West Haven, CT
Nick Johnson
Full-Stack Engineer
I build clean, scalable, and high-performing web applications with deep expertise in Laravel, Vue, React, and Next.js.
About Me
Full-Stack Engineer who builds web applications that developers actually want to use and businesses can depend on. I work primarily with Laravel, Vue, React, and Next.js, handling everything from backend APIs to interactive frontends.
I'm a builder first. I solve problems, adapt quickly, and bring hands-on experience to the work. I'm most energized when working with teams that care about shipping solid code and aren't afraid to challenge the status quo.
Primary Stacks
Laravel + Vue · React + Next.js
Location
West Haven, CT
Skills & Technologies
Frontend
Backend
Database
Testing
Infrastructure & Tools
Auth
AI
Experience
Full-Stack Engineer
Cardinal Financial Co. · Remote
- Migrated the company's WordPress marketing sites to Next.js and their data from MySQL to PostgreSQL, including sebonic.com (live) and cardinalfinancial.com (in progress at my departure).
- Maintained and extended the company's existing WordPress web properties, covering theme and plugin development, MySQL schema and query work, and REST API integrations.
- Contributed backend and frontend development to a multi-year internal platform build in Laravel and Alpine.js, serving as the central hub for employee resources and tooling.
- Built a sales dialer for loan officers with two other developers using Vite, Vue 3, TypeScript, and Pinia, managing state across WebSocket connections and call workflows.
- Built an embeddable chat and lead-capture widget on my own with Vue and Vite's library mode (Rollup), shipped as a JavaScript library and deployed via a script tag.
- Used Claude Code, Codex, and previously Cursor daily in production codebases, reviewing every change before it shipped and owning the result in production.
- Integrated OpenAI and Anthropic APIs into application features, using tool calling, structured JSON output, and vision-based document understanding.
- Wrote automated tests across the stack, using PHPUnit for backend code and Vitest and Playwright for frontend and end-to-end coverage.
- Worked in Docker across local development and production, shipping through a CI/CD pipeline on a regular release cycle.
Contract Full-Stack Developer
Self-Employed · Remote
- Built a job application platform end-to-end using Laravel and Vue 3, designing the database schema, REST API layer, and Composition API frontend from scratch.
- Implemented server-side filtering, pagination, and role-based access control on the backend with a reactive, type-safe frontend in TypeScript.
- Shipped a responsive, production-ready app with optimized queries, lazy-loaded components, and cross-device compatibility.
Lead Web Developer
Total Mortgage Services LLC · On-site
- Rebuilt TotalMortgage.com on Laravel and Vue.js, replacing a legacy stack, restructuring the database, and improving page load times.
- Led a team of 2 developers and a designer, owning architecture, technical decisions, and code review while shipping features on a regular release cycle.
- Administered the Linux application environment behind production web properties, covering Nginx and Apache configuration, PHP services, scheduled jobs, background queues, and application logging, and diagnosed production issues across the stack.
- Co-built Embr, an internal marketing portal using Laravel and React, handling campaign management, asset generation, and distribution workflows.
- Built and integrated authentication, including enterprise single sign-on (SAML, OpenID Connect, LDAP) and OAuth-based third-party providers.
Featured Projects
Embr Marketing Portal
A comprehensive marketing management platform for Total Mortgage, enabling teams to create, manage, and distribute marketing materials at scale.
In DevelopmentAn AI-powered marketplace connecting college students with available courses across institutions, including a prerequisite-aware course sequencer that handles multi-level chains, cross-institution prerequisites, and cycles in catalog data, plus LLM tool calling and structured output for transfer credit evaluation.
Company Intranet Hub
A multi-year internal platform serving as the central hub for employee resources and tooling, built in Laravel and Alpine.js. I contributed backend and frontend development as part of the team.
Embeddable Chat Widget
A chat and lead-capture widget shipped as a standalone JavaScript library using Vite's library mode. Deployed via a single script tag across multiple company websites, with a Vue-powered UI that mounts into any host page without style conflicts.
Just for Fun
Side projects I built for the love of it.
A Mac and Windows app that turns a podcast episode or any audio into social video, with a waveform that reacts to whoever is speaking, local Whisper captions, and one render that exports 9:16, 16:9, 1:1 and 4:5 at once. Runs fully offline, with bundled FFmpeg and a sandboxed Mac App Store build.
Get in touch
I'm open to full-time roles, contract work, and interesting projects. Email is the fastest way to reach me.
Email me