State machines beat a pile of booleans
What moving a 50k-user app's flows to XState actually fixed — and the three places it was overkill.
ShashiGyawali
Role
Stack
Based
Status
I build the parts of the product that have to work: hiring platforms, payment flows, dashboards carrying tens of thousands of people.
Start a projectWorked withSkill UpData Science InstituteFlashParkingScholarsspacePurchasedMunal ITSweven
Toptal verified expert since 2022What I'm hired for
01 / Build it
Product engineering, end to end
From data model to deployed UI. React and Node, typed all the way through, tested where it counts.
02 / Fix it
Rescue and performance work
Slow front ends, failing payments, downtime, a codebase nobody wants to touch. I've done all four.
03 / Scale it
Multi-tenant and AI features
One deployment serving many customers, roles and permissions, and LLM features that behave in production.
Selected work
Five case studies01 / Australian Pharmacist CPD / 2026
From AI prototype to production
A founder built 80% of a regulated CPD platform with AI tools. I made it something you could safely take payments and personal data through.
Read case study →02 / Skill UpA real-money esports platform, built solo
Skill-based mobile tournaments with real payouts. I was the only engineer: game engine, anti-cheat, payments, tournaments, iOS and Android.
Read case study →03 / Data Science InstitutePython exams that run in the browser
An accredited data science certification platform with proctored coding exams, each student in an isolated container.
Read case study →04 / FlashParking / 2024EV charging & parking UI
Operator and driver interfaces for charging sites, and a payment failure quietly costing half of all transactions.
Read case study →05 / Local government / 2021–22Public exam result system
Result processing and publishing for schools across many municipalities, rebuilt as one multi-tenant platform.
Read case study →About
I'm a self-taught full-stack engineer from Tilottama, Nepal. I started writing JavaScript in 2018 to make a jewellery shop's stock stop living in a notebook.
Since then I've built software for schools, electricity boards, restaurants, marketplaces, hiring platforms. Most of my work is the load-bearing middle: the data model that has to be right, the state machine nobody sees, the payment path that can't drop a transaction.
I've led small teams, reviewed a lot of other people's code, and learned that clarity ships faster than cleverness. I work remotely with teams anywhere, mostly overlapping European and US mornings.
Education
Certification
Languages
Based
Availability
Experience
2026 — now
Australian Pharmacist CPD
Full-stack Developer
Took a security-critical CPD platform, 80% built by a non-technical founder with AI tools, from prototype to production as sole engineer.
2025 — 2026
Skill Up
Full-stack JavaScript Developer
Sole engineer on a real-money esports platform: a 60 FPS React Native game engine, server-authoritative anti-cheat, Stripe and Apple IAP, concurrency-safe tournaments.
2025 — 2026
Data Science Institute
Full-stack Lead Engineer
Sole engineer on an accredited data science certification platform. Proctored in-browser Python exams on JupyterHub, one isolated container per student.
2024
FlashParking, Inc.
Front-end Engineer
EV charging and parking operator UI; found and fixed the payment failure that was halving transaction success.
2021 — 2024
Scholarsspace
Full-stack Developer
Learning network with 50,000+ users. Cut downtime 70%, moved complex flows to XState, reduced infrastructure spend.
2022
Purchased
Front-end Developer
Market research app in Next.js — component library from scratch, custom internationalisation, responsive across everything.
2021 — 2022
Munal IT
Full-stack Developer · Tech Lead
Government result processing platform and a consulting CRM. Multi-tenant architecture, dynamic RBAC, code review.
2019 — 2022
Sweven Incorporate
Full-stack Developer
Restaurant management suite — admin, customer, waiter and kitchen apps. Managed a small remote team.
2020 — 2021
Simrik Technology
Full-stack Developer
Jewellery store inventory system and a community electricity billing platform for the local authority.
2018 — 2019
Gurash Tech · Epitome Solutions
Front-end Developer
First professional years: invoicing and stock apps, vanilla JS migrated to React, web app shipped as desktop via Electron.
Stack
What I reach for first — not a list of everything I've opened.Languages
Front end
Back end
Data
Infra
Quality
AI in the stack
Ways of working
Notes
Holding 100% coverage without hating your life
Coverage is a bad goal and a useful constraint. How I kept it on a production app for two years.
Designing around a model that gets it wrong
Speech-to-text was 85% accurate. The product needed to feel 100%. Notes on building the gap into the UX.
Available for new work
Got something that needs building properly?
Tell me the problem, the constraint and the deadline. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person — and if I'm not, I probably know who is.
Shashi Gyawali — full-stack engineerTilottama, Nepal / UTC+5:45