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 solving complex, business-critical problems with intuitive and reliable software.
I am also a former litigation and trial attorney. I remain a licensed attorney, although I no longer practice. Because of this background, 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