THE PORTFOLIO OF
@el-JoftSoftware engineerBackend & platform
My work spans Python backends, AWS infrastructure, and observability. This is where I share the projects I’m building, the systems I work on, and what I learn along the way.
01 / SELECTED WORK
Useful products. Considered architecture.
A few things I’ve been building.
A little less guessing. A lot more giving.
A shareable wish list: save the link, photo, size, color, and notes, then send one public page. Guest lists work from a private manage link; an account keeps several lists in one dashboard. Reservations sit on the shared view so two people do not buy the same thing.
Live siteCare starts with privacy.
A chatbot for survivors of gender-based violence. No conversation persistence, no identifiers. The data model is shaped so those features cannot be added later by accident.
Design notesBetter questions. Clearer answers.
Natural-language analytics: English in, validated read-only SQL out, with the rows and the query shown. Statement whitelisting, planner checks, and row caps sit outside the model.
Independent project02 / HOW I WORK
From the first API endpoint
to the system behind it.
APIs and services in Python, TypeScript, and Node.js. I aim for code that reads clearly, fails predictably, and stays easy to operate in production.
AWS infrastructure as code with CDK, CloudFormation, and Kubernetes. CI/CD pipelines and platform tooling that get out of the way of product teams.
Metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and alerts wired in early, so on-call engineers move from symptom to cause without guessing.
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
03 / THE JOURNEY
Building services, supporting teams, and making production a little more predictable.
View full resume04 / FIELD NOTES
AI / Open Source
What AI changes about open-source productivity, review work, security, and sustainability—with research, maintainer accounts, and an exploratory analysis of 623 posts.
AI / Security
LLM firewalls sit between your application and the model, screening prompts and responses for injection, jailbreaks, and leaked data. How they work, the tools worth knowing, and the attacks that still get past them.
Ethics / AI
What building Niva, a chatbot for survivors of gender-based violence, taught me about privacy, restraint, and making ethical commitments part of the system design.
ALWAYS A STUDENT