Skip to content
rafsuntaskin.com — zsh

Rafsun Chowdhury — Senior Full Stack Engineer. Focus: AI Integration, Backend Architecture, APIs, Data Modelling, Performance and Testing.

Open to senior full-stack & WordPress engineering roles

I design the layer everything else depends on.

Eleven years of backend engineering — API architecture, data modelling and performance work behind WordPress plugins running on 800,000+ active sites, plus full-stack AI applications shipped solo on ReactJS and Next.js.

$ cat ./scope.md
API architectureDesigned the contracts other products build on
REST API layers across commercial plugin suites — endpoint design, data contracts and versioning for products that extend one another, where a breaking change breaks somebody else's release.
ConstraintEvery change ships to 800,000 live sites
No staging environment that matches production, no ability to roll back a customer's site. That constraint shapes the work: deprecation cycles over breaking changes, regression tests before fixes, upgrade paths that assume the worst.
PerformanceCut page loads ~40% by redesigning how data is cached
Multi-layer caching architecture — profiled the real bottlenecks, chose what to cache and where to invalidate, rather than adding a cache and hoping.
Technical directionLed three commercial products and the engineers on them
Set engineering standards, ran code review, and mentored developers into senior-level ownership across Dokan, WP User Frontend and weForms.

experience --list

  1. WordPress Engineer (Contract) @ Big Think

    Jan 2026 — Present · current

    Enterprise editorial platform on WordPress VIP, working within the engineering team under VIP coding standards and peer code review.

    • Personally built 30+ custom Gutenberg blocks, combining native block development with ACF Pro implementations.
    • Translated Figma designs into production PHP and React blocks — pixel-perfect and fully responsive.
    • Worked to WordPress VIP coding standards (VIPCS) with peer review on every change.
    • Styled the block library with Tailwind CSS for a consistent, maintainable design system.
    • WordPress VIP
    • Gutenberg
    • React
    • PHP
    • ACF Pro
    • Tailwind CSS
    • Figma

  2. Software Engineer @ StellarWP — The Events Calendar

    Jan 2019 — Nov 2025

    Six years of backend engineering on one of the largest commercial plugin suites in the WordPress ecosystem — API architecture, caching, data modelling and test coverage, in an async-first remote team working US business hours.

    • Contributed to the REST API architecture underpinning the suite — endpoint design, data contracts and versioning across plugins that extend one another.
    • Cut page load times ~40% by designing and shipping a multi-layer caching architecture.
    • #1 contributor to Event Tickets across five years — the person the ticketing and commerce surface was handed to.
    • Built the Seating Chart product as a hybrid Next.js and WordPress system — interactive seat mapping, real-time seat syncing and an iframe bridge between the React app and the WordPress host.
    • Wrote regression tests before shipping fixes and kept PHPUnit suites green in CI — the practical guard against breaking 800,000+ live sites.
    • Maintained backward compatibility and safe upgrade paths across a large installed base, with deprecation cycles rather than breaking changes.
    • Led WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility work — keyboard navigation, ARIA roles and labels, focus management across plugin UIs.
    • Shipped continuously in an async, distributed team with sustained US-hours overlap for six years.
    • PHP
    • WordPress
    • TypeScript
    • React
    • Next.js
    • REST API
    • MySQL
    • Accessibility
    • CI/CD

  3. Senior Software Engineer / Team Lead @ weDevs

    Mar 2015 — Jan 2019

    Core engineer and technical lead across weDevs' commercial products, with three distinct Team Lead stints: WP User Frontend, weForms, then WP ERP.

    • Architected the commission and payout engine for Dokan — vendor onboarding, order splitting and multi-party settlement across thousands of marketplaces.
    • Integrated Stripe, PayPal and WooCommerce payment flows, including recurring and split payments, where correctness is non-negotiable.
    • Tech Lead on weForms (Feb — Aug 2018): designed the plugin architecture for new modules, built Gutenberg block integrations and conditional-logic features on Vue.js and the WordPress REST API.
    • Team Lead on WP User Frontend (Feb — Aug 2018): shipped 15+ feature modules and a UX overhaul.
    • Team Lead on WP ERP (Aug 2018 — Feb 2019): led a navigation redesign and new accounting and CRM capability across three business domains in one extensible framework.
    • Set engineering standards, ran code review, and mentored developers into senior-level ownership.
    • PHP
    • WooCommerce
    • Stripe
    • PayPal
    • Vue.js
    • MySQL
    • REST APIs

  4. Independent engineer (alongside full-time work) @ Agency & direct clients

    2012 — Present

    A long-running parallel track: 75+ projects delivered for agencies and direct clients across media and publishing, e-commerce, education, real estate and events.

    • Ran concurrent engagements end to end — scoping and estimation, technical discovery, build to designer-supplied Figma, QA and documented handoff.
    • Onboarded fast into unfamiliar legacy codebases against fixed deadlines.
    • Led technical conversations directly with non-technical stakeholders, translating business goals into phased delivery plans.
    • WordPress
    • WooCommerce
    • PHP
    • REST / SOAP / GraphQL
    • Migrations

ls ./projects --solo

JobLumy AI

Solo backend, tested end to end

AI-assisted job search that filters out the noise.

Built end to end, solo. Backend is a multi-model AI pipeline over Claude and OpenAI, on PostgreSQL and Prisma with Redis caching, S3 storage and NextAuth sessions. Covered by a Vitest suite with MSW mocking the external APIs, so the AI layer is testable without burning tokens.

  • Next.js 16
  • ReactJS
  • TypeScript
  • PostgreSQL
  • Prisma 7
  • NextAuth v5
  • Redis
  • AWS S3
  • Claude + OpenAI
  • Vitest / MSW

VibeMan.pro

Typed data layer, regression-tested

A production SaaS shipped solo, from blank file to live product.

Full-stack application on the modern React edge stack — server components, typed data access and row-level security through Supabase, deployed on Vercel. A Vitest suite guards the core business logic against regressions on every push.

  • Next.js 16
  • ReactJS
  • TypeScript
  • Supabase
  • Vercel
  • Vitest

ls ./projects --platform --open-source

Seating Chart System

Hybrid React × WordPress architecture

Assigned seating with live inventory, sold through WordPress.

A hybrid Next.js and WordPress product: interactive seat mapping, real-time seat syncing to prevent double-booking, and dynamic pricing — integrated into the Event Tickets payment and registration flow so venues can sell assigned seating with live inventory and Stripe processing. An iframe bridge carries state between the React app and the WordPress host.

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • React
  • WordPress REST API
  • Stripe
  • PHP

weForms

Tech Lead · installs 4K → 8K

Contact form builder with conditional logic and payments.

Tech Lead. Designed the plugin architecture for new modules, built Gutenberg block integrations, Stripe and PayPal payment flows, and conditional-logic form features on Vue.js and the WordPress REST API.

  • PHP
  • Vue.js
  • WordPress REST API
  • Gutenberg
  • Stripe
  • PayPal

claude-usage-in-status

11 stars · own open-source tool

A Claude Code plugin for live context and rate-limit telemetry.

Renders context-window usage, per-turn token counts, cache hits and rate-limit windows in the Claude Code statusline. Reads entirely from stdin — no external API calls. Published as an installable plugin with a SessionStart hook and self-configuring setup.

  • Node.js
  • JavaScript
  • CLI tooling
  • MIT licensed

The Events Calendar

800K+ active installs

The most widely used events plugin for WordPress.

Core engineer for six years. Contributed to the REST API architecture, caching improvements and UI work, with a constant focus on stability and backward compatibility.

  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • React
  • REST API
  • MySQL

Event Tickets

90K+ active installs · #1 contributor

RSVPs and paid ticketing for WordPress events.

#1 contributor over five years. Designed RSVP and paid ticket flows with Stripe and PayPal, improved checkout reliability and real-time ticket validation, and led the accessibility overhaul.

  • PHP
  • TypeScript
  • React
  • WordPress REST API
  • Payments

Dokan Multivendor

50K+ active installs

Multivendor marketplace platform on WooCommerce.

Marketplace architecture supporting thousands of stores — vendor dashboard, order management, commission engine and WooCommerce compatibility layers, built for extensibility.

  • PHP
  • Vue.js
  • WooCommerce
  • Stripe
  • PayPal
  • REST API

WP ERP

3 business domains, one framework

HR, CRM and accounting for WordPress.

Led development and the UI overhaul of the Accounting, CRM and HR modules, introducing improved navigation and collaboration features inside a single extensible plugin framework.

  • PHP
  • Vue.js
  • WordPress
  • MySQL
  • REST APIs

WP User Frontend

Doubled installs, 10K → 20K

Frontend posting and user dashboards for WordPress.

Directed feature expansion and a UI/UX redesign across 15+ feature modules — form builder, frontend submission and membership flows.

  • Vue.js
  • PHP
  • WooCommerce
  • ACF

stack --core

Backend first — API architecture, data modelling and performance, backed by test suites that gate the merge. The frontend and AI work sits on top of that foundation.

ai integration

Production AI pipelines and developer tooling, not demos

  • Claude API
  • OpenAI API
  • Multi-model pipelines
  • AI workflow integration
  • Prompt engineering
  • Structured output & evals
  • Claude Code plugins

backend architecture

Where most of my eleven years have actually gone

  • System design
  • REST API architecture
  • Domain modelling
  • Service layers
  • Plugin frameworks
  • Backward compatibility
  • Debugging complex systems

data & performance

Relational modelling, caching, and making slow things fast

  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • Query optimisation
  • Multi-layer caching
  • Redis
  • Prisma 7
  • Supabase
  • Firestore
  • SQLite
  • Performance profiling
  • Xdebug

testing & quality

Tests before fixes, suites that gate the merge

  • Vitest
  • Jest
  • PHPUnit
  • MSW (API mocking)
  • Regression tests
  • CI/CD test gates
  • Code review
  • WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility

languages & runtimes

Deep PHP alongside modern TypeScript — an uncommon pairing

  • PHP
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript (ES2023)
  • Node.js
  • Express
  • Laravel
  • SQL
  • Python
  • C / C++

frontend

Server components through to design-system CSS

  • ReactJS
  • Next.js 16
  • Gutenberg / Block Editor
  • Vue.js
  • Tailwind CSS
  • SCSS
  • Responsive & pixel-perfect UI

wordpress ecosystem

Plugin architecture at commercial scale

  • WordPress VIP
  • Plugin architecture
  • WooCommerce
  • ACF Pro
  • WP-CLI
  • VIPCS / WPCS standards
  • WordPress REST API

infrastructure & collaboration

How the work actually gets shipped

  • Docker
  • Lando
  • CI/CD pipelines
  • Git workflows
  • Async remote collaboration
  • Technical leadership
  • Mentoring

cat ./about.md

I don't think of myself as a WordPress developer or a React developer. Every stack has the same layers: data, business logic, API, UI. Once you understand how those fit together, the tools are secondary. That's what lets me be useful fast in any codebase.

I started at 20, building a live cricket score tracker for a university project in PHP, MySQL and AJAX. The moment scores updated without a page reload I was hooked — not by the tech, but by realising I could just build things.

Most of the time since has gone below the surface: designing APIs other plugins build on, modelling data that has to survive a decade of migrations, and hunting the queries that quietly cost 40% of a page load. A bug fix starts with a failing test — at this scale that isn't process for its own sake, it's the only way to know a fix stays fixed.

education

BSc, Computer Science & Engineering

American International University-Bangladesh · 2010 — 2014 · CGPA 3.61

Deep data-structures and algorithms coursework. Favourite course was Human-Computer Interaction — it shifted how I think about building software: less about what's technically possible, more about what makes sense to the person using it.

open source
WordPress Core
Contributor · credited in the 5.1 release
WooCommerce Core
Contributor
Event Tickets
#1 contributor over five years
StellarWP suite
Core engineer, 2019 — 2025
claude-usage-in-status
Author · Claude Code plugin, MIT
recognition
  • Arctic Code VaultContributor to code archived for 1,000 years
  • Pair Extraordinaire ×4Co-authored commits — collaborative by default
  • WordPress 5.1Named in the core release credits
based in

Remote

Consistent US-hours overlap

Six years async-first remote on US business hours — proven and sustained, not just theoretical overlap.

./contact --send

Open to senior full-stack & WordPress engineering roles. I read everything and reply within a day or two — a short note about the role or the problem you're solving is plenty to start.