About me
Developer.
Designer.
Builder.
I'm Alex Chen, a Hong Kong–born, San Francisco–based full-stack developer and visual designer. I spend my days building products that sit at the edge of engineering rigour and design craftsmanship.
Before software, I studied graphic design — and that background shapes everything I build. I believe deeply that the best interfaces are the ones that feel inevitable: so obvious in hindsight that you forget they were designed at all.
Currently at
Verdigris Labs
Craft over velocity
Shipping fast matters. But shipping something worth using matters more. I take the time to get the details right.
Design as thought
Design isn't decoration — it's how we communicate structure and intention. Every visual choice is an argument.
Open by default
Most of my work is open source. The web is built on shared knowledge; I try to give more than I take.
Tech stack
Skills & Tools
Career
Experience
Senior Product Engineer
Verdigris Labs
Leading frontend architecture for a climate-tech SaaS with 50k+ users. Rebuilt the core visualization layer from scratch, cutting load times by 65%.
Full-Stack Engineer
Axiom Digital
Built and shipped 12 client products across e-commerce, fintech, and media. Introduced the design system that is still in use across 8 live products.
UI Engineer
Moonshot Studio
Designed and developed interactive marketing experiences for Fortune 500 brands. Won two Awwwards site of the day.
2014 – 2018
B.Sc. Computer Science
UC Berkeley
Dean's list. Thesis on generative music composition using recurrent neural networks.
2018 – 2019
MFA Graphic Design
California College of the Arts
Focused on interaction design and typography. Exhibited at Graduation Show, SF.