About Nikhil Babu

My work sits at the intersection of engineering and product judgment. I care about how a codebase ages, not just how a feature looks on launch day — which is why I spend as much time on architecture, data flow, and rendering strategy as I do on interface details.

Most of my professional experience has been in React, Next.js, and TypeScript, with earlier years spent in Angular and vanilla JavaScript. I've built and maintained production applications for enterprise clients, including work on banking-sector platforms where correctness, auditability, and performance under load weren't optional — they were the job. That background shaped how I approach every project since: fewer shortcuts, more deliberate structure, and a strong bias toward code that's easy for the next person (often future me) to reason about.

Outside of client and employer work, I run an independent freelance practice under WorkflowHyd, helping small businesses and founders design, build, and ship digital products — from marketplaces to content-driven business sites. I enjoy this work because it forces range: product thinking, UI design, backend architecture, and deployment all fall on one person, which keeps the craft honest.

On the front end, I build primarily with React and Next.js, styled with Tailwind CSS, and increasingly with React Native for mobile. On the back end, I reach for PostgreSQL, Supabase, and Convex depending on the shape of the problem, and deploy almost everything through Vercel. I care about modern web architecture — server components, edge rendering, sensible caching — but I try to apply it because it solves a real problem, not because it's new.

I'm based in India and work with clients and teams both locally and remotely. When I'm not writing code, I'm usually writing about it — the blog section of this site is where I document what I'm learning in more detail.