Independent Engineer · Taking On New Projects

Hi, I’m Yohanes.
I bring the engineering experience. We solve the problem together.

I’ve spent over a decade inside large engineering teams — insurance systems, commerce platforms, and high-traffic media properties. I now work directly with teams that need clear technical judgment, steady delivery, and someone who can stay close to both the code and the product.

Staff Software Engineer · 10+ years · Lightspeed Commerce · HuffPost · IRVINS

Rapid PrototypePrototype → ProductionLegacy Modernization
10+
Years Engineering
5
Countries Supported
$M+
Large Orders Supported
1
Engineer You Work With

A decade inside larger
engineering teams. Now closer to yours.

Any stageNapkin sketch, funded MVP, or a ten-year-old platform.
Any sizeA one-week spike or a longer engagement with your team.
Any teamSolo founders, in-house teams, or no engineers at all yet.

My career has been spent in the kind of engineering organizations where mistakes are expensive: insurance systems processing claims at national scale, a B2B commerce platform serving Macy’s, Nordstrom and Saks, and news properties running across international editions on web, mobile and AMP.

Those environments teach habits that are hard to pick up anywhere else — how to design a system that survives real traffic, how to ship changes without breaking what already works, and how to make sense of a large codebase you didn’t write.

They also move slowly, and not every team needs a twelve-person consultancy. So I work independently. You get the engineering habits from those places, applied to the size of problem actually in front of you — from the person writing the code.

No account managers. No junior engineers learning on your budget. You talk to me, and we work through it clearly.

Three Ways I Work
With Your Team

I work alongside your team, keep the path clear, and stay close to the code. The goal is useful progress, not process for its own sake.

01

Rapid Prototype

Idea → Working Demo in Weeks

You have a rough idea, a concept, or a question you want to test. I help you build a working prototype quickly — not just screens, but enough real behavior for people to respond to honestly.

Ideal for: Founders validating ideas · Pre-seed / Seed startups · Product teams testing new features

  • Functional web or mobile prototype
  • Core user flows implemented end-to-end
  • Basic backend and API integration
  • Deployable to a staging environment
  • Feedback-ready in 2–6 weeks
02

Prototype → Production

Prepare a Validated Product for Real Use

You’ve validated the idea and now need it to hold up for real users. I take prototypes and MVPs — whether I built them or someone else did — and make them stable, maintainable, and easier for your team to own.

Ideal for: Post-validation startups · Series A teams · Products with growing user bases

  • Architecture review and redesign
  • Performance and reliability work
  • Security and operational basics
  • CI/CD pipeline setup
  • Test coverage (unit, integration, E2E)
  • Documentation and handoff
03

Legacy Modernization

Modernize Without Disrupting the Business

Your platform has grown beyond its original design. Performance is slipping, the codebase is hard to maintain, and adding new features takes too long. I help you improve it in measured steps, without a risky rewrite.

Ideal for: Established companies · E-commerce platforms · Platforms with technical debt

  • Legacy codebase audit and roadmap
  • Incremental refactoring strategy
  • Careful service boundaries where needed
  • Frontend modernization (React, Next.js)
  • Database migration and optimization
  • Zero-downtime migration planning

Engineering experience. Shared problem-solving.

I bring the engineering experience, but we solve the problem together. I care about the code, the product, and whether the work is actually useful to your team.

You work with me directly

No account managers, no junior proxies. The code and technical decisions come from the person you speak with.

Small or large, same care

A two-week prototype and a larger platform need different amounts of work, but both deserve clear thinking and careful execution.

I keep the business problem in view

I’ve worked on platforms supporting large orders, regional operations, and growing teams. The code should serve the work, not become the work.

Close to your workflow

I can work inside your Slack, GitHub, Jira, standups, or planning rhythm. The closer I am to the context, the better the technical decisions become.

Big-company habits, small-team pace

My background spans Lightspeed Commerce, HuffPost and IRVINS. I bring the useful habits from those environments without importing all the ceremony.

You keep the knowledge

The work ends with understandable code, useful documentation, and a team that knows what was built. No black boxes, no forced dependency on me.

A simple way to
work together

Clear scope, steady communication, and working software you can inspect along the way.

01

Discovery Call

We spend 30–60 minutes on your product, goals, constraints, and timeline. No presentation — just listening and asking the right questions.

02

Scoping & Proposal

I put together a clear scope of work, timeline, and pricing. Specific deliverables, milestones, and what finished should mean, all in plain language.

03

Working Alongside You

I join your workflow — Slack, GitHub, Jira, or whatever you use. Weekly syncs, async updates, and enough visibility that nobody has to guess.

04

Delivery & Handoff

Clean code, documentation, and a knowledge transfer session. Your team owns everything and understands the important parts.

Where I’ve worked,
and what I helped with

A product I shipped myself, plus a decade inside other engineering teams. Each one reflects a real system, a real constraint, and a practical problem to solve.

Lightspeed Commerce

Lead Engineer

Prototype → Production
  • Led a team building and maintaining a large B2B merchandising platform
  • Supported large orders and helped grow internal engineering capability
  • Served major US retail brands including Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue
  • Decoupled a monolithic frontend into independently deployable micro-frontends

IRVINS

Lead Engineer

Rapid Prototype → Growth
  • Launched unified customer login and SSO across 5 countries
  • Led payment gateway and shipping provider integrations for seamless online fulfillment
  • Adopted CI/CD pipelines, increasing release velocity and stability
  • Integrated POS, SAP and WMS for 360° customer and inventory visibility
  • Enabled analytics across regions with different tech stacks and compliance requirements

HuffPost

Software Engineer

Legacy Modernization
  • Worked on feature development and tracking for international editions
  • Owned cross-platform analytics across web, mobile, AMP and FBIA
  • Resolved region-specific bugs and ensured reliable analytics integrations
  • Maintained performance and reliability across high-traffic properties

EyeEat is my own product. The remaining companies refer to my prior employment history — they are not clients of my independent practice, and their inclusion does not imply endorsement.

Tools I Work With

I choose tools for the project, the team, and the maintenance path, not just for what is popular at the moment.

Frontend

ReactNext.jsTypeScriptReduxTailwind CSSSCSS

Backend

Node.jsPHPGraphQLElasticSearchREST APIs

Database

PostgreSQLMySQLMongoDBFirebase

Cloud & DevOps

AWSGoogle CloudDockerCI/CDVercel

Testing

JestCypressPlaywright

Integrations

SAPWMSPOS SystemsPayment GatewaysShipping APIs

Have Something
You Need Built?

Whether you have a prototype to validate, a product to prepare for real users, or an older platform that needs care, start with a free 30-minute conversation.

First conversation

Send me a note about what you’re building and we’ll find a time. Tell me the problem, the timeline, and where you’re stuck — that’s enough to start.

Remote-first · Working across time zones · Available for short engagements and longer team support