About Me

Hi, I’m Chris Spurlock.

I’m a developer with a journalist’s brain, a designer’s eye, and a builder’s heart. Over the last decade, I’ve moved fluidly between storytelling, strategy, and software. But my deepest value often shows up between code and conversation, turning ambiguity into action and connecting dots across product, design, and engineering.

I spent my early career in journalism, where a lecture on interactive storytelling lit a fire that never really burned out. There was no formal training track, so I built one: learning D3, jQuery, and CSS on nights and weekends to bring stories to life in the browser. Since then, I’ve applied that same energy to every challenge, whether leading a digital transformation at a major newspaper, coding custom themes from scratch, or picking up a new JS framework on the fly because the project needed it yesterday.

These days, I’m the COO and UI lead at The Kestrel Co., a boutique dev agency where I help shape both the work and the workflows—bridging design and engineering to move teams from messy problems to launch-ready solutions. Design audits, accessibility reviews, CSS bug hunts, pricing strategy, proposals, GTM tracking setups? I’ve done them all.

Whether I’m sketching ideas in Figma, writing custom components, or refactoring and debugging alongside Cursor, I aim to bring structure, clarity, and calm to complex problems. I care just as much about how teams work together as I do about the interfaces we ship. My favorite roles are the ones that sit at the intersection of product, engineering, and empathy—where enhancing lives isn’t just a tagline, but a daily measure of success.

Lately, AI has become a key part of how I do that. I see it as a teammate, not a threat: a pair programmer, a rubber duck, and a research assistant rolled into one. I use it to debug, prototype, explore unfamiliar frameworks, and challenge my own assumptions. Paired with a decade of hands-on experience and an instinct for clarity, i’’s made me more deliberate, more confident, and more curious in my work.

I’m especially at home in hybrid roles—part designer, part developer, part systems thinker—where the work lives in the seams between disciplines.

I’m also constantly sharpening my skills. I read blogs by folks like Una Kravets, Adam Argyle, and Chris Coyier; watch developers like Kevin Powell, Kyle Cook, and Scott Tolinski and Wes Bos; and follow designers and developers like Jordan Hughes, Steve Schoger, Adam Wathan, and Thorsten Ball on Twitter/X. I’ve worked through foundational books like Refactoring UI, and I’m currently taking both Joy of React and Vue Mastery—two courses that are deepening my framework fluency and reigniting my creative spark.

Both teammates and hiring managers have consistently noted that I bring “off-the-charts” verbal and logical reasoning to every project, paired with a communication style that makes complex concepts click. Whether I’m reviewing a Figma flow, prototyping a component, or coaching a junior dev through a tough bug, I focus on reducing friction and helping teams move forward with clarity and confidence.

Here’s what others have to say about working with me:

Outside of work, I’m a dad to two tornado toddlers, a husband of nearly 11 years, and a distance runner who’s rediscovered the meditative joy of the long run. I believe in making work that matters and showing up every day with a bias toward generosity, craft, and clarity.

If you’re looking for someone who can code, design, write, lead, and connect dots others don’t see, I’d love to meet.

I thrive where systems meet storytelling, especially in roles like UX Engineer, Design Technologist, or UI Architect.