012024
Ledgerline
A bookkeeping product for freelancers that turns receipts and bank feeds into a clear, auditable ledger — designed and built end to end by me.
2024 — Product — Next.js · TypeScript · PostgreSQL · Prisma
Kathayat Dhiren — Busan, South Korea
Booking projects for Q3I build digital products with the care of a craftsman and the rigour of an engineer.
Independent full-stack engineer & product designer. Currently taking on a small number of projects where design and engineering matter equally.
- Based in
- South Korea
- Experience
- 4 years
- Focus
- Product · Full-stack
01 / Work
Selected work, built end to end.
A few projects that show how I think: the problem, the shape of the solution, and the system underneath. Case studies open in place — no new tabs.
022023
Atlas CMS
A small, file-first headless CMS for structured content. Local Markdown and JSON stay the source of truth; a typed admin layer sits on top for editors.
2023 — Open source — TypeScript · Node.js · React · Zod
032023
Printwork
An online shop for a two-person letterpress studio — edition-based inventory, framed by photography that treats every print like the object it is.
2023 — E-commerce — Next.js · Stripe · Sanity · Vercel
Further work
02 / Services
Ways of working together.
What an engagement actually involves. Open a row for the detail — scope, deliverables, and how the work runs week to week.
04 engagements
The full arc: discovery, interface design, architecture, build, launch. One person accountable for the whole — no handoff gaps where quality quietly dies.
Included- Design and code by the same hands
- Weekly working releases
- Production hardening and observability from day one
03 / About
The person behind the work.
My path into software went through print. I studied visual communication, spent a year setting type and grids for editorial layouts, and discovered that what I actually loved was the moment a layout starts responding to the person using it. I taught myself to program, and the two crafts have been inseparable for me ever since.
Today I work end to end: research and interface design, then the system behind it — data models, APIs, authentication, performance budgets — and finally the unglamorous work of keeping it fast and maintainable in production. I've shipped design systems used by dozens of engineers, rebuilt monoliths into services without downtime, and edited my share of CSS at 2am.
I keep my client list short on purpose. Fewer projects means I can be the person who designs it, builds it, and answers the phone when it matters.
- Approach
- Design and code, owned end to end
- Studio
- Independent since 2022
- Working languages
- English · Hindi · Nepali
“Nine years of building web products. Design-trained, engineering-driven, comfortable owning a product from the first wireframe to the production deploy.”
Toolbox
Languages
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- SQL
- Python
- HTML & CSS
Frontend
- React
- Next.js
- Tailwind CSS
- Framer Motion
- Accessibility (WCAG)
Backend
- Node.js
- API design
- Prisma
- Auth & security
- Testing
Data
- PostgreSQL
- SQLite
- Redis
- Data modelling
Infrastructure
- Docker
- CI/CD
- Vercel
- Observability
Design
- Figma
- Design systems
- Typography
- Prototyping
04 / Experience
Where the experience comes from.
A working record, newest first — where the years went, and what each role left behind.
Apr 2018 —Present
Independent — design & full-stack engineering
Studio Log (own practice) — BerlinOwn practice focused on end-to-end product work for founders and studios. Notable engagements: a fintech ledger product (design through launch), an edition-based e-commerce for a letterpress studio, and a multi-brand design system for Studio Northwind. I keep the practice at three or four concurrent clients.
Sept 2015 —Mar 2018
Senior full-stack engineer
Northwind Studio — BerlinLed the web engineering track across client engagements: architecture for content platforms, an internal design-system effort that grew into the studio's system of record, and hiring the second and third engineers on the team. Client work spanned publishing, retail and one very demanding museum.
Feb 2014 —Aug 2015
Frontend developer
Kiln Digital — HamburgFirst proper engineering role after the design degree. Built marketing and editorial sites, learned production discipline the honest way — on-call for a CMS used by newsrooms.
05 / Writing
Notes on craft, code and the space between.
Occasional essays on how software gets made — process, trade-offs, and the habits that survive contact with real projects.
All essays
07 / Contact
Let's build something considered.
Direct
For questions, collaborations or a second opinion on an existing product — this reaches my inbox directly.
Start a project
For new work: tell me what you're building, roughly when, and what budget range you have in mind. I take on 3–4 projects a year.