Working as a Senior Software Engineer embedded within client engineering teams, contributing to product development, architecture, integrations, and delivery across different industries.

Embedded within client engineering teams to deliver production applications across fintech, streaming, AI, commerce, and mobile platforms. Worked with engineers, product managers, and stakeholders on product requirements, architecture, implementation, and delivery.

Developed shared web and mobile marketplace experiences, including product discovery, authentication, and payment integrations.

Built React Native commerce and fulfillment features, including order recommendations, guest checkout, and mobile workflows for order processing.

Developed mobile and web features for legal and school management applications, including portal-building experiences and payment-related improvements.

Owned frontend implementation of Ogenetv, a digital movie rental application, including authentication, purchasing, and integration with backend services.

I build thoughtful products and reliable systems.

John Ugbe

Over 8 years building and shipping software across web, mobile, fintech, AI, and streaming. I work closely with teams to understand product goals, refine requirements, navigate technical complexity, and deliver software that serves real business needs.

DCP+ is Decentralized Pictures’ streaming platform for films and episodic content. It brings catalogue discovery, rentals, purchases, subscriptions, and advertising-supported viewing into a single experience, with protected playback across web and connected TV.

The familiar act of choosing a title and pressing play crosses several systems: viewer identity, card payments, wallet signing, blockchain settlement, content entitlements, and DRM-protected media. My work connected those boundaries into a usable client application. A successful journey meant that viewers could find content, understand their access, complete a transaction, and watch with progress retained for their next session.

The product

I joined DCP+ through Lazer Technologies in June 2025, embedded within the client’s engineering team. Working alongside product and engineering stakeholders, I helped refine requirements, translate product goals into application behavior, and resolve the integration questions that stood between implementation and a working viewer experience.

From August 2025, I was the primary engineer responsible for the client applications. My scope covered application architecture, feature and integration ownership, technical investigations, connected TV, operational tooling, and release preparation. That responsibility required moving between product details and system behavior: understanding what a viewer needed to accomplish, deciding where the application should own that behavior, and collaborating across service boundaries to make it work.

I carried that approach through catalogue and account experiences, commerce, playback, and episodic viewing. The goal was a coherent product whose parts could evolve together, with maintainable contracts between the interface and the services behind it.

My engagement

I restructured the application around explicit route boundaries to make session responsibilities predictable. Global providers had allowed unrelated dependencies to interact, producing inconsistent request initialization and flashes of content before redirects. Each route needed a clear answer to what session, permissions, and data had to be ready before its experience could proceed.

The resulting structure separated root infrastructure, authentication routes, the main streaming session, and page-local data and permissions. This gave initialization a clearer order and reduced coupling between experiences. Application lifecycle work, including bounded recovery and cleanup, also addressed repeated SDK initialization and made recovery behavior easier to reason about.

Generated OpenAPI types and view models stabilized the interface as API contracts evolved. Generated types exposed contract changes during development, while mapping code kept endpoint-specific shapes out of presentation components. Those boundaries supported discovery, profiles, personal libraries, and series and episode experiences without tying every component directly to a service response.

The Next.js backend-for-frontend provided another deliberate boundary, moving session tokens into HttpOnly cookies with CSRF protection. Together, these decisions made access, data readiness, and lifecycle management explicit responsibilities within the application.

Application architecture

Wallet signing helped establish a viewer session, but continuous wallet connectivity was unnecessary for browsing and playback. When unexpected sign-outs appeared, targeted telemetry showed restoration failures while the wallet SDK was still connecting. I used that evidence to reconsider the dependency instead of simply adding more reconnection attempts.

I made the viewer session the authority for application authentication and treated the wallet as an on-demand signing capability. This separated access to the streaming experience from the availability of a wallet for a particular purchase, subscription, or renewal operation. In-place signing recovery let the viewer address a wallet problem within the transaction workflow.

Commerce required similarly clear boundaries. I implemented Stripe purchasing, wallet-signed transactions, subscriptions, and reusable payment methods, connecting the interface to the steps needed for access. Payment completion, blockchain settlement, and a playable entitlement could arrive separately; showing them as one event produced misleading calls to action and indefinite pending states.

I consolidated five sources of client settlement state into a unified transaction state machine. It gave the application one consistent model of progress, including a longer-than-usual state, while preserving the distinction between paying for content and being able to play it. That made the client workflow clearer and gave technical investigations a more precise starting point.

Commerce and authentication

I integrated DRM-protected playback with FairPlay and Widevine across HLS and DASH delivery, then built the surrounding experience: custom controls, audio and subtitle selection, progress tracking, resume, and playback recovery. The work extended beyond displaying video to maintaining a consistent viewing session across browsers and devices.

Safari exposed a difficult authorization boundary. Protected content played in Chrome, but Safari’s native HLS path did not carry the expected authorization headers. Playlist tokens did not propagate as needed, cross-site cookies were dropped, and alternative playback paths did not resolve FairPlay decryption. Working with the client’s engineering team, I helped establish a functioning path using signed CDN cookies, a CDN alias on the application’s site, and appropriate CORS configuration.

Later compatibility work introduced an iOS 17.1 and newer path using Managed Media Source for authorization injection with FairPlay support. Playback recovery also became a product interaction: Watch Here let a viewer reclaim playback after another session took over.

A shared TypeScript core carried API clients, view models, session logic, streaming behavior, and error handling across web and TV. I built the Samsung Tizen experience around those foundations, with device sign-in and remote navigation adapted to television use. A signed build passed Samsung Seller Office pre-testing in June 2026, establishing a tested distribution path toward store submission.

Playback and connected TV

The engagement produced a live streaming web product and an end-to-end purchase-to-playback journey. A real purchase settled on-chain and became playable in March 2026. Safari DRM playback followed in April, the web service and Cannes beta in May, and a production web release in July. In October, I prepared the v0.3.0 release package, bringing together later work on episodic content, subscriptions, advertising, settlement, and recovery.

Additional contributions made the product easier to operate. I implemented VAST advertising behavior that allowed content to continue when inventory was empty or ad requests failed. Localization automation connected a scoped Laravel import endpoint to CI publishing, using merge-safe updates and translation diagnostics to replace manual resource imports in development and staging.

This work reinforced how much reliable delivery depends on understanding the complete product journey. Clear route responsibilities, explicit transaction state, and evidence-led playback investigations made complex integrations easier to explain and maintain. Being embedded in the team let me connect those technical decisions to product requirements and carry them through implementation, validation, and release preparation.

Delivery and reflection

Engineering a streaming platform across web and connected TV.

Affected cold-start requests in captured local development traces. Not a production-wide metric.

Down from approximately 3–4 seconds in captured local development traces. Not independently verified in production.

DCP+

Concrete is a decentralized finance platform built around on-chain yield vaults. Users deposit supported assets and receive vault shares representing their portion of a vault, giving them access to yield strategies through one interface. The value of those shares changes with the underlying assets and strategy performance.

Concrete’s documented vault model follows ERC-4626, a standard for tokenized vaults. The protocol handles strategy allocation, accounting, and withdrawal operations behind the interface.

I worked across Concrete Earn and Concrete Borrow, with different responsibilities on each product. For Earn, I was the sole frontend engineer, developing the complete application experience in React, Next.js, and TypeScript. My scope covered wallet connection and authentication, vault operations, deposits, withdrawals, rewards, balances, and portfolio experiences.

The work involved direct smart-contract integration alongside supporting APIs. I connected financial data and wallet authorization to the interface so users could review a position, authorize an operation, and follow its result within the application.

On Borrow, I worked alongside another engineer, contributing to multi-network vault management, liquidation protection, APY visibility, and reusable SDK integrations. This combined full application responsibility on Earn with focused contributions within Borrow’s shared implementation.

I built the Earn client from wallet connection and authentication through vault transactions, rewards, balances, and portfolio management. The application connected the information users needed to assess a vault with the operations needed to deposit, withdraw, and review their holdings.

I integrated on-chain reads, wallet signing, and transaction execution directly with smart contracts and supporting APIs. The client had to connect financial operations to understandable actions: reading a position supplied information, while changing it required a user-authorized transaction. My work joined those different interactions into the vault workflow.

Alongside another engineer, I contributed to multi-network vault management, liquidation protection features, and APY visibility. I also developed reusable SDK modules for partner integrations, extending those capabilities beyond a single application surface.

Engineering work

My work delivered the Earn client experience and targeted contributions to Borrow. The engagement reinforced the importance of making financial information and transaction authorization understandable together, with clear boundaries between what the client displayed and what users signed.

Engineering DeFi products around wallet identity, smart contracts, and financial workflows.

User-reported platform scale; not value personally generated by John. No reporting date supplied.

Owned the complete Concrete Earn client, from wallet identity to smart-contract transactions and portfolio views; contributed to Concrete Borrow.

Concrete Finance

Reka’s 2023 research application let users supply their own data to fine-tune models, then explore the results through streaming conversations. It connected model customization with a practical way to examine a model’s responses.

Beginning in March 2023, I worked as the sole client-side engineer on a greenfield AI research application. I built the client from scratch, covering assigned-token access, model fine-tuning workflows, and streaming conversations. The scope connected the user’s first access to the application with their later interaction with a customized model.

I integrated Python APIs that exposed the fine-tuning capabilities, building the user-facing path for supplying data and using the resulting models in chat. The backend services handled training and inference; my responsibility was the application through which users accessed those capabilities.

The conversational experience completed that workflow. I worked on progressive responses and conversation handling so model customization led into an ongoing exchange within the same application, rather than a disconnected set of research features.

I established the client application and integrated assigned-token access. I connected that access model to the research workflows, keeping client actions aligned with the operations supported by the backend contracts.

I integrated Python APIs that let users supply their own data for model customization. The client connected data submission and fine-tuning interactions with the resulting model’s conversational experience. This work concerned access to the training services, not implementation of the models or training infrastructure.

I built the chat interface to display responses progressively as they arrived while maintaining the ongoing conversation. This completed the customization journey by letting users interact with their fine-tuned models in the same application.

The application brought token-based access, model customization, and streaming conversations together. Building it strengthened my approach to greenfield engineering: define the client’s responsibilities around the user journey and validate those responsibilities against the capabilities of the underlying services.

Building a greenfield AI research application for model fine-tuning and streaming conversations.

Sole client-side engineer for a greenfield AI research app, integrating model fine-tuning through Python APIs and streaming conversations.

Reka AI

React Native work on app lifecycle, iOS location and motion permissions, trip tracking, and dashboard synchronization.

Cardata

PlaiDay was a social mobile application centered on AI-generated content. Users could create images, explore creative themes, and share generated content through interactions with friends and followers.

I worked on several major experiences within the PlaiDay mobile application, including Re-imagine, Multi-subject image generation, theme architecture, and social notifications. My contribution spanned React Native implementation and native mobile integrations where those experiences required them.

The work connected creative input with generated content and the social interactions that followed. Re-imagine began with a written scenario; Multi-subject brought together images of friends or family, a selected theme, generated captions, and sharing. I contributed to those multi-step journeys and to the theme re-architecture supporting the creative experience.

I also worked on notification experiences involving followed users and people tagged in Multi-subject content. Across these areas, my role was to implement the mobile product behavior around generation and sharing, rather than the underlying image-generation models.

I implemented the user-facing workflow that connected a written scenario or creative situation to AI image generation. The mobile experience carried the user’s story into the generation interaction and presented the resulting image as the output of that creative process.

I contributed to the workflow for supplying multiple images of friends or family, choosing a theme, and generating a composition featuring them together. My work included the theme re-architecture and experiences around generated captions and sharing with friends or followers, connecting generation to its social use.

I worked on notifications associated with followed users and people tagged in Multi-subject content, alongside React Native and native integration work where required. These interactions connected the content-creation experience with the people participating in or following it.

My contributions connected AI image generation, multi-step mobile workflows, and social interactions across several product experiences. The work reinforced the need to consider the entire creative journey: how users supplied an idea, how themes shaped the result, and how that result reached the people involved.

Contributed to Re-imagine, Multi-subject generation, theme architecture, and social notifications in a React Native AI application.

PlaiDay

NFL ALL DAY is a marketplace and digital collectibles experience built around officially licensed NFL moments represented as NFTs. Fans can purchase and collect moments, bringing commerce and digital ownership into an interactive sports experience.

I worked on the initial version of NFL ALL DAY, contributing to the early product experience and purchasing workflows. My work included the initial landing page and NFT purchase flow involving FLOW blockchain transactions, as well as collectible cards and moment reveal animations.

Those pieces supported different parts of the same marketplace journey: introducing the product, moving through a purchase, and experiencing a collectible moment. I contributed to that client-side journey within the wider platform effort, rather than building the blockchain infrastructure.

I used Next.js and server-side rendering for the web application, alongside XState for application state management. I also worked on an internal component library that supported consistency across the initial application. My scope combined purchasing behavior, interactive collectibles, and reusable client foundations.

I contributed to the initial landing page and early NFT purchasing flow, including integration with FLOW-based digital asset transactions. This connected the product’s entry experience with the commerce interactions required to acquire collectible moments.

I worked on collectible cards and animated moment reveals. The reveal was part of how fans encountered a digital collectible, connecting its presentation with the experience of discovering the NFL moment rather than serving only as decoration.

I used XState to model application workflow states and contributed to an internal component library. Together with Next.js and server rendering, these provided foundations for the initial marketplace’s behavior and consistent presentation.

My work contributed to an early marketplace experience where purchasing, digital ownership, and interactive collectibles came together. It reinforced the need to treat transaction workflows and collectible presentation as connected parts of a product, supported by explicit state and reusable components.

Contributed to the initial marketplace, FLOW-based purchasing, moment reveals, and reusable client foundations.

NFL ALL DAY

IHLAD’s mobile application supports patient-facing healthcare experiences, including appointments, preparation information, care interactions, and related health services.

I joined an existing React Native and Expo codebase for a short engagement of approximately three weeks, backfilling an absent engineer to support ongoing mobile delivery. My first responsibility was to understand the existing application architecture and established product flows well enough to make targeted changes within the team’s conventions.

The work covered appointment-detail experiences, preparation-related information, partner-visit flows, and Week 7 Home content. I contributed within the application’s existing structure rather than introducing a new architecture.

The limited engagement called for a focused scope: become familiar with an unfamiliar healthcare product, implement the requested mobile improvements, and support continuity during the staffing gap. My role was feature delivery within an established team and codebase, not responsibility for the application as a whole.

I implemented targeted improvements to appointment details and preparation-related interfaces within the existing React Native and Expo application. The work connected patient-facing appointment information with the preparation content associated with the care journey, following the application’s established flows.

I contributed changes to partner-visit flows and Week 7 Home content after becoming familiar with the application’s architecture and conventions. These were focused delivery contributions that supported the team during a temporary staffing gap, rather than a redesign of the mobile system.

The engagement delivered targeted mobile improvements across appointment, preparation, partner-visit, and Home experiences. It reinforced the importance of understanding existing product flows quickly and making changes that fit the team’s conventions, especially when supporting a product for a short period.

A three-week React Native and Expo engagement supporting appointment, preparation, partner-visit, and Home experiences.

IHLAD

Shared marketplace experiences across web and mobile.

Global Villages

Reported improvement associated with the Picker App initiative. A team outcome, not attributed solely to John.

Ordering, visitor checkout, and fulfillment on mobile.

Selected Work

Lazer Technologies

IHLAD

DCP+

Concrete Finance

PlaiDay

Cardata

Reka AI

NFL ALL DAY

Global Villages

Mart

Selected Work

IHLAD ↗

DCP+ ↗

Concrete Finance ↗

PlaiDay ↗

Cardata ↗

Reka AI ↗

NFL ALL DAY ↗

IHLAD

DCP+

Concrete Finance

PlaiDay

Cardata

Reka AI

NFL ALL DAY