Available for opportunities

Hi, I'm Alex ChenSoftware Engineer

I build thoughtfully crafted digital experiences — from scalable backend systems to polished, accessible frontends. Passionate about clean code, great UX, and tools that make developers' lives better.

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About me

Crafting software with purpose

I'm a full-stack software engineer with 5+ years of experience building products that live at the intersection of engineering excellence and delightful user experience.

My background spans early-stage startups and large-scale enterprise systems, giving me a broad perspective on trade-offs, pragmatic engineering, and shipping fast without accumulating painful technical debt.

When I'm not writing code, I'm contributing to open-source projects, writing about software design, or hiking somewhere with poor cell coverage.

5+
Years exp.
30+
Projects shipped
12+
Open-source contribs

Frontend

  • React
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Framer Motion

Backend

  • Node.js
  • Python
  • Go
  • REST APIs
  • GraphQL

Database

  • PostgreSQL
  • MongoDB
  • Redis
  • Prisma
  • Drizzle

DevOps

  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • AWS
  • CI/CD
  • Terraform
Projects

Things I've built

View all on GitHub
Full Stack

Flux — Real-time Collaboration

A real-time collaborative workspace with live cursors, shared documents, and presence indicators. Built for distributed teams.

Next.jsSocket.ioRedisPostgreSQL
1.2k
SaaS

Beacon — Analytics Platform

Privacy-first web analytics that gives you actionable insights without tracking your users. GDPR compliant out of the box.

ReactGoClickHouseKubernetes
847
Dev Tools

Forge — CLI Scaffolding Tool

An extensible CLI that scaffolds production-ready projects with opinionated defaults and customizable templates.

TypeScriptNode.jsInquirer
2.4k
Experience

Where I've worked

Work History

Senior Software Engineer

Vercel
2022 — Present

Lead engineer on the Edge Runtime team. Architected a distributed caching layer that reduced cold start times by 60%. Mentored junior engineers and drove adoption of TypeScript across 3 teams.

GoRustTypeScriptKubernetes

Software Engineer II

Stripe
2020 — 2022

Built and maintained critical payment processing infrastructure handling $50B+ in annual transactions. Led migration of the billing service to a microservices architecture.

RubyGoMySQLgRPC

Full Stack Engineer

Notion (acquired Coda)
2019 — 2020

Core team member at an early-stage startup. Built the collaborative editor engine from scratch and helped scale the product from 0 to 50k DAU.

ReactNode.jsWebSocketsAWS

Education

B.S. Computer Science

University of California, Berkeley
2015 — 2019

Graduated with honors. Specialization in Systems Programming and Human-Computer Interaction. Teaching assistant for CS61B Data Structures.

AlgorithmsSystemsHCI

Certifications

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect
    2023
  • Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer
    2022
  • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
    2021

What I value

  • Clean, readable code over clever hacks
  • Strong opinions, weakly held
  • Ship fast, iterate faster
  • Documentation as first-class work
  • Async-first communication
Download full résumé
Contact

Let's work together

Whether you have a project in mind, want to chat about engineering, or are looking for a collaborator — my inbox is always open.

Location

San Francisco, CA

Schedule a call

calendly.com/alexchen