Full-stack engineer · Hong Kong · Open to relocation

Five years shipping web and mobile products at Sugar.fit, Unacademy and Avalon Meta, used by 100K+ people. I moved to Hong Kong for an MSc IT at HKUST, one of the world's most mobile-first cities, and lead app development at USThing, HKUST's student app. I work in React, Next.js and React Native, with Spring Boot behind them, and I sweat the details: fast launches, smooth gestures, apps that don't crash.

See projects Download resume

Projects.

What I built, what it achieved, and the decisions behind it.

GradPath explore screen with course search GradPath course map with prerequisites GradPath shortest path to a course
Personal project · iOS & Android

UST GradPath

HKUST's free-text prerequisites for 4,030 courses, turned into a map students can explore and plan with, fully offline.

React Native 0.83ExpoTypeScriptReanimated 4MMKVMaestro
4,030courses in one graph
574 KBstartup index from a 28 MB dataset
69 + 7Jest tests + E2E flows in CI

Key decisions

  • Heavy work at build time: parse, dedupe and index once on a laptop, then lazy-load department chunks. The phone never parses 28 MB.
  • One gesture layer: the map is a single transformed view driven by Reanimated, hit-tested for taps, so pan, pinch and tap never fight.
  • "Leads to" is one level deep: transitively it explodes (one course reaches 295 in three steps), so the map grows a column per tap.
View code Android APK
Today NEXT LESSON · 10:30COMP 3511 · LTA ↗CGA Rm 4Library Hall booking · 8 pm Book a room 10K+installs Dailythousands of students
USThing · Lead App Developer

USThing

HKUST's all-in-one campus app since 2015, relied on daily by thousands of students.

React NativeExpoTypeScriptiOSAndroid
10K+installs
Dailyuse by thousands of students
2015running since

What I work on

  • Timetable and next-lesson alerts, grade and CGA tracking, library and hall room booking on HKUST systems.
usthing.xyz ↗
# live-room ● LIVE · 3 speaking 60+communities Join
Avalon Meta · Software Engineer

Scenes

A white-label community platform (think "your own Discord") on web, iOS and Android. Acquired by Graphy in 2023.

ReactNext.jsWebSocketsReact Native
60+communities, $1M+ ARR
+67%daily active users from push
85%install-to-sign-up

Key decisions

  • Real-time over WebSockets: live audio and video rooms, group chat, forums.
  • White-labeled from one codebase, so each community got its own branded web app.
Glucose● NFC sensor In range Log a meal −52%launch time 99.9%+crash-free
Sugar.fit · Senior Software Engineer

Sugar.fit app

Owned the modernization of an 8-year-old healthcare app for 100K+ premium users.

React NativeHermesNative modulesNFC
−52%launch time
99.9%+crash-free sessions
−30 / 33%Android / iOS binary size

Key decisions

  • Hermes + lazy loading for the launch-time cut; R8 shrinking for the Android binary.
  • Native NFC modules (Android and iOS) to read continuous glucose sensors in real time.
Plan my week? Message… SSE streamtoken by token
Personal project

AI Fiesta

An AI chat app that streams model responses in real time, word by word.

React NativeOpenAI APISSE

Key decisions

  • Custom Server-Sent Events instead of waiting for the full reply, so text appears as the model writes it.
DuraLedger Grafana dashboard showing zero invariant violations and request rates
Personal project · Backend depth

DuraLedger

The backend behind the frontends: a live wallet ledger that never loses or duplicates money.

Java 21Spring BootPostgreSQLCloud RunKubernetes
406/son one hot account, p99 91 ms
20 → 1concurrent retries, posted once
≈$0idle cost, scale to zero

Key decisions

  • Idempotency key claimed inside the transaction, so retries replay instead of paying twice.
  • Rules enforced by PostgreSQL itself: zero-sum per currency at commit, no negative balances.
View code

Experience.

Five years shipping products, from community platforms to healthcare.

USThing (HKUST)

Lead App Developer

Shipping iOS and Android features on HKUST's all-in-one campus app, relied on daily by thousands of students.

Sugar.fit

Senior Software Engineer

Modernized a healthcare app for 100K+ users: launch −52%, 99.9%+ crash-free, native NFC glucose sensors.

Unacademy

Senior Software Engineer

CI/CD that cut releases from days to ~2 hours for apps serving 50M+ learners.

Avalon Meta (Graphy)

Software Engineer

Built Scenes' React and Next.js web app; 60+ communities, $1M+ ARR, +67% DAU from push.

Skills.

Front to back, the tools I ship with.

Frontend

React · Next.js · TypeScript · Redux

Mobile

React Native · Expo · Reanimated · Native modules

Backend

Spring Boot · Node.js · REST · WebSockets · PostgreSQL

Quality & delivery

Jest · Maestro · GitHub Actions · Bitrise · Fastlane

Let's build something.

Graduating from HKUST in 2027 and available now: daytime hours during term (my classes are in the evenings) and full-time over the winter break.

bprana@connect.ust.hk LinkedIn GitHub