Rael BernardinoFull-Stack Engineer
/ Rael Bernardino · Portfolio · 2026

Hello, I’m a full-stackengineer who caresabout the people I build with.

Five years owning features end-to-end at small, fast-moving startups. Currently leading architecture on a multi-tenant SaaS at POS360 — and most of my curiosity right now goes to how AI tools change what one engineer can hand a team.

See selected workGet in touch
/ what I’m here for
tech · people · AI

Software gives people leverage.AI just made the surface area bigger.I'm here to help good people build cool things on top of it.

/ how I think about the work

I started in 2020 helping small business owners stand up storefronts during the COVID shutdowns — the kind of work where it really mattered if it shipped. That set the bar. Software is most exciting to me when there’s a real person on the other side of it whose day just got better.

Five years on, I’m still drawn to the same thing: small teams, ambiguous problems, and tools that genuinely help the people using them. Most of my time is spent making complicated systems feel calm and obvious for the next engineer or operator who has to live with them.

Right now I’m most excited about what AI is opening up. Claude Code, MCP servers, agent-driven QA — not because the tools are magic, but because they shift what one engineer can hand a team. It’s a generational change in how we get to help each other build cool things. I want to be in the middle of it, helping good people figure out what’s actually possible now.

/ selected work · 03

A few thingsI’m proud of.

POS360 is where most of my weeks go. Practicum Review is the personal side project I’m playing with right now. Merchant was a 2020 passion project with two friends that quietly ended up in two small-business owners’ hands.

01shipping
/ client
POS360
/ role
Lead Software Engineer
/ period
2021 — Present

A multi-tenant SaaS for retail operators.

Owning architecture and delivery on a full-stack platform for inventory, sales, and reporting — used by hundreds of retail locations across mobile, desktop, and web.

[ POS360 · 2021 — Present ]
01 / 03
POS360.
/ Onboarding time
1 wk → 30 min
/ Live locations
800+
/ Engineering role
Lead
/ what got shipped
  • 01Led architecture for the next-gen Next.js + NestJS + GraphQL stack — Apollo on the client, PostgreSQL on Neon for data.
  • 02Cut onboarding from a one-week, hands-on process to a 30-minute self-serve flow by automating the internal setup workflow.
  • 03Set the team standard for user-story-driven test plans and integrated the Playwright MCP server into the QA loop, catching regressions before code review.
  • 04Shipped a cross-platform inventory + order management app with React Native, Expo, and Apollo to 800+ retail locations.
  • 05Built real-time order tracking inside an Electron desktop app over Socket.io, giving store staff live operational visibility.
  • 06Maintained a Node.js + MongoDB service syncing inventory with Drizly, including batch-job retry handling.
/ stack
  • Next.js
  • NestJS
  • GraphQL
  • PostgreSQL · Neon
  • Apollo Client
  • React Native · Expo
  • Electron
  • Socket.io
  • AWS
  • Playwright MCP
02personal
/ client
Practicum Review
/ role
Solo Engineer · Personal
/ period
2025 — Present

An ongoing personal project on Next.js + Supabase.

A server-rendered Next.js app paired with a Discord bot for workflow automation. A sandbox for trying new patterns without a production safety net.

[ Practicum Review · 2025 — Present ]
02 / 03
Practicum.
/ Next.js rendering
SSR
/ Bot automation
Discord
/ AI-paired
Cursor
/ what got shipped
  • 01Architected and shipped a server-rendered Next.js app on PostgreSQL (Supabase) with Prisma as the data layer.
  • 02Built a Discord bot for workflow automation and admin moderation tied directly to the app's data model.
  • 03Used Cursor as a thinking partner to iterate on Prisma schema design and data-model trade-offs.
/ stack
  • Next.js
  • PostgreSQL · Supabase
  • Prisma
  • Discord.js
  • Cursor
03passion project
/ client
Merchant
/ role
Engineer · Passion project
/ period
2020

A side project for two COVID-era merchants.

Three of us — one designer, two engineers — built a small commerce tool on the side during the COVID shutdowns. Two real merchants ended up using it to track their orders day-to-day. That was the whole win.

[ Merchant · 2020 ]
03 / 03
Merchant.
/ On the team
3 people
/ Real users
2 merchants
/ Onboarding
Email-only
/ what got shipped
  • 01Built a mobile-first commerce tool with one designer and one other engineer — purely a side project during the COVID shutdowns.
  • 02Worked end-to-end across product, inventory, and transaction flows, plus a dashboard a non-technical merchant could actually read.
  • 03Shipped a low-friction, email-only onboarding so a new merchant could list their first product right after signup.
  • 04Helped two real small-business owners track their orders day-to-day — the only version of “shipped” that mattered to us.
  • 05Worked side by side with the designer on onboarding, store management, and inventory screens.
/ stack
  • Mobile-first web
  • Node.js
  • Merchant dashboard
/ capabilities · 04

Tools I reach forwithout thinking.

Not a list of every framework I've touched — the ones I've actually shipped with, can debug at 2am, and still believe in.

●TypeScript●JavaScript●SQL●GraphQL●React●Next.js●Remix●React Native●Expo●Electron●Apollo Client●Tailwind CSS●Motion●Node.js
●TypeScript●JavaScript●SQL●GraphQL●React●Next.js●Remix●React Native●Expo●Electron●Apollo Client●Tailwind CSS●Motion●Node.js
●TypeScript●JavaScript●SQL●GraphQL●React●Next.js●Remix●React Native●Expo●Electron●Apollo Client●Tailwind CSS●Motion●Node.js
●TypeScript●JavaScript●SQL●GraphQL●React●Next.js●Remix●React Native●Expo●Electron●Apollo Client●Tailwind CSS●Motion●Node.js
●TypeScript●JavaScript●SQL●GraphQL●React●Next.js●Remix●React Native●Expo●Electron●Apollo Client●Tailwind CSS●Motion●Node.js
●TypeScript●JavaScript●SQL●GraphQL●React●Next.js●Remix●React Native●Expo●Electron●Apollo Client●Tailwind CSS●Motion●Node.js

Languages

01 / 6
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • SQL
  • GraphQL

Frontend

02 / 6
  • React
  • Next.js
  • Remix
  • React Native
  • Expo
  • Electron
  • Apollo Client
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Motion

Backend

03 / 6
  • Node.js
  • NestJS
  • GraphQL APIs
  • REST
  • Socket.io
  • Strapi
  • Discord.js

Data

04 / 6
  • PostgreSQL
  • Prisma
  • Neon
  • Supabase
  • MongoDB

Cloud & infra

05 / 6
  • AWS
  • Vercel
  • CI/CD
  • Observability

AI-paired

06 / 6
  • Claude Code
  • MCP servers
  • Cursor
  • Playwright MCP
/ note

Tools are commodities. The actual job is reading the room — what's the team's appetite for change, what's already paid for, what's going to outlast me. Pick the boring choice when you can.

/ off the clock · 05

Also a person.Probably drinking coffee.

The shape of a week, more or less, when nothing is on fire. The things that keep the engineering brain from eating itself.

  • 01V-something / projecting

    Rock climbing

    Bouldering mostly. Reading the wall before I touch it. The closest thing engineering has to a physical analog — pick a problem, fail it cleanly, try again.

  • 025K → 10K

    Running

    Slow miles before the screen turns on. The hour where I'm not optimizing anything except where my next foot lands.

  • 03Push / pull / legs

    Gym

    Lifting heavy things in a deliberate order. Boring on purpose. The compounding works.

  • 04Grass + indoor

    Volleyball

    Six-person systems, on-the-fly negotiation, set plays that never quite go to spec. Same job, different uniform.

  • 05Iced americano / cold brew

    Coffee

    Less hobby, more constant. Always black — iced americano most days, cold brew when the weather gets honest about it.

/ contact · 06

Got a problem worthshipping?

I'm most useful early — small teams, ambiguous problem space, short feedback loops. Email is the fastest way in. Phone if it's actually urgent.

01Email
raelcbernardino@gmail.com
02Phone
+1 (323) 384-6390
Let'sbuildsomething.
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