Greg Siekman

Greg Siekman

Automation & Systems Engineer

Using code and digital tools to automate tasks and make work easier.

Open to opportunities in education technology and beyond.

About

I started my development career inhereting a web extension that automated tasks in Canvas LMS. Working on that laid the ground work for how I understand the capacity of software to make work easier. I continue to carry that ethos in my work. Whether I’m setting up auto-deploy practices or implementing documentation-as-code, I try to limit the amount of tedious work involved in the work getting done.

I fundamentally believe technology should be centered on user value— a model that, by-and-large, tech companies have turned away from.

Tools

TypeScriptGitHub ActionsPythonREST APIWeb Extension DevDocumentation

Experiences

2025

Solution Developer · Unity Environmental University

Expanded on an internal browser extension and suite of automation tools used to manage 130+ courses, focusing on eliminating manual friction for educators and staff.

  • Extended TypeScript and React automation pipeline to automate boilerplate content and settings across multiple academic levels
  • Implemented robust CI/CD pipeline, replacing manual publication scripts with automated testing, PR-based preview builds, and GPO-based device updates.
  • Built one-click workflow tools that bridge internal data sources (Canvas, Salesforce, and Trello)
  • Led the rollout of a version-controlled "documentation-as-code" platform to keep documentation with the code
  • Developed data-driven dashboards to surface insights from ticket feedback and course logs, shifting curriculum design toward evidence-based improvements
  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Python
  • Node
  • Zustand

2023

Learning Technology Support Specialist · Unity Environmental University

As inaugural LTSS, set procudes for ticket handling, video production, LTI tool audits, and Canvas maintenance.

  • Acted as the primary technical authority for Canvas LMS, resolving Tier 1 & 2 issues regarding course design, rubrics, and platform settings
  • Defined and implemented protocols for ticket lifecycle management, LTI tool compliance audits, and academic video production
  • Collaborated with learning design teams to translate complex technical requirements into actionable, user-friendly solutions
  • Served as the bridge between end-user frustrations and technical implementation, identifying recurring pain points that informed course development
  • Canvas LMS
  • Salesforce
  • LTI
  • HTML/CSS

2022

Technology Integrator/IT Support Specialist · MSAD #58

Provided hands-on technical support and infrastructure maintenance for a K-12 school district, ensuring reliable hardware and software environments for faculty and students.

  • Executed large-scale summer device rollout and fleet maintenance across four campuses, maintaining operational standards through complex logistical challenges
  • Resolved Tier 1 support tickets, covering end-user identity management, software troubleshooting, and classroom A/V issues
  • Implemented physical network infrastructure upgrades, including the installation and cabling of security cameras and wireless access points across the district
  • Evaluated emerging educational technology tools to ensure alignment with K-12 curriculum and district-wide security standards
  • Ticketing
  • Jamf
  • macOS
  • Clever

Blog

Porting my Personal Website from Astro

2026-07-16

A picture of Greg Siekman's personal website.

A few years ago, I built my website: siekmang.com. I wrote it with vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript because that is what I knew at the time. Since then, I've been battling with layout shift on first load of the site. Recently, when I decided to build out my developer site, I decided to use Astro. I was captivated by the speed at which pages load. After finishing that site(or this site, I guess,) I was intrigued if I could get similar performance on my personal site by switching over to Astro. I thought it was going to be a whole refactoring journey, building out components and layouts, but I was able to drop my existing site into an Astro project, change .html to .astro, move a few things around to the right places in the directory and have a functioning site. Better yet, the performance gains were already clear! The biggest issue I had in the port over had to do with my use of document selectors in some of my JavaScript. The solution was to use script tags for my existing JS files. Another thing that took some reworking was my header generator. What it currently does is pull the slug from the page, if that slug is privacy, sets the header to Privacy Policy, and if it's not, defaults the header to my name. How I was doing that in my old code: var page = window.location.pathname.split("/").pop(); In the Astro build of the site, that kept turning up blank. After a little bit of troubleshooting, I figured out that it was easier to just peel away any back-slashes and just leave the slug using removeAll. That got the header generator working. At that point, I merged the astro code into main, and Cloudflare Pages built and shipped it. As a side note, I really gained an appreciation for Cloudflare Pages in the process. It's integration with GitHub is so effortless and it built every push in a preview environment, which helped increase my confidence that what I was going to eventually ship to main was going to work. Another tip: astro dev is great for visual changes on your site, but I got tricked a few times by things not working in that environment. astro build and astro preview swooped in to save the day on that. I still plan to move toward components and layouts for that site eventually, as well as replacing my bloated css with Tailwind, but having the performance upgrades from the jump with Astro was a really nice quality of life upgrade for my site.

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