Work I've Built

Pengion Pilot is a social media scheduling platform built at The Network. Marketers connect their accounts, and the AI generates and schedules posts across platforms. The pitch: let AI handle the content drafting so the user can focus on what to say, not how to say it six different ways.

The architecture was built around a Turborepo monorepo with a Next.js frontend and dedicated NestJS worker services for background job processing. Redis served as both a queue and cache layer, ensuring scheduled posts fired reliably at the right time. Cron jobs orchestrated publishing windows, and integrations with both Gemini and OpenAI gave users a choice of AI engines for content generation.

Auth is handled by BetterAuth, and the platform is built with whitelabel capability, allowing agencies and resellers to deploy it under their own brand. Infrastructure runs on AWS ECS with Docker containers, provisioned via Terraform and deployed through GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines.

Utogi is the most technically complex and longest-running project of my career. A real estate operating system that followed me from Sri Lanka to New Zealand. It started at Virtual Capital, continued development at Unicorn Hatch, and is now maintained at The Network.

Version 1 established the core: a Node.js + PostgreSQL backend with PostGIS for geographic data, React frontend, AWS Lambda functions, and a GraphQL API. The standout feature was the custom GIS map layer system. Agencies could draw territories, tag sales, visualize door-knocking campaigns, and overlay market data on interactive maps.

Version 2 was a ground-up architectural evolution. We migrated to NestJS with Nx monorepos, introduced Amazon EventBridge Scheduler for time-based workflows (automated follow-ups, campaign triggers), added Redis for caching and queuing, and built an OpenAI-powered assistant for smart suggestions. We also shipped a React Native mobile app, plus plugins for Zapier, WordPress, and Framer so agencies could embed Utogi data anywhere in their ecosystem.

Language schools worldwide had no standardised online presence, and students had no single place to compare courses across countries and providers. Tambook was a marketplace that aggregated language programs globally, with a booking flow and upfront pricing.

The React frontend prioritised search UX, filterable by language, country, duration, and price, with a smooth booking checkout connected to a Node.js API and MongoDB backend. AWS handled file storage, deployments, and scaling. The challenge was normalising wildly different course structures from different schools into a consistent data model.

Easy Tradies connected homeowners with tradespeople. Homeowners searched by specialty and location, read reviews, and requested quotes. Tradespeople got a dashboard to manage leads, log hours against jobs, and build up their review profile.

The time-logging feature was particularly interesting. It let tradies clock in/out of jobs and automatically generate timesheets for clients. Built on AngularJS and Node.js, hosted on AWS, with MongoDB for the flexible document model needed to handle different trade categories and job types.

Health Hunter was an early project in my time at Virtual Capital, a meal delivery service focused on healthy, weekly meal plans. Customers subscribed to a plan, customised their preferences, and received freshly prepared meals each week.

Built with AngularJS on the frontend and Node.js + MongoDB on the backend, with a React Native app for mobile ordering. AWS managed the infrastructure, and the key engineering challenge was handling recurring weekly order cycles: generating orders in bulk, routing deliveries, and managing inventory signals back to the kitchen.

Adlogix was the most ambitious project during my time at CMS. A full ad management platform that let businesses create campaigns, define audience targeting, and monitor performance across channels. The React frontend handled campaign creation and dashboard reporting, PHP powered the API and business logic, and everything ran on AWS.

The React Native mobile app gave account managers a way to monitor campaigns and respond to performance alerts on the go. Building across React, PHP, and React Native in parallel was a significant challenge, but it forced me to think carefully about API design and shared data contracts.

As the team grew, tracking SEO and SEM performance across multiple client projects in spreadsheets became untenable. I built an internal tool that centralised keyword rankings, organic traffic trends, and paid campaign ROI into a single dashboard.

Built in PHP with JavaScript-powered charts, it showed the team which campaigns were working and which weren’t. We ended up using it for both client reporting and internal planning.

Several CMS clients in the financial services space needed interactive calculators to engage visitors and qualify leads. I built a suite of tools: retirement savings calculators that projected balances based on contributions and age, and comparison tools that helped users evaluate products side by side.

These were PHP-backed with JavaScript for real-time interactivity, updating results as users adjusted sliders and inputs. They were embeddable widgets designed to drop into client websites.

My first major engineering challenge: modelling and computing commissions for a multi-level marketing operation. The business logic was layered: base commissions from personal sales, override commissions flowing up through recruited downline tiers, rank-based bonuses triggered by volume milestones, and performance incentives like trips and cash rewards for top performers.

The hardest part was the tree data structure: any distributor could have unlimited direct recruits (frontline), and each of those could recruit further, creating a deep hierarchy. Computing overrides correctly, respecting level limits and rank qualifications, required careful recursive logic. I built the platform in PHP with MySQL, with a JavaScript frontend for the distributor dashboard showing their downline, earnings, and rank progress.

Most of my early career was WordPress. At Lankanonline I delivered 5+ client sites; at eTeamsys that grew to 20+ across different industries.

Each project involved the full workflow: requirements gathering with the client, WordPress theme development (custom themes and customised premium themes), plugin integration, on-page SEO, and post-launch performance monitoring. Managing that volume of projects taught me to work efficiently: reusing patterns, building a library of component solutions, and establishing a repeatable launch checklist.

The SEO side went beyond meta tags. I worked on site architecture, internal linking strategy, content structure, schema markup, and page speed, which became increasingly important as Core Web Vitals emerged as a ranking factor.