Sidney
Alcantara

  1. Portfolio sidney.me
  2. Email sidney@sidney.me
  3. GitHub notsidney

Experienced design engineer passionate about crafting memorable and dependable user experiences on the Web, specialising in design systems.


Experience

Canva

  1. Sydney
Software Engineer (Frontend)
  1. Empowering Canva Creators worldwide to design excellent templates.

Rowy

  1. Sydney
  2. SaaS startup
Senior Frontend Software Engineer
Frontend Software Engineer
  1. Designed and implemented a design system for a modern, appealing user experience. Responsible as the product owner of the entire frontend as employee #1 up to seed funding. Plus, designed the logo and visual identity.
  2. Improved the web app’s reliability, maintainability, and performance by rewriting the frontend architecture, writing tests, fixing accessibility issues, and writing technical documentation, including contribution docs.
  3. Conducted code reviews for junior engineers and open-source pull requests, identifying talented developers who were subsequently hired.
  4. Produced high-quality writing — including a new landing page, tech blogs, and tweets — raising Rowy’s visibility and attracting new users. Featured on top Medium publications, with three articles attracting 20,000+ views each.

Antler

  1. Sydney
  2. early-stage VC
Frontend Software Engineer
  1. Led the development of Virtual Demo Day, a critical online platform for events showcasing Antler’s new startups, which could not run in person during Covid. Hosted 12 events with over 10,000 viewers in its first year.
  2. Built and maintained web apps for expansion to five new locations focused on usability for thousands as part of a scrum team with weekly iterations.
  3. Contributed to the tech community by creating and open-sourcing internal libraries as npm packages, improving our team’s developer efficiency.
  4. Collaborated with our UX designer on a new design system and wrote docs.

2hats

  1. Sydney
  2. HR tech startup
Full Stack Developer
Junior Frontend Developer
  1. Orchestrated the frontend redesign of the student portal, enhancing the user experience and driving growth, boosting the user base by 40%.
  2. Modernised the codebase to TypeScript and React Hooks and wrote docs. Reduced code by 30% and JS payload by 50%, improving performance.
  3. Extended backend systems after learning existing serverless architecture.
  4. Conducted technical interviews and assessments, presented a talk at a uni.

Languages and technologies

Frameworks and libraries

  1. React + Hooks
  2. MUI / Material UI
  3. Jotai
  4. Svelte + SvelteKit
  5. Gatsby
  6. Storybook
  7. Testing Library
  8. Hook Form
  9. CSS-in-JS
  10. TanStack Table

Frontend

  1. Modern responsive CSS
  2. TypeScript
  3. JavaScript
  4. semantic HTML
  5. accessibility (WCAG 2.2, WAI-ARIA)
  6. performance
  7. OKLCH colours

Design

  1. Design systems
  2. Figma
  3. Sketch
  4. Webflow
  5. copywriting
  6. typography

Backend

  1. Firestore
  2. Firebase
  3. Google Cloud
  4. Node.js
  5. Vercel
  6. Netlify
  7. CI/CD

Education and awards

  1. Bachelor of Advanced Computing at The University of Sydney
  2. Sydney Scholars Award
  3. Dalyell Scholars program