About

Maren
Cole

Creative developer with a photographer's eye and an engineer's rigour. 7 years building interfaces people love to use.

Maren Cole — portrait

Portland, Oregon

Available for freelance

I believe in the details — the micro-interaction, the perfect line-height, the 4 ms animation curve.

My path into tech started at an art school, studying visual communication. That foundation shapes everything: when I reach for a typeface or space a layout, it comes from intuition honed by years of studying how humans perceive the visual world.

Since 2018, I've worked across agencies and product companies, building everything from campaign microsites to large-scale design systems. The thread connecting all of it is a conviction that code and craft are not separate disciplines — the best interfaces emerge when they're treated as one.

When I step away from the screen, I carry a film camera through the forests and coastlines of the Pacific Northwest. Photography has taught me to see light, composition, and negative space in ways that quietly influence every interface I make.

I'm currently open to senior and lead frontend roles as well as select freelance projects. If what you're building deserves to be beautiful, let's talk.

Tools & Craft

Frontend

  • React 19
  • TypeScript
  • TanStack Router
  • Vite
  • Next.js

Styling

  • Tailwind CSS
  • CSS Architecture
  • Design Tokens
  • Radix UI
  • Framer Motion

Backend

  • Node.js
  • Netlify Functions
  • REST APIs
  • GraphQL
  • PostgreSQL

Craft

  • Figma
  • Motion Design
  • Typography
  • Accessibility
  • Performance

Experience

2022 – Now

Senior Frontend Engineer

Meridian Studio

Leading design-system architecture and cross-functional front-end for a SaaS platform used by 40k+ teams.

2020 – 2022

Frontend Developer

Coldwater Agency

Built campaign microsites and interactive data visualisations for Fortune 500 clients.

2018 – 2020

UI Engineer

Initech Solutions

Shipped accessible React component libraries and led performance audits across legacy product suite.

2017 – 2018

Design Intern

Foundry Creative

Prototyped and iterated on mobile-first interfaces using Figma and vanilla CSS.