$ cat about.md

Headshot of Arvind Rathee

about

Hi, I'm Arvind. I'm a Frontend Developer II at Daffodil Software, working out of Gurugram, India. I spend my days shaping React and TypeScript applications in healthcare and fintech, and my evenings learning the parts of full-stack I haven't shipped yet.

What follows is the longer version: how I got here, what I've been up to, and what I'm doing now.

$ what I optimise for

I optimise for the things you can't see in a screenshot — reliability, real-world performance on the bandwidth visitors actually have, and the kind of code that the next person can change without holding their breath.

I lean pragmatic. Ship the boring proven thing; refactor when the friction is real, not when it's theoretical. "Is this code easy to delete?" tends to be a more useful question than "is this code clever?"

AI tools (Claude Code · Cursor · ChatGPT) are part of the workflow now — I treat them like a fast junior engineer: leverage their throughput, verify their work, never let them ship unattended.

Performance budgets, accessibility, and clean error states aren't nice-to-haves for me — they're part of the deliverable.

$ how I came to be

I grew up in Haryana — a part of India where you don't typically meet engineers until you become one. School was the usual mix of board exams, cricket, and a slow realization that I liked taking things apart more than putting them back together.

I ended up at UIET, M.D. University, Rohtak, studying Computer Science because I wanted a discipline that would give me both the why and the how. I picked up programming the way most engineers do — too late to be a prodigy, early enough that I had time to make every mistake.

The thing that made it click was, of all places, Udacity. In 2018, mid-undergrad, I started reviewing Front End Web Developer Nanodegree projects on the side. Reading other people's code for two years — really reading it, line by line, writing feedback — was the single most useful exercise of my career. By the time I graduated (B.Tech 2019, M.Tech 2021), I knew what kind of engineer I wanted to be.

I joined Daffodil Software in November 2021 as a fresher and have been here ever since.

$ what I've done

The rough chronology, with the bits that mattered most. The formal version is on /resume.

  1. past · 2015

    B.Tech, Computer Science — UIET, M.D. University, Rohtak

    First time someone called me an engineer. Mostly C, Java, and the occasional all-nighter.

  2. past · 2018

    Project Reviewer & Mentor at Udacity

    Started reviewing Front End Web Developer Nanodegree submissions. Two years of reading other people's code taught me to write better of my own.

  3. past · 2019

    B.Tech graduation. Began M.Tech.

    Carried on at the same university; mostly to give myself more runway to figure out what I actually wanted to build.

  4. past · 2021

    M.Tech graduation. Joined Daffodil Software.

    First full-time gig. The fresher year — review cycles, branch hygiene, what production logging really looks like.

  5. past · Nov 2021

    MayaMD — PPHM Solution.

    Healthcare product. UI work alongside cross-functional teams; first real exposure to lab-API integrations and PDF generation pipelines (Puppeteer + EJS). The project that taught me the shape of professional software.

  6. past · May 2022

    HIMS Agroha — 500-bed hospital management.

    OPD, IPD, Billing, Inventory, Pharmacy. The payroll engine that absorbed Haryana's pay matrix and replaced 40+ admin-hours/month. Sped up patient-data APIs by 20%. Picked up Daffodil's "New Star On The Block" award along the way.

  7. past · 2023

    Chalo Recon Dashboard & Operator App.

    Sole frontend engineer on a greenfield fintech / transport platform — owned every technical decision: architecture, performance budget, deployment, production support, and the cross-platform strategy. Cut the bundle by 28% to unblock low-bandwidth deploys. Web, iOS, Android — one codebase via Capacitor.

$ what I'm doing

updated 2026-05-04

  1. now · 2024 →

    Vimo — Childcare SaaS. JSP → React with Claude Code.

    Currently leading an LLM-assisted migration pipeline that converts legacy JSP into React components — manual migration effort cut roughly in half. Building a shared component library inside an NX monorepo. Most fun I've had at a desk in years.

  2. now · 2026

    Building rathee.dev in public.

    Treating my own portfolio like a product. Each phase shipped openly so I can write about what I learned along the way.

$ tech stack

Roughly: what I reach for without thinking, what I'm building real things with, and what I'm deliberately leaning into.

  • comfort

    ReactTypeScriptRedux ToolkitNX monoreposcomponent librariesperformancePWA
  • working

    Node.jsExpressMongoDBREST APIsPlaywrightVitestDockerCI/CD
  • learning

    .NETC#ASP.NET CoreEF Coresystem designAzure
  • exploring

    Game dev (Unreal · Unity · Roblox)RustWebGPUvector / RAG basics

$ ai workflow

Force multipliers I actually use, not name-drops.

  • daily

    Claude CodeCursorChatGPT

    ChatGPT carries the meta-work — planning, drafting, reasoning out loud.

  • exploring

    Agentsevaluation harnessesprompt-pattern librariesRAG basics

$ ways of working

The non-technical half. What I'm good at without a stack name attached.

  • strong

    End-to-end ownershipCode reviewMentorship · since 2018MigrationsGreenfield projects
  • growing

    ArchitectureCross-functional collaborationTechnical writingPublic speaking

$ cat off-screen.md

The site is tech-themed — but I'm not, entirely. A few less-engineering bits:

  • 📍 where

    From Haryana, currently living in Gurugram.

  • 🗣 languages

    English · Hindi · a smattering of Punjabi at family functions.

  • 📺 watching

    One Piece (still) · Classroom of the Elite II · Daemons of the Shadow Realm.

  • 📚 reading

    long-form non-fiction · the unsexy bits of engineering.

  • 🎧 listening

    lo-fi while shipping · OSTs (Steins;Gate, Made in Abyss) on a long walk.

  • ☕ tend to

    Take ownership of unowned problems · ask "could a script do this?" · over-explain things to a whiteboard · enjoy a proper pour-over coffee.

  • 🌀 don't tend to

    Sit still for very long · finish books I started but don't love · stop tinkering with my dotfiles, despite swearing every six months that I will.

$ what comes next

Closer term: rounding out into full-stack via .NET; getting deliberate about AI workflow. Longer term: deeper system design, more writing, open source, and a small game in Unreal someday.

The full open-ended list — engineering, personal, hobby — lives on /bucket-list with a little story behind each one.

In one line: frontend engineer who's been quietly doing backend on the side, slowly turning "side" into "both sides."

/resume — formal version · /bucket-list — wishlist · /contact — say hi.