I help companies build SaaS products. I work with teams who have a concept, MVP, or design. Over a decade in software development.
- Based
- Tokyo, remote
- Status
- US citizen, W-9/1099
- Japan visa
- Engineer / Specialist in Humanities
- Overlap
- Full APAC, US West mornings
What I bring
Why teams bring me in.
I build SaaS, and I run my own.
Client work and my own products are both SaaS. So I live with the choices long after launch.
I question what it is worth.
I ask what a feature does for a user before I build it. Then I ask what it costs to get there. Product-market fit is the question I keep coming back to.
My specialty is web technology.
The frontend is my strongest ground. State, speed and accessibility get weighed at every step. I am at home in the architecture too, and in the libraries a project leans on.
TypeScript, top to bottom.
I write it on both sides of the wire. Next.js and NestJS are my defaults. Services get wired in as each project needs them.
Latest products
What I am building.
Crewcade
2024 — presentMemberships and events · clubs and nonprofits
Crewcade handles memberships and events for clubs, nonprofits, and community groups. Each one gets its own branded space, where members join and pay online and organizers see who is coming. Payments run through the group’s own Stripe account, so money goes to them rather than through me.
- Next.js
- NestJS
- PostgreSQL
- Prisma
- Stripe Connect
Reboot
2023Device rental subscriptions · Japan
- The problem
- A subscription service rents phones and devices across Japan. We started from a prototype and a new Figma design. The business needed a production storefront it could run on.
- The solution
- I built the storefront against the backend team’s Django API. We coordinated the Square subscription flow to match the one they had planned.
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Square
- Django
Arrow Note
Coming soon2026Project management for you and your agents
- The problem
- Project tools are built for people, and the AI is bolted on after. Your board lives on someone else’s server. An agent reaches it one API call at a time, so it never holds the whole plan.
- The solution
- It runs on your machine against a folder of Markdown files you own. Offline is the normal case, so every keystroke and every search hits local disk. The MCP server ships with the app and gives an agent fourteen tools over the same vault you are looking at. An ACP driver connects Hermes and any other ACP agent through that same vault. Any agent that speaks neither edits the files directly. The UI is built for all three: cards move in the open window while an agent works.
- TypeScript
- React
- Electron
- SQLite
- MCP
More case studies in progress. Ask and I will walk you through any of them.
How I work with you
You always know where things stand.
Updates you can read.
Short written updates. Demos you can watch. Pull requests you can read. You see progress without asking for it.
Timezone.
From Tokyo I cover APAC all day. I catch the US West Coast in your morning.
I tell you what something costs before I build it.
Requirements change. You hear the tradeoff from me early and in plain words. Then I keep moving.
I work the way your team already works.
I shape my setup around your process rather than bringing my own. Your conventions, your reviews, your branching. The codebase reads the same after I leave.
What I use
Frontend
- TypeScript
- React
- Next.js
- Astro
- React Query
- State & data layers
- Design systems
- Performance
- Accessibility
Backend
- NestJS
- PostgreSQL
- Prisma
- GraphQL
- Payload CMS
- Typed API clients
- OAuth
Infrastructure and services
- pnpm monorepos
- GitHub Actions
- Vercel
- Railway
- Google Cloud
- Cloudflare
- AWS S3
- Doppler
- Sentry
- Umami
- Postmark
- Stripe
- Square
- Google APIs
- LINE LIFF apps
About
Jesse Alvarado
Jesse AlvaradoSaaS Developer
Hey, I'm Jesse.
I have worked in software since 2016. I live in Tokyo. I take contract work or a full-time remote role.
Outside of code I run communities and the events they need. I direct SOGO Fitness, a ten-year-old community in Tokyo. Before that I spent three years as Captain of Midnight Runners Tokyo.
Running them is where my products come from. Memberships, payments, and the work of getting people back.
- In software since
- 2016
- SOGO Fitness
- Director
- Midnight Runners Tokyo
- Captain, 3 years
Contact
Let’s build something together.
Tokyo (JST) · US citizen · Japan work visa · APAC and US West overlap