Pathfinder Education - Networking Platform

Pathfinder is an education networking platform that connects universities, high schools, and counselors across 78 countries. The platform serves 283+ universities and 4,209+ high schools, helping them build meaningful professional connections.

I worked as the founding full-stack engineer, responsible for building the entire web application from scratch. This included the frontend, backend API, database design, and deployment infrastructure on Google Cloud Run.

TanStack Start, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Tailwind CSS, Google Cloud Run, Cloudflare

Real-time messaging system between institutions. Advanced search and filtering for schools and universities. Role-based access control for admin, school, university, and counselor roles. Institution profile management. Connection request workflow. Analytics dashboard for engagement tracking. Responsive design for mobile and desktop.

The biggest challenge was designing a data model flexible enough to handle different institution types while keeping queries fast across thousands of records. I solved this with a polymorphic association pattern in PostgreSQL combined with strategic indexing.

Another challenge was building real-time messaging that scales. I implemented WebSocket connections with connection pooling to handle concurrent users without overloading the server.