Full-stack engineer heading into fintech infrastructure.
I ship whole products: polished React and Next.js frontends, Node.js backends, mobile apps. Now going deeper into payments, ledgers, Go, Rust and distributed systems.
4x international hackathon winner ($45K+ in prizes, 3 of 4 won solo and pre-AI agents) · Ex founding engineer @ Good Bards (Singapore) · Certified Cassandra developer
Open to software engineer (founding or product or core) roles in fintech, payments or Web3. Remote, or happy to relocate. Say hi at surajvijay67@gmail.com.
🧭 Just shipped: Ariadne, a 3D, source-backed atlas of how payments really move across six markets.
📑 Jump to: Building · Projects · Achievements · Experience · Certifications · Stack · Education
- A distributed key-value store, from scratch. The best way I know to learn how databases really work.
- Learning Go and Rust. Picking up systems depth one small build at a time.
| Project | What it is | Built with |
|---|---|---|
| Ariadne 🆕 | Spin a globe, step into a 3D city per market and follow one payment from app to settlement. 736 systems, 442 rules, 24 traces, 1,306 sourced claims across India, UK, US, EU, Singapore and China | React, TypeScript, Three.js, React Three Fiber, React Flow, Vite |
| Payzer | Cross-border payments. Postgres triggers for transactional integrity, Redis rate limiting, event-driven SMS via LISTEN/NOTIFY | React Native, Express, PostgreSQL, Redis |
| Subdot 🥇🥈 | A Twitter-style social platform on Polkadot. Won Seoul, placed 2nd in Paris | Polkadot, React, TypeScript |
| Zeyphr 🏅 | Payments project at IOTA Moveathon. I led a 4-person team across smart contracts, backend and POS hardware | IOTA, Move |
| Astra DB Navigator 🏆 | No-code admin console for AstraDB. A serverless backend keeps credentials out of the browser | React, TypeScript, Netlify Functions, Cassandra |
| Pirate Land | Battleship, but pirates. Solo-built and live on Google Play | React Native, Expo, Zustand, Reanimated |
| Aneta | Workforce management. JWT with server-side session kill, Socket.io chat, a 7-table Cassandra schema | React, Node.js, Express, Cassandra |
$45K+ in prize money across 4 international hackathons.
| Event | Where | Result | Prize | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | Polkadot APAC Edition | Seoul · 2023 | 1st place, Interfaces & Experiences. 1 of 15 finalists from 1,000+ | $18,000 |
| 🥈 | Polkadot Europe Edition | Paris · 2023 | 2nd of 2,400+, plus a sponsor award for SDK integration | $11,000 |
| 🏆 | DataStax AstraDB Build-a-thon | Online · 2022 | Grand Winner. 1 of 4 finalists from 2,300+ across 60+ countries | $9,500 |
| 🏅 | IOTA Moveathon APAC | Singapore · 2025 | Community Best Project + 3rd place, Payments & Consumer Apps | $7,000 |
- ⭐ Star Achiever Award, SVCE (2024). The principal's award, one of only two given this decade
- 🧮 Winner, Kanitham 2021 national math-modelling symposium
- 🔧 Merged a fix into a DataStax repo (2022)
- 📰 Featured in Anna Nagar Times and Mogappair Times
Singapore (remote) · Sep 2024 to May 2026
Rewrote the whole platform. Wrote 82% of the commits.
- Pitched and led a full rewrite after month one: 15 product modules, one multi-tenant Next.js app, 180K lines, 90+ pages
- Built the entire app security layer: cookie auth, server-side route protection, CSP, XSS sanitisation
- Solo-built a white-label edition for an enterprise client. It now serves 50+ of their own clients
- Turned one client's chatbot request into a product used across 4 to 5 brands
- Helped get us into Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First (1 of 32) and demoed at GITEX Asia 2025
- Mentored our second engineering hire through PR reviews
Next.js React TypeScript Tailwind Redux SWR shadcn/ui
Chennai · Jun 2024 to Oct 2024
A ride-sharing app where drivers keep 100% of the fare.
- Designed the zero-commission model, the pricing engine and the fare logic
- Built it solo, end to end: rider app, driver matching, Stripe payments, Node.js backend on AstraDB
- Validated with 50+ riders and 10+ drivers, then applied to Y Combinator with a working demo
React Native TypeScript Node.js Express Stripe Cassandra
Nov 2021 to Dec 2021
4 services. 1 month. 1 developer.
- Shipped Meet Up solo: a React Native app backed by 3 Node.js services for REST, real-time chat and image uploads
React Native Node.js Socket.io MongoDB
Chennai · Feb 2026 to present
Volunteer to board seat in 3 months.
- Ran Kids-2-Kids: collected clothes from daycare families and gave them to orphaned children
- Building the NGO's new website
Professional
- Apache Cassandra 3 Developer Associate · DataStax
- GitHub Actions (GH-200) · Microsoft
- Redis for Startups (with JavaScript) · Redis
- Hashgraph Developer · Hedera & Hashgraph
HackerRank
- Node.js · REST API · Problem Solving · JavaScript · React · SQL · Python
freeCodeCamp
- APIs and Microservices · Quality Assurance · JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures · Front End Libraries · Scientific Computing with Python · Responsive Web Design · Legacy Front End
Coursera
- Problem Solving Using Computational Thinking · University of Michigan
Languages
Frontend & mobile
Backend
Databases
Cloud, DevOps & tools
- B.Tech, Artificial Intelligence & Data Science · Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering, Chennai · 2024 · CGPA 8.7
- Higher Secondary (PCM + Computer Science) · SBOA School & Junior College, Chennai · 2020