Skip to content
Pooya NikbakhtSenior Software Engineer

For startups and teams

A senior full-stack engineer for your team

I've spent 10+ years building web products, most recently search, recommendations, microservices and AI features at ApplyBoard, a marketplace used by hundreds of thousands of students. I can join your team for a feature, a project or a few hours a week, and take work from idea to production.
Talk about your projectSee the full stack I cover

What I take on

Where I help most

  • Own a feature end to end

    From the database schema and API contract to a polished, accessible UI, with tests and a clear PR.

  • APIs, data and architecture

    REST and GraphQL APIs, data models, microservices, queues and background jobs, sized to your traffic and your team.

  • AI that holds up in production

    Tool calling, structured outputs validated against a schema, retrieval with citations, and eval suites so a prompt or model change can't quietly make things worse.

  • Performance and rescue work

    Slow pages, heavy bundles, slow queries, flaky jobs. I measure first, fix what matters, and show the before and after.

Projects

Engineering work you can look at

Public code you can read and run, plus a summary of production work I can describe but not show.

A high-traffic marketplace search and catalog app at ApplyBoard

Full-stack work on the core search of a marketplace used by millions of students: a React and TypeScript catalog with 150k+ listings and 50+ filters, saved searches and compare, a NestJS API layer over OpenSearch, and natural-language filters.

  • React
  • TypeScript
  • NestJS
  • OpenSearch
shop-search: a search box with a plain-English query, the filters it produced shown as removable chips, and a grid of hiking boots.

shop-search: turning plain-English requests into filters

Type "waterproof women's hiking boots under $150, size 8" and the AI turns it into filter chips you can see, edit and remove. Every answer is checked against a schema, and an eval suite measures accuracy before any prompt or model change ships.

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Zod
  • Claude API
Website support bot: a coffee shop website with the chat open, answering a shipping question and showing the quoted passage from page 2 of the help center.

Website support bot and booking receptionist

A chat widget that answers website visitors from a business's own help documents with the source, and books appointments from real open times in the business's booking system. One script tag installs it on any site.

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Python
  • FastAPI
Paperwork AI review screen: a scanned invoice with the misread line highlighted, next to two failed checks and the editable fields.

Paperwork AI: invoices and receipts into checked spreadsheets

Drop in a pile of invoices, receipts and forms, including scans and phone photos, and get back checked rows you can export to Excel or CSV. Every value shows where on the page it came from, and the math is checked before you approve it.

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript

Working together

How I work with teams

  • Work in your repo, your tools and your process: GitHub or GitLab, Jira or Linear, your CI.
  • Small PRs with tests and a short description, ready for your review.
  • Written async updates at the end of each working session, so you always know where things stand.
  • Hourly or fixed-price milestones, agreed in writing before work starts.

Need an extra senior engineer?

Tell me about your stack and what you need shipped. I'll reply with questions and a rough plan.

Start a projectEmail contact@pooya.website