Center for Internet Security
React Front End Engineer
•Merkle - Customer Experience and Commerce
Summary
The Center for Internet Security (CIS) partnered with Merkle to completely rebuild and redesign their member portal and develop new platform features. This private, member-only application serves CIS's cybersecurity community with essential tools and resources, powered by Sitecore as the content management system. The project presented a unique opportunity: build out the new portal based on existing functionality in year one, followed by a comprehensive redesign in year two. The redesign allowed us to refactor the codebase, eliminate technical debt, and introduce TypeScript for improved type safety and developer experience.
As an equal contributor on the development team, I built fully-featured components, prioritizing reusability and Sitecore integration, and took ownership of various features. I advocated for adopting TypeScript during the redesign, recognizing its value for long-term maintainability. This project marked my first professional experience with React and provided valuable hands-on practice with TypeScript. The opportunity to revisit and refine our work proved surprisingly rewarding—much like methodically organizing a cluttered space, we emerged with a cleaner, more maintainable codebase that better served both the development team and CIS members.
Key Features
- React & TypeScript architecture - Built a modern, type-safe application with improved code quality and developer experience
- Headless Sitecore integration - Integrated React components with Sitecore's headless CMS architecture, decoupling content management from presentation for greater flexibility
- Technical debt reduction - Leveraged the redesign phase to implement TypeScript, refactor components, and establish best practices
- Feature development and expansion - Extended portal functionality with net-new capabilities tailored to member needs
Toolset
