About

I'm a senior engineer based in the Western Cape, South Africa, working with teams in Europe, the UK and at home. My focus is frontend architecture with real backend depth, and I'm best known for taking legacy platforms like AngularJS, FreeMarker, and spreadsheet-driven workflows and turning them into systems people can actually maintain.

I lead architecture and delivery from discovery to deployment, and I care about pragmatic engineering: choosing the right technology over hype, keeping systems resilient, and writing code the next engineer can understand quickly.

What I do

Modernisation

Moving legacy platforms like AngularJS, server-rendered FreeMarker templates and spreadsheet workflows onto modern stacks, in steps small enough that the product keeps shipping while it happens.

Product engineering

Taking products from first schema to production: marketplaces, internal platforms and multi-tenant SaaS, including the payments, auth and integrations that make them usable by a real business.

Frontend architecture

Codebases that stay workable as teams and features grow: monorepos, micro-frontends, shared component libraries and one codebase serving many brands.

Complex business workflows

Turning processes that live in spreadsheets, paper forms and people's heads into software where the rules are enforced by the system instead of remembered by staff.

Experience

1. TravelstartApr 2026 – Present
   Software Developer · Cape Town, South Africa

   Rewrote a single-brand Angular B2C site as a multi-tenant Nuxt 4 platform, and have been hardening the systems around it since.

2. KlantenVertellen / KiyohJun 2024 – Present
   Software Developer (FE / Full Stack), Contract · Netherlands (Remote)

   Led the migration of 144+ server-side FreeMarker templates into a React micro-frontend architecture to unblock releases.

3. JL Consulting Engineers (Margus)Dec 2025 – Present
   Software Developer (Full Stack) · South Africa (Remote)

   Replaced an Excel-based workflow with a real-time Supabase + React platform covering quoting, pipeline/WIP tracking, invoicing, and directories.

4. CFOHIREMay 2025 – Mar 2026
   Software Developer (Full Stack) / Tech Lead · United Kingdom (Remote)

   Built a B2B marketplace from the ground up covering job posts, proposals, contracts, invoicing, and payments in one workspace.

5. TelematicsAI (via KRE8IT Programming)Dec 2020 – Mar 2026
   Software Developer (Full Stack / Mobile) · Somerset West, South Africa

   Built multi-protocol live streaming (FLV/HLS/H5F) with automatic fallback and reconnection handling.

The full history is in my CV, and the projects are written up on the work page. To get in touch, mail me at lotzgustav@gmail.com.