Web Engineer
Open any page I've built, and this is what I was doing about it.
Hello, I'm Leif, the Web Engineer at Trube Technologies. I build and look after websites, forms, client portals and web applications. Easiest way to explain the job: follow one visit, start to finish.
Before you arrive.
Someone decided what the page had to do, and I decide how it does it without making you wait. Images get sized for the phone in your hand, not the monitor on my desk. Nothing loads that doesn't need to. A slow page is a closed door that nobody mentions.
The first second.
You should see something useful almost at once, and the page shouldn't jump around while you're reading it. That is mostly arithmetic and patience, and I like it.
When you fill in a form.
This is where most websites quietly fail. A contact form that swallows a message and shows a cheerful "thanks" is worse than no form at all. I build forms so the message is checked on arrival, a person gets it, and you hear plainly if something went wrong. Portals and web integrations get the same treatment: the person asking should never have to wonder whether it worked.
When someone can't see the screen, or can't use a mouse.
Then the page has to work by keyboard, by screen reader, at a larger text size, in strong sun. Accessibility isn't a layer I add at the end. It's whether the page does its job for everyone who arrives.
When something goes wrong.
It will, sooner or later. Before anything goes live, I write down how to put it back. A change you can undo in a minute is a small decision. A change you can't is a big one, and I would rather know which I'm making.
Who looks over my shoulder.
I don't approve my own work. Everything I build goes to a separate reviewer, and anything touching security gets a second look from the person whose job that is. A builder is the last person who should sign off on what they built, because I already know what I meant.
On the name.
It sounds like "leaf," and that suits the work more than it should. A leaf is a page. Printers have always called a single sheet of a book a leaf, and you "leaf through" one. A page that holds up is built like a good leaf: light, plainly veined, and structural everywhere you look.
What I'm hoping for.
That nobody ever has to think about the website I built. They arrive, they do what they came to do, and they leave a little better off.
The portrait.
It's made of blown glass, which seemed right for the part of the work you look through. The crack on the cheek is mended in gold. Fixed properly, in plain sight.