On a long-term contract

Tech lead at Capital Typing (US) · Not actively looking
UTC+6 — overlaps US and European working hours

Based in Comilla, Bangladesh

Syful Islam
Shakil

Software Engineer & Tech Lead

10+ years building software that ships — for SaaS platforms, European agencies, and US-based startups. Today I lead development across Capital Typing's software products on a long-term contract. Before that I spent six years as the founding frontend engineer on a UK B2B talent intelligence platform serving 22M candidate profiles, from first commit through to acquisition — leading a three-engineer team, running frontend hiring, and holding the architecture through a scale-up to 16 engineers and a downsize to 4. I ship production LLM integrations with real validation, not demos.

22M

Profiles searched at scale

10+

Years shipping product

6 yrs

Async delivery with UK & DE teams

Get in touch →See my work Download CV

Skills & Stack

Frontend

ReactNext.jsTypeScriptJavaScriptVue.jsTailwind

Backend

Node.jsNestJSPHPLaravelREST APIsWebSocketsPostgreSQLMySQL

DevOps & Infra

DockerLinux VPSCI/CDNginxGoogle Cloud (working knowledge)

Leadership

Team LeadershipHiring & Technical InterviewingCode ReviewProduct OwnershipAsync Remote Delivery

AI in Production

Claude APIOpenAI APIClaude CodeLLM Tool UseOutput validation & evalsAI-assisted DevPrompt EngineeringCursor

Work Experience

Senior Software Engineer & Tech Lead

Capital Typing · Contract · Remote (United States)

Oct 2026 – Present

Leading development across Capital Typing's software products on a long-term contract.

A returning client: I first built the company's admin system in 2018–2020. It still runs the business today, and the new platform follows the same business logic.

Point-of-sale system for retail stores: rebuilt the frontend foundation (Next.js, TypeScript), secure sessions and staff permissions, and the shipping, ordering and payment flows, delivered in fixed-scope milestones with test steps and automated end-to-end tests
Cloud service for counter hardware (NestJS, WebSocket, MongoDB, Redis, Docker): connects each counter PC's label printer, receipt printer and scale to the POS, with live device status and secure PC linking. Deployed and run on GCP
Rework of the company's operations platform: code audit, a shared foundation for list and detail screens, and a plan to switch the team over from the previous system
Technical leadership: turning the owner's requirements into specs and milestone plans, coordinating frontend, backend and desktop developers, and code review and security audits on every change

Savannah Group

Contract via a German agency · Remote (United Kingdom) · Nov 2020 – Jul 2026 · 5 yrs 9 mos

Lead Frontend Engineer
Apr 2022 – Jul 2026
Lead frontend engineer on a B2B SaaS platform for talent intelligence and organisational research. Engagement ended when the product was acquired; the acquirer did not retain contractors.
A hands-on product partner — not just an implementer. I planned and decided alongside the product owner, shaping requirements, scope, and how features behaved before any code was written.
- Promoted to lead after 18 months and owned the frontend through to acquisition — architecture, state management, API integration layer, and weekly releases across dev, staging and production.
- Longest tenure on the engineering team at six years; next-longest was 3.5
- Retained as the most senior engineer through a downsize from 16 engineers to 4
- Led a three-engineer frontend team and ran frontend hiring: 15 candidates interviewed, 6 hired and onboarded
- Diagnosed UI freezes under concurrent background jobs and fixed them by tiering event delivery — high-priority completions over Pusher, interval polling for the rest
- Led the frontend for AI-assisted candidate search: an LLM extracts filter criteria from a described profile, surfaced as an editable draft the user validates before running
- Built the data-dense search, filtering and analytics interfaces used concurrently by 30–40 researchers at global automotive and consumer brands
Frontend Engineer
Nov 2020 – Apr 2022
Frontend engineer on MapX, the B2B SaaS platform for talent intelligence and organisational research.
- Founding frontend engineer on MapX: built the frontend from first commit — application architecture, state management and the API integration layer — and set the release process the team used from then on.

Tech Lead

DevArena GmbH · Freelance · Remote (Germany)

Mar 2025 – May 2026

Platform where companies evaluate and grow developer talent through assessments and live competitive challenges. Delivered to MVP; paused while the founder raises funding.

I owned the product direction end-to-end — deciding which features shipped, how they worked, and the workflows behind them, then leading the team to deliver them.

Owned product scope and roadmap — feature decisions, behaviour, and workflows
Led delivery across 5 engineers and 4 product stakeholders — planning, implementation oversight, and quality at every milestone
Coordinated mobile app releases across iOS and Android with store compliance
Shipped REST API features — invitations, assessments, PDF reports, and role-based access
Powered real-time multiplayer coding battles via WebSockets and a matchmaking engine
Built multi-language question generation on the Claude API with a human-in-the-loop review step — 100 validated questions in ~40 minutes at a 5% rejection rate

Selected Projects

MapX — Talent Intelligence Platform

B2B SaaS platform for talent intelligence and organisational research, serving 22M candidate profiles. Built the data-dense search, filtering and analytics interfaces used concurrently by 30–40 researchers at global automotive and consumer brands, and led the frontend for AI-assisted candidate search — an LLM extracts filter criteria from a described profile, surfaced as an editable draft the user validates before running. Owned the full frontend architecture, state management, API integration, and automated deployment pipelines across dev, staging, and production.

ReactTypeScriptNode.jsCI/CD

DevArena — Developer Evaluation Platform

Platform for companies to evaluate and grow developer talent through assessments and live competitive challenges. Led the team end-to-end — shipping REST APIs, real-time multiplayer coding battles via WebSockets, a matchmaking engine, iOS & Android releases, and AI-powered multi-language question generation at scale.

Node.jsWebSocketsREST APIAI Integration

AI Property Management Dashboard

A personalized AI assistant with a public portfolio layer and a private dashboard — built with Next.js, PostgreSQL, and Claude API. Features natural-language querying, property management, and AI-augmented workflows. Actively in development.

Next.jsPostgreSQLClaude APINode.js

Solar + AI Battery Scheduling

Hybrid inverter integration with an API-driven scheduling layer that shifts battery charge and discharge against tariff windows and generation forecasts. Raised household energy self-sufficiency from 62% to 72% across two iterations. Also runs a multi-floor home network (Starlink → Mikrotik → mesh Wi-Fi) with tenant subnet isolation and bandwidth controls.

Next.jsClaude APIIoTLinux

Client Testimonials

5.0Jan – Feb 2023

It has been a pleasure working with Shakil. He is a very experienced developer with excellent communication and people management skills. He is detail-oriented and always meets his deadlines. I can highly recommend working with Shakil.

CollaborativeClear CommunicatorDetail OrientedReliable

5.0Aug 2020 – Dec 2022

When we started working together, I didn't realise it will be such a great experience to work with Shakil. He is a very reliable, hard-working person who has vast experience in full-stack development. Very good at communication and was always available whenever needed. He has solved a lot of complex functionality throughout these 2 years of working together. Hopefully, in future, we will work on more projects together.

ReliableClear CommunicatorSolution OrientedCollaborative

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