Daniel Ellis

Appearance

Integrity Music ​

Platform foundation for music discovery, streaming, and structured song data ​

I served as technical lead on a pre-launch platform for a major global worship publisher with significant catalog reach. The work focused on building a foundation for discovery, streaming, and structured song data that could support a large, evolving catalog.

Technical Leadership at Scale

Serving millions of users, Integrity Music's catalog accounts for roughly one third of the top 500 praise and worship songs sung in churches worldwide

Overview ​

In collaboration with Hart & Vine, I served as technical lead for a new platform for Integrity Music.

The product needed to support more than streaming. It required a system for music discovery, structured song data, chord transposition, downloadable resources like chord charts and sheet music, and a search experience capable of handling a large catalog.

The challenge was not just feature breadth. The product definition and data model evolved significantly during development, and much of the source data came from an existing legacy system. I was responsible for defining the technical direction and building the foundation that allowed the team to move quickly without sacrificing reliability.

What I Led ​

  • Core architecture across frontend, backend, CMS, and API layers
  • Search and discovery systems for navigating a structured music catalog
  • Streaming and content delivery workflows
  • Chord transposition support built around domain-specific song data
  • Legacy data transformation to normalize existing content into the new platform
  • Engineering patterns and quality standards for a multi-developer team

Key Decisions ​

Designing for an evolving data model ​

The structure of songs, resources, and relationships changed substantially during development.

I chose a stack built for change: full-stack TypeScript, GraphQL, and Strapi. That gave the team fast feedback when the data model evolved and reduced the risk of changes rippling unpredictably across the system.

Solving domain-specific complexity ​

This was not a generic content platform. Supporting transposition and structured song data required custom handling of messy source material and careful modeling of musical information in a way the product could actually use.

I built the foundation for that system while working through the complexity of extracting, transforming, and representing inconsistent legacy data.

Treating performance as part of the product ​

Because the platform centered on discovery and streaming, performance was a product requirement from the start.

I used Next.js to build a fast frontend foundation and worked closely with design to turn polished interfaces into performant implementations that could hold up in production.

Leading the team technically ​

I selected the core stack, set patterns for the codebase, established systems for code quality, mentored other developers, and helped translate design intent into implementation decisions the team could execute consistently.

My Role ​

  • Technical lead in collaboration with Hart & Vine
  • Chose the core stack and architectural direction
  • Built the initial full-stack baseline of the platform
  • Established code patterns, standards, and quality systems
  • Led and mentored multiple developers
  • Worked closely with design to implement complex, high-performance interactions

Result ​

A production-ready platform foundation for a major worship publisher, designed to handle evolving requirements, structured music data, legacy content migration, and high-performance delivery for a globally significant brand.