DevTinder — Developer Networking Platform

01 / Challenge

Developers often rely on disconnected communities and platforms to find people to collaborate with on side projects, hackathons, and open-source work. The challenge was to build a focused networking platform where developers could discover other developers, manage connection requests, and communicate in real time while maintaining secure authentication and a reliable production architecture.

02 / Solution

I designed and built DevTinder as a full-stack MERN application with a React frontend and modular Express backend. JWT authentication is implemented using secure HTTP-only cookies, with middleware protecting private routes. Developer discovery uses a paginated feed and connection-request workflow, while Socket.IO provides one-to-one real-time messaging with chat history persisted in MongoDB. For production, the frontend is deployed on Vercel while the backend runs on AWS EC2 behind Nginx. PM2 manages the Node.js process and Let's Encrypt provides HTTPS, creating a production-style deployment architecture rather than relying only on a local development environment.

03 / Result

Delivered a production-deployed developer networking application with authentication, profile management, developer discovery, connection management, and real-time messaging. The project demonstrates end-to-end ownership across frontend development, backend API design, database modeling, authentication, WebSocket communication, security configuration, and cloud deployment.