Job When?

Job When? is a web platform built for SENG 513 to help students and new graduates manage their job search. The app uses gamification (XP, goals, and badges) to make an often demoralising process feel more structured and social.

Team and scope

Five-person team project over a full semester at UCalgary. The scope covered authentication, application tracking, goal-setting, peer visibility, and a leaderboard. I contributed across the full stack.

Architecture

React + Vite frontend, Flask REST API, PostgreSQL 15 database, orchestrated with Docker Compose. Any team member could spin up the full stack locally with a single command (docker compose up --build), with schema.sql and seed.sql running automatically on first start. Authentication uses Google OAuth with the client ID passed through environment variables to both services.

Engineering challenges

Coordinating five developers on a full-stack project meant establishing clear API contracts early. Docker Compose gave us reproducible local environments, which reduced the integration friction that comes from subtle differences in individual setups.

What I learned

Working across a containerised full-stack project taught me how the pieces fit together at the system level. Not just writing code in isolation, but thinking about how the frontend, API, and database communicate, and how to make that setup reproducible for an entire team.