. I co-founded and direct Academy Pittsburgh, the first coding boot camp in Pittsburgh, where I focus on helping under-represented groups enter the tech workforce. I created state-licensed curriculum in back-end and front-end development, built partnerships with local foundations and companies, and successfully got more than 80% of graduating students a job in tech within a year of graduation. I also founded Looking for Group, a coworking and gaming space that fosters community building. I am the technology lead, designing and building systems that make functionality accessible for non-technical users. I have contracted with multiple local companies to build up events and event spaces, including a multi-year project for designing and opening The Rezzanine, a secondary location in Pittsburgh. I have extensive experience in managing complex projects, mentoring aspiring developers, and delivering innovative software solutions that drive meaningful change in the tech industry.

Experience

1. Director, Founder

   Academy Pittsburgh

   Nov 2015 — Present · Pittsburgh, PA

   Co-Founder and Director of the first Pittsburgh coding boot camp, focusing on helping under-represented groups enter the tech workforce. Created state-licensed curriculum in back-end and front-end development, built partnerships with local foundations and companies, and successfully got more than 80% of graduating students a job in tech within a year of graduation. Contracted with local companies to give students real world experience and keep base tuition costs lower. Project manager and tech lead, guiding groups to successfully delivering dozens of products that have been used by tens of thousands of users, drastically reduced worker time through automation, and allowed multiple start-ups to gain hundreds of thousands in funding for further development based on MVPs produced by students. Key Projects Taught and mentored more than 200 students, successfully helping them get jobs as developers, working with companies to find appropriate positions and with students to prepare them for interviews. This included instructional design for the classroom, building a strong understanding of a large range of topics from algorithms and data structures to database design to reactive programming design to front end design and development. Designed and built, with student teams, an event scheduling app that has been white labelled for multiple events per year in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. The backend is written in C# MVC and designed for non-technical users to create their own events and customize the app fully for their event. The front end is written in React Native with regular updates. Uses a full CI/CD pipeline to keep app stores and the Azure back end up to date. The app handles events with tens of thousands of users over a single day or weekend, with hundreds of thousands to millions of datapoints being recorded during a single event.