I'm a software engineer with a decade of experience building applications for the web. My work spans frontend engineering, backend engineering, cloud infrastructure, and AI engineering. I currently consult for a Fortune 100 media company, where I'm helping build an advertising platform responsible for managing more than a billion dollars in annual ad revenue. My work focuses on building complex, data-intensive applications and making them fast, scalable, and intuitive.
Prior to getting into software, I went to law school and spent three years as a litigation and trial attorney. I remain a licensed attorney, and I'm especially interested in the intersection of law and technology and in how software and AI can be used to solve problems in the legal industry. I regularly contribute to open source legal technology and legal AI projects, and I'm one of the top contributors to Stella, an open-source legal workspace.
Outside of work, I build software, experiment with new technologies, and write about software engineering and AI. I'm particularly interested in understanding how the technologies I use actually work — from web browsers and distributed systems to large language models — and explaining those ideas in approachable terms. You can find links to my writing below.
| Project | What it is | Stack |
|---|---|---|
| Stella | Open-source legal workspace: matters, documents, tabular review, research, and an AI agent with source-traced answers. I'm one of the project's top contributors. | TypeScript · TanStack Start · Bun · PostgreSQL · Redis |
| Zaera | Multi-tenant SaaS for scheduling and payments for service businesses: branded booking, team scheduling with double-booking prevention, Stripe payments. | React · NestJS · PostgreSQL · Stripe · AWS |
| Odyssey | AI travel planner that turns a prompt into a day-by-day itinerary, with streaming responses and usage-aware tiered plans. Live at findmyodyssey.com. | React · TanStack Query · AWS Lambda · DynamoDB |
| Vault | Private photo and video cloud with direct-to-S3 uploads and a capture-date timeline built for tens of thousands of items. | React · Cognito · API Gateway · Lambda · DynamoDB · S3 |
| research-reader | CLI + Claude Code skill that compiles docs, repos, papers, and blogs into concept-organized research EPUBs. | Python · Claude Code |
| Homak Design & Development | Studio site built with zero client framework (~14 KB gzipped). | Astro · TypeScript |
More on my portfolio: shanehobson.me
- A Software Engineer's Guide to Large Language Models
- How React Renders Components: A Deep Dive into Fiber
- How Angular Renders Components: A Deep Dive Into Ivy
- Book: How To Become a Self-Taught Software Developer: the roadmap I followed from law to software
Also on Medium.
- Languages & frontend: TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Angular, Next.js, Astro, Redux, Tailwind CSS, SCSS
- Backend & data: Node.js, NestJS, Express, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB
- Cloud: AWS (Lambda, CDK, API Gateway, S3, CloudFront, Cognito)
- Testing: Jest, Playwright
Certifications: AWS Certified Solutions Architect · AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner