Matthew Mercado
Background & Experience
I am first and foremost a proud nerd. I'm a Computer Science graduate summa cum laude from Mount St. Mary's University. I have designed interactive Arduino puzzles and redesigned the website at Escape This Frederick. I founded Escape Director, a web-app for escape room businesses manage their business. I also worked as a Software Engineer Intern at Box, leading a project to implement social media link unfurling, worked with React and Redux to create components, and developed Gherkin scripts with Webdriver.io and Selenium to support BDD. I am a passionate problem solver and tech enthusiast. I love to learn and am always looking for new challenges.
What's Next?
I look forward to bringing my creative spark, burning passion, and technical prowess to a forward-thinking company. Let's connect and code our way to innovation, one line of code at a time.
Projects
Full-Stack Web Application
Overview: Engineered a MERN (MongoDB, Express.js, React, Node.js) tech stack SaaS-based escape room management system built from the ground up that reduces training time and costs and captures valuable statistics to help escape room owners make data-driven decisions. The project was born out of a need observed while working at Escape This Frederick. The solution can be found at escapedirector.com. You can also visit the documentation at the docs subdomain docs.escapedirector.com.
Impact: The application tackles user authentication and authorization with secure routes, secure payment using Stripe API, offers a scalable S3 storage solution, socket.io for real-time communication with players, etc. The application greatly improved the operation of escape rooms, reduced training time and monthly costs, and captured critical performance metrics. It is currently in open beta and being tested by several local escape rooms.
Web Development
Overview: Built this responsive portfolio website to showcase my work, skills, and experiences. The portfolio is available at matthewmercado.dev. The website is built with Next.js, React.js, and Tailwind CSS. The contact form is created using SendGrid and Vercel serverless functions.
Impact: The website demonstrates some of my technical abilities, design sensibilities, and project experiences.
Escape This Frederick Website Redesign
Overview: Redesigned and maintain escapethisfrederick.com, optimizing SEO to become the most popular escape room in Frederick and one of the most popular in Maryland.
Impact: Implemented UX/UI design principles to reduced the bounce rate from 53% to 35% and increased the conversion rate from 2.5% to 5.0%. The site now ranks #1 for 'escape rooms frederick maryland' and ranks on the first page for 'escape room maryland'. The business has seen a steady yearly increase in revenue since the redesign.
Contact Me
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