# Track record: the work, the stages, the community

> Everything here is dated and defined. Speaking counts only delivered sessions (hosting and attending never inflate them); community numbers belong to everyone who built ZurichJS. Counts as of Oct 2026.

## Speaking (derived from event session records, Oct 2026)

- **60** talks delivered: past, not-cancelled sessions where Faris was speaker, keynote or lightning speaker.
- **14** workshops delivered.
- **5** panels.
- **23** sessions hosted or MC'd (counted apart from talks).
- **19** countries spoken in, **28** cities: where he spoke, ran a workshop or hosted, in person; attending excluded. Countries: Switzerland, United States, Greece, United Kingdom, North Macedonia, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Serbia, Belgium, Romania, Poland, France, Czechia, Austria, Germany, Thailand.
- **7** podcast appearances (Jul 2025 – Jul 2026): podcast episodes in the writing and media list. Shows: JS-Craft, PodRocket, YouTube, Life of Dev, ConTejas, Seniors @ Scale, Spotify.

## Community (ZurichJS)

- **<2** years to JSNation community award (2026). ZurichJS received the 2026 GitNation Open Source Award for Most Impactful Contribution to the Community, less than two years after founding. Definition: Elapsed time from ZurichJS's founding to its 2026 JSNation community award. Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jsnation-the-main-js-conference_congrats-to-all-the-winners-of-the-open-activity-7474846182234771456-BOu0
- **4.5K** Swiss JavaScript Group members Across its sub-groups; not ZurichJS alone (Jul 2026). 4,500 members across groups managed by the Swiss JavaScript Group, the nonprofit behind ZurichJS. Definition: Reported members across the Swiss JavaScript Group's sub-groups in 2026; this is not the membership of ZurichJS alone.

## Engineering: shipped, measured, corrected

### Payments & checkout

- **~14×** new Chinese subscriptions (Smallpdf, Smallpdf — May–Dec 2025). Launched Alipay via Stripe; new Chinese subscriptions grew approximately 14× against the pre-launch baseline. Definition: New Chinese subscriptions after the May 2025 Alipay launch, relative to the pre-launch baseline, measured using first paid invoices.
- **~83%** New Indian Subs on UPI (Smallpdf, Smallpdf — 2026). Delivered UPI Autopay via EBANX and adapted subscription flows to mandate constraints; UPI reached ~83% of new Indian subscriptions and total acquisition exceeded pre-decline levels. Definition: UPI's share of new Indian subscriptions within three months of launch in 2026, measured using first paid invoices.
- **~10** lines of config per supported payment method Previously days of cross-cutting implementation (Smallpdf, Smallpdf - 2025). Designed reactive routing across Stripe, Adyen and Braintree via Recurly, with conditional SDK loading, fallbacks and shared analytics, state and types. Definition: Approximate configuration required to enable a supported payment method through the orchestration layer; not a measured percentage reduction in rollout time.
- **94%** new Chinese subscriptions using Alipay (Smallpdf, Smallpdf — 2025). Alipay became the dominant acquisition method after its May 2025 launch. Definition: Share of new Chinese subscriptions paid through Alipay in calendar year 2025, measured using first paid invoices.
- **1.4–1.6%** US checkout conversion during tax rollout Observed stability; not a causal A/B-test result (Smallpdf, Smallpdf — Mar–Jun 2026). Delivered validated postal codes and failure-tolerant server-calculated price previews; observed weekly US conversion stayed within 1.4–1.6%. Definition: Observed weekly US checkout conversion from March 30 to June 29, 2026, through and after the sales-tax rollout.
- **~86%** Apple Pay Success Rate Australia; checkout success, not gateway authorisation (Smallpdf, Smallpdf — Apr–Aug 2025). On Smallpdf (tens of millions of monthly users), one-tap Apple Pay reached ~86% checkout success in Australia versus ~57–67% on cards. Definition: Observed Apple Pay checkout success in Australia during the 2025 measurement window, compared with ~57–67% for cards.
- **6+** Stripe payment methods shipped (Smallpdf, Smallpdf — 2025–2026). Implemented method-specific flows, setup-intent lifecycle handling and 3DS support. Definition: Stripe methods delivered: Link, PayPal, Alipay, Google Pay, Apple Pay and SEPA.

### Revenue & growth

- **+63%** 30-Day Retention 2.14% → 3.49%; +1.35 percentage points (Smallpdf, Smallpdf — Feb–Mar 2025). Built and iterated cancellation offers; the second A/B test lifted 30-day retention among cancelling users by 63% relative to control. Definition: Relative uplift in 30-day retention among cancelling users in cancellation-offer v2: 2.14% in control versus 3.49% in treatment.

### Performance

- **-60%** Bundle Size (Smallpdf, Smallpdf - 2025). Made payment SDK loading conditional on the selected gateway, cutting the checkout bundle by 60%. Definition: 60% reduction in the Sliding Dialog checkout bundle from a 965.72 KiB baseline, based on PR build-output comparisons.

### Reliability

- **-88%** Release Time GitClear/DORA tracking (Navro, Navro (2023-2024)). Rebuilt release practices and feature-flag management, moving from multi-day release trains to same-day releases. Definition: Reported 88% reduction in time-to-release, tracked through GitClear/DORA work; the original query is no longer recoverable.
- **~20%** frontend error-volume reduction Reported error volume; not a measured incident-rate reduction (Smallpdf, Smallpdf — verified Jul 2026). Improved error tagging, stack traces and escalation alongside the reduction in recorded error volume. Definition: User-confirmed approximate reduction in recorded frontend error volume after consolidating error handling in TrackJS.

### Product & UX

- **6 figures** conference platform transactions (By Jul 2026). Built ticketing, CFP reviews, sponsorship pages and a workshop catalogue with Next.js, Supabase and Stripe. Definition: Cumulative transaction volume processed by the ZurichJS Conf platform by July 2026; not profit or sponsorship revenue. Source: https://conf.zurichjs.com/

### Platform & DX

- **50+** callsites in pricing data-layer migration (Smallpdf, Smallpdf — 2024–2026). Led TanStack Query adoption across 76 files and trained the team through hands-on workshops. Definition: Callsites covered by the migration from fragmented legacy pricing fetching to a resilient, cached and schema-validated query layer.

## Career: a non-traditional route to building things

- Aug 2024 – Present: Staff Frontend Engineer - Monetization, Smallpdf. Contributed to the popular document management SaaS platform
- Aug 2022 – Jul 2024: Founding Engineer, Frontend Tech Lead, Engineering Manager, Navro. Joined as the first member of the engineering team for this payments curation layer startup
- Nov 2021 – Jul 2022: Software Engineer II, Fiit. Joined the #1 rated workout app that brings personal trainers to your home and gym
- Oct 2022 – Present: Software Engineering Mentor, MentorCruise. Provide mentorship to aspiring frontend professionals
- Jul 2020 – Aug 2021: Junior Front-End Developer - Connected TV, FX Digital. FX is a TV, Voice and Web application development agency, providing innovative solutions for brands looking to pioneer the latest technologies.. Clients: Eurosport (Worked on Connected TV applications reaching millions of users worldwide. Helped develop the text-to-speech accessibility integration for set-top boxes and led the integration of In-App-Purchasing for Comcast devices.), GCN (Developed the Global Cycling Network (GCN) Connect Devices TV Application. Implemented text-to-speech accessibility integration for devices such as Amazon Fire TV and Samsung. Worked directly with Figma designs for UI component implementations.), Discovery+ (Worked on the Discovery Plus Connected Devices Application. Contributed to accessibility features and in-app purchasing integrations for the streaming platform.)

The longer story: https://faziz-dev.com/about

## Recognition

- Most Impactful Contribution to the Community, GitNation Open Source Awards · JSNation, 2026 (ZurichJS): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jsnation-the-main-js-conference_congrats-to-all-the-winners-of-the-open-activity-7474846182234771456-BOu0

## What people say

> All the organizers are just lovely and great people, and I'm very fortunate to be able to be here at this conference, I would say.

Dominik Dorfmeister, Sentry · Maintainer of TanStack Query, 11th Sep 2026. All 24 quotes: https://faziz-dev.com/appreciation.md

## Stages (recent, one per series)

- Game of Codes 2026, Oct 2026, Niš: https://faziz-dev.com/events/game-of-codes-2026
- Devs.Ghent, Sep 2026, Merelbeke-Melle: https://faziz-dev.com/events/devs-ghent-sept-2026
- React Alicante 2026, Sep 2026, Alicante: https://faziz-dev.com/events/react-alicante-2026
- WhatTheStack 2026, Sep 2026, Skopje: https://faziz-dev.com/events/whatthestack-2026
- Web Zurich August 2026, Aug 2026, Zurich: https://faziz-dev.com/events/web-zurich-august-2026
- RenderATL 2026, Aug 2026, Atlanta: https://faziz-dev.com/events/renderatl-2026
- ZurichJS Meetup: Surfing the Open Web, Jul 2026, Zurich: https://faziz-dev.com/events/zurichjs-2026-07-23

Full schedule: https://faziz-dev.com/events

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Faris Aziz: software engineer, speaker, ZurichJS co-founder. Geneva, Switzerland.
Site: https://faziz-dev.com · Invite to speak: https://faziz-dev.com/invite · Services: https://faziz-dev.com/services · Mentorship: https://faziz-dev.com/mentorship · Index for agents: https://faziz-dev.com/llms.txt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farisaziz12/ · GitHub: https://github.com/farisaziz12 · Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/farisaziz.com