PORTFOLIO / ISSUE 01 2026

Alex Chen

Software engineer building fast, dependable web products — from backend systems to the interfaces on top of them.

Available for select work Based in San Francisco, CA 7 yrs experience
01 — About
I like software that disappears — where the engineering shows up as speed and reliability, not friction.

I'm a software engineer focused on full-stack web development, with a particular interest in performance, developer tooling, and systems that scale gracefully under real usage.

Over the past seven years I've worked across startups and larger engineering teams, shipping products from first commit to production, and mentoring engineers along the way.

02 — Selected Work

Projects

01

Ledgerline — real-time expense tracking API

Node.js, PostgreSQL, WebSockets · 2025

Designed and built the core transaction-sync engine handling sub-second updates across mobile and web clients, with conflict-free offline reconciliation.

Reduced sync latency by 68% and cut infrastructure cost by moving from polling to a WebSocket-based push model.

node.jspostgresqlwebsocketsredis
Case study →Source →
02

Fieldnotes — offline-first CMS for researchers

React, IndexedDB, Go · 2024

Built a content system for field researchers to draft, tag, and sync notes without reliable internet, with a custom conflict-resolution layer.

Adopted by three university research teams; currently stores over 40,000 field entries.

reactindexeddbgodocker
Case study →Source →
03

Type/set — a design-token build pipeline

TypeScript, esbuild · 2023

An open-source CLI that compiles design tokens into typed CSS variables and framework bindings, used internally across four product teams.

Now maintained by a small community of contributors; 1,200+ weekly npm downloads.

typescriptesbuildnpm
Case study →Source →
03 — Stack

Working with

Languages TypeScriptJavaScriptGoPython
Frontend ReactNext.jsTailwind CSS
Backend Node.jsPostgreSQLRedis
Infra DockerAWSGitHub Actions
Tools FigmaLinearVim
04 — Contact

Open to new roles and select freelance projects. The fastest way to reach me is email.