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Nadia Rahman

Taking on 1 contract from January

I build the parts of developer tools that people notice.

Product engineer in Lisbon. I ship performance and accessibility work to open source projects with 59.5k combined stars, and help teams do the same for their own products.

Book an intro call

or email hello@example.com

merged pull requests
127
stars on repos I ship to
59.5k
projects I help maintain
2
building for the web
6 yrs

Open source

Merged where it matters

Features and fixes in projects I did not start. Open a project to see the pull requests behind the numbers.

All contributions

Small, well tested pull requests sent to the tools that other engineers depend on every day.

Projects

Things I built and still use

Each one started as a problem I had myself.

All projects

Experience

Where I have worked

Product teams, then independent work, then product teams again.

  1. to now

    Lisbon, remote

    Current

    Senior product engineer, platform at Ferrous Labs

    • Lead the team of four that owns the public API and the developer dashboard, used by 3,800 companies.
    • Cut the dashboard’s largest page from 1.9 MB to 412 KB of JavaScript, which took the 75th percentile load time from 4.6 s to 1.7 s.
    • Started the open source time policy: every engineer spends one Friday a month on the projects we depend on.
    • TypeScript
    • Go
    • PostgreSQL

  2. to

    Berlin

    Software engineer at Parcelwise

    • Built the live tracking map that 210,000 recipients a day open, with updates over server sent events.
    • Moved courier routing from a nightly batch to a queue, so late orders could still be planned the same day.
    • Ran the accessibility audit that took the recipient app to WCAG 2.2 AA across 31 screens.
    • React
    • Node.js
    • Redis

  3. to

    Lisbon

    Frontend developer at Independent

    • Shipped 14 marketing sites and two booking flows for small studios, clinics and restaurants.
    • Wrote a performance budget into every contract: no page over 200 KB before images.
    • JavaScript
    • Accessibility
    • Performance

Writing

Notes from the work

Long form posts about open source, codebases and the tools I build.

All posts

Toolbox

What I reach for

Commits and reviews over the last 52 weeks, and the stack behind them.

1,183contributions in 52 weeks
52 weeks agoThis week
Languages
TypeScriptGoRustSQL
Frontend
ReactAstroTailwind CSSWeb Components
Backend
Node.jsPostgreSQLSQLiteRedisgRPC
Practice
Accessibility auditsPerformance budgetsTechnical writing

Working together

Questions clients ask first

Are you available for contract work?

Yes, for one contract at a time, starting in January. I work four days a week on client projects and keep Fridays for open source. Engagements usually run between six weeks and six months.

What kind of work do you take on?

Frontend performance, accessibility, design systems and developer tools. I’m most useful when a product works but feels slow, breaks for keyboard and screen reader users, or needs an API that other developers will enjoy using.

Do you work across time zones?

I’m in Lisbon (UTC+0, UTC+1 in summer) and overlap at least four hours with teams from San Francisco to Bangalore. Most of the work happens in writing, in pull requests and short documents, so a call is rarely the bottleneck.

How do you price a project?

Weekly, at a fixed rate, with a written scope for each two week block. You can stop at the end of any block. I don’t bill by the hour because it rewards the wrong things.

Can you help my team start contributing to open source?

Yes. I run a two week programme where each engineer lands a first merged pull request in a project your product depends on. It starts with picking the right issues, which is most of the work.

What do you need from me to get started?

A short description of the problem, access to the codebase and one person who can make decisions. I send a written plan within three working days of our first call.

Have a product that feels slow or hard to use?

Tell me what is in the way. I reply to every message within two working days, usually with a few questions and a rough plan.

Book an intro call