Nikhil MukundanEmail me

Nikhil Mukundan · Software developer · UAE

Notes from a developer in the UAE

I’m Nikhil. I build fast websites and web apps with React, Next.js and PostgreSQL, and write about what I learn doing it.

See my projectsRead the blog
Nikhil Mukundan in a navy suit, checking his phone
Now
Software Developer at Woodlem Education
Builds
School websites, an admissions CRM, side projects
Stack
React · Next.js · Supabase · SEO

Clients

The people I build for

Schools, nurseries, a college and an education consultancy, in the UAE and India.

  • Woodlem Education
  • Hampton Heights British Private School
  • Columbia Crest American School
  • Dewvale School, Al Quoz
  • Smart Kids British Nursery
  • Red Roses British Nursery
  • EduPro Advanced
  • Malabar Arts & Science College for Women, Chekkiad

What I do

Where I can help

01

Web applications

Full-stack apps in Next.js and TypeScript on PostgreSQL: CRMs, staff portals, booking and rental registers. Sign-in and roles, row-level security, dashboards, file uploads, and PDFs generated on the server.

2–6 weeks, depending on scope

Recent: Admissions CRM, Sandglass

02

Websites that get found

Fast, accessible websites with the technical SEO done properly: structured data, clean metadata, sitemaps, and pages that stay quick on a mid-range phone.

Landing page in 3–5 days · full website in 1–2 weeks

Recent: School websites, edupro.ae

03

From design to code

I started out in design, so I can take a rough idea to a finished, responsive interface on my own, in English or Arabic.

Timelines start once the brief and content arrive

Recent: Wedding website, Woodlem Times

Selected projects

Things I've built

01

Sandglass

A focus app for the UAE, my own product

A focus timer built for people in the UAE. It knows the prayer times for every emirate, works in English and Arabic, and needs no account to use.

How it’s built
  • Next.js 15 and TypeScript. Prayer times are calculated on the device with the adhan library, so a session can pause for prayer without a server round trip.
  • Full Arabic with right-to-left layout, and installable as a PWA.
  • Works completely as a guest. Signing in syncs through Supabase, with row-level security on every table.
  • Share cards are drawn on Canvas at 1080×1920, and the ambient sound is synthesised with the Web Audio API rather than shipped as audio files.

TypeScript · Next.js · Supabase · PWA2026 · In development

02

Admissions CRM

Woodlem Education

The system the admissions teams across Woodlem’s schools use to track every enquiry, from a web form or a Facebook ad through to a booked campus visit.

How it’s built
  • Next.js on Supabase. Postgres row-level security decides what each login can see: staff only ever see their own campus’s leads, and super admins see the whole group.
  • Separate logins for registrars, reception and admission officers, with lead assignment and a change log of who touched what.
  • A locked-down role for the outside social media agency. It can import a Meta Ads CSV into a campus through a single security-definer function, and cannot read one existing lead.
  • One-tap WhatsApp from any lead, with phone numbers cleaned up first. Note history, stale-lead flags, appointment dates, and a special-needs flag so a campus can plan before the family arrives.

Next.js · Supabase · PostgreSQL · Row-level security2026 · Internal, in daily use

03

Staff portal

Woodlem Education

One login for the group’s staff, opening onto the tools each person is allowed to use: admissions leads, a facility rental register for every school, and marketing.

How it’s built
  • Supabase Auth with row-level security, so each person only sees the portals and schools granted to them.
  • Replaces spreadsheets and WhatsApp threads: leads from the website and social ads arrive on their own, and every school keeps its rentals in one register.
  • Deployed on Vercel, with DNS on Cloudflare.

Next.js · Supabase Auth · Row-level security2026 · Internal, in daily use

04

Wedding website

Freelance

An invitation site covering a couple’s betrothal, wedding and reception, with online RSVPs and a shared photo album the guests fill themselves.

How it’s built
  • Guests RSVP and upload their own photos from the day. RSVPs and photo records live in Supabase, the images in Cloudinary.
  • A page for each event, each with a QR code that opens the venue in Maps.

Next.js · Supabase · Cloudinary2026

05

School websites

Woodlem Education group

Websites for the group’s schools in the UAE and India, built in Next.js to load quickly and rank for parents searching locally.

How it’s built
  • On the newest builds every page is statically generated, with no CSS framework and no third-party scripts. The only client JavaScript is the menu, the forms and click-to-play video.
  • Per-page metadata, generated sitemaps, and structured data for each school.
  • All content lives in data files, separate from the components, so changing fees or staff is an edit to one file.
  • Rebuilds of Dewvale School and Hampton Heights British Private School are in progress.

columbiacrest.ae for School websites, opens in a new tabwoodlempark.ae for School websites, opens in a new tabwoodlempark.in for School websites, opens in a new tab

Next.js · Technical SEO · Core Web Vitals2026

06

Woodlem Times

School newspaper generator

A browser tool that lets a school put together its own printed newsletter and download it as a print-ready PDF.

How it’s built
  • Each school signs in to its own space, writes the issue, uploads photos and sets its masthead. Sessions are signed JWTs.
  • The issue is laid out in HTML and CSS, then printed to PDF on the server by Playwright driving headless Chromium, so the layout is real CSS rather than a PDF library’s drawing calls.
  • Built for several schools from the start: one codebase, with a separate paper name, logo and issue for each.

Next.js · Playwright · JWT2026 · Internal

07

Pill Identifier

Medication recognition from a photo

A web app that identifies a prescription pill from a photograph and tells you what it is.

How it’s built
  • Trained a Keras CNN on 224×224 pill images covering 20 medications, and served it from Flask.
  • The result is not just a label. It returns the drug class, the generic name, what the pill is for, and a warning to check with a doctor.

Source code for Pill Identifier, opens in a new tab

Python · Flask · TensorFlow · Keras2024–25

More work

Writing

Latest from the blog

Notes from the things I build: what worked, what didn’t, and why.

All postsRSS

  1. 2 min read

    What actually makes a school website fast

    Lessons from rebuilding school websites in Next.js: static pages, almost no JavaScript, lighter images and technical SEO for parents searching locally.

    Performance, SEO, Next.js

  2. 2 min read

    Building Sandglass: prayer times without a server

    How Sandglass calculates prayer times on the device, keeps its timer honest in background tabs, and works properly in Arabic.

    Next.js, TypeScript, Product

  3. 3 min read

    Locking down a CRM with Postgres row-level security

    How Postgres row-level security keeps each school's leads private in a Supabase admissions CRM, and lets an agency import leads without reading any.

    Supabase, PostgreSQL, Security

Experience

Where I've worked

Oct 2025–PresentCurrent

Software Developer

Woodlem Education · UAE

Joined as Web Developer on 17 October 2025, promoted to Software Developer in October 2026.

  • Built the admissions CRM the group’s schools use to manage every enquiry, on Next.js and Supabase.
  • Build and run the websites for 12+ schools and education ventures, for over 4,000 visitors a day.
  • Built Woodlem Times, which turns a school’s newsletter into a print-ready PDF.
  • Much of the day-to-day is load performance and technical SEO, because these schools compete on local search.

Jun–Jul 2024

Software Development Intern

Bridgeon Solutions · Kinfra Infopark, Calicut

  • Built responsive, accessible interfaces with a small product team.
  • Turned design mockups into React components and took them through senior review.

Sep 2024

Web Development Lecturer

DevLabs · Online bootcamp

  • Taught JavaScript fundamentals, layout and DOM work to 140+ students.

Nov 2022–Jun 2025

Chief Creative Officer

IEDC, Vidya Academy of Science and Technology · Thrissur, India

  • Ran visual identity and design for the campus innovation cell.

Skills

My everyday toolkit

Languages

  • JavaScript (ES6+)
  • TypeScript
  • SQL (PostgreSQL)
  • Python
  • HTML and CSS

Frameworks

  • React
  • Next.js (App Router)
  • Node.js
  • Zustand
  • Tailwind CSS

Platforms

  • Supabase: Postgres, Auth, RLS
  • Vercel
  • Git and GitHub
  • Playwright
  • Figma

Practice

  • Responsive layout from 320px
  • Accessibility to WCAG AA
  • Core Web Vitals
  • Technical SEO
  • Arabic and RTL layout

Beyond code

I do the visual side too

Most of my work is code. Clients often ask for the posts, posters and videos that bring people to their sites, so I make those as well, held to the same brand.

  • Chikarro social post: hands holding a chicken wrap under the words Unwrap the Magic

    Unwrap the magic Social post

  • Chikarro AI poster: the chicken mascot reading reviews on a phone

    Bad reviews AI poster

  • Chikarro social post: a plate of crispy chicken wings

    Crispy wings Social post

  • Chikarro AI poster: the mascot in a kandura announcing the Abu Dhabi branch

    Coming to Abu Dhabi AI poster

  • Chikarro social post announcing the Abu Dhabi opening with a bucket meal

    Open now in Abu Dhabi Social post

  • Chikarro AI poster: the mascot as a delivery rider for Keeta

    We are on Keeta AI poster

  • Chikarro social post: a woman eating a burger meal

    Beyond cravings Social post

  • Chikarro menu poster with three bucket deals and prices

    The crunch bucket AI poster

  • Chikarro social post announcing the Kuwait branch with a photo of the shopfront

    Now frying in Kuwait Social post

  • Woodlem Education AI poster for Mother's Day: a mother and daughter at a laptop

    Happy Mother's Day AI poster

Social media posts

On-brand posts for Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn: product drops, menus, offers and launches.

One post in 24 hours · a monthly pack of 12–15 in 5–7 days

AI posters

Campaign visuals and mascots generated with AI, then colour-matched and finished with real typography.

1–2 days per poster

Company profiles

Multi-page PDF profiles for education investment groups: Meta Minds, Qimam Crest and Veyora.

1–2 weeks

About

Hi, I’m Nikhil

I’m a software developer based in the UAE. Most of my work is in React and Next.js. A lot of my time goes on the things users notice but never mention: how fast a page loads, how the layout holds up on a cheap phone, whether a screen reader can get through it.

I studied computer science, but I got into building things through design. For three years I ran visual design for my college’s innovation cell, and that is still how I approach layout and type.

Day to day I build production web software: admissions systems, marketing websites and internal tools, mostly in React, Next.js and PostgreSQL. Outside work I’m building Sandglass, my own product. I’m looking for software developer and engineering roles in the UAE, on-site or remote, and I hold my own visa, so there is no sponsorship to arrange.

Based in
United Arab EmiratesOwn visa, no sponsorship needed
Education
B.Tech, Computer ScienceVidya Academy of Science and Technology, 2021–2025
Works in
React, Next.js, TypeScript, PostgresPerformance, accessibility, SEO
Languages
English, Malayalam, Hindi

LinkedInGitHub

Contact

Let’s talk

I’m open to software roles in the UAE, and to freelance work: websites, web apps, and the posts and videos around them. Tell me what you need and I’ll tell you when it’s ready.

xnikhilmukundan@gmail.com