Hi.

If you're reading this, you're looking at my application for the Design Engineer role at Tailwind Labs, and may (hopefully) be thinking of hiring me.

In any case, it'd be rude not to introduce myself properly!

Who am I?

My name is Thomas G. Lopes, I'm a 24 y/o nerd developer based in Portugal.
I live with my girlfriend, and two cats we rescued near our home.
(Pro #1, if you hire me, plenty of cat pictures 🐱)

I have way too many hobbies that I unequally distribute my time between, such as playing guitar 🎸, gaming 🎮, and jumping way too much in metal concerts.
(Pro #2, one more person to watch Slayer play!)
(...if they ever come out of retirement)

I started learning to code when I was 16, grabbing Python books online and hammering at them. I eventually got to college to study Computer Science, but no idea what field I wanted to specialize in.

I just knew it definitely wasn't web development. No way.

Thing is, I was the only one who gave a crap about how our assignments looked. So, out of moral obligation, I experimented and tinkered my way until our websites were shiny and pretty.

It was actually quite fun, and now here I am!

Where are you now, exactly?

I'm currently working at , one of the largest UK-based startups as a
front-end engineer.

I'm a Svelte ambassador, and also the maintainer of the biggest headless library for Svelte, .

A recreation of Headless UI's Combobox component in Svelte, using Melt UI

It's one of my most proud achievements throughout my career, and definitely my most challenging one. With it, I became a leader, a writer, a designer, a public speaker, you name it.

It's incredibly taxing, but also incredibly rewarding.

Wait, so you're a Svelte developer?

Not exactly. I'm a web developer first and foremost. I fell in love with the web, and my passion lies in making it a better place. I just use the tools that suit me best.

I've used React extensively, and I'm always tinkering with different frameworks. One of my goals is to build an agnostic headless library (that also works in vanilla JS, unlike existing solutions), and as such, diving deep into different frameworks is a regular occurrence for me.

In fact, not only is this site built (mostly) in React, but a lot of my work experience has been in React. Check it out.

Why should we choose you?

I'm extremely passionate. That may sound like a cliche answer, but it's one of the best ways to describe me and my work. I don't shy away from challenges and the unknown, and experiment until I find the best solution, obessing over details, sometimes to a fault.

This extends to Open Source, which I'm a huge advocate for. I'm drawn to it, as shown by my work with Melt UI, my participation in the Svelte community, and my previous work experience with Appwrite. I believe this would be a good fit with Tailwind, due to its huge impact in OSS.

I love working on intricate, interactive, and delightful designs/animations. Besides the ones I worked with in Dia and Kota, here's a short video showcasing some recent animations I worked on. And here's a blog post detailing the process behind the landing page animation.

I'm deep into Component Libraries & Design Systems. I've worked on them with Melt UI, Appwrite's design system, and a bunch of design systems made at Significa. I've written POCs, extensive documentation and guides, RFCs, you name it. I'm obsessed about them!

I also have tons of experience interacting with the tech community. I've given talks, appeared in podcasts, written blog posts, interact daily on Svelte's Discord, and also had my fair share of interactions during my time at Appwrite. Most of it results in me learning, or teaching other people, which is a win-win in my book.

Example time: Here's a fun demo I did to breakdown an old animation at Appwrite. I also wrote a blog post for it!

I'm learning more and more about accessibility. I have to, due to Melt UI! I'm creating components that need to be generally accessible in a variety of different contexts, so that requires a lot of study. I'm also currently going through Sara Soueidan's Practical Accessibility course.

Actually, I just love to learn! I'm also taking Bruno Simon's Three.js Journey course, and am always looking for new things to experiment with. I learn by doing, on the job, in personal projects, it doesn't matter as long as I'm finally figuring out how to do it.

I love going the extra mile. That sounds like a LinkedIn cliche, so here's an example: At Appwrite, our DevRels and Designers suffered with code snippet generation for social media. So I built a handy tool for it, Snapwrite.

Besides that, I'm just an easy-going guy. I love to chat, nerd out together about creating awesome stuff, and I believe we'd have a great time working together.

I could go on and on talking about myself. But I think it's better if we chat about it, and put me to the test, which is where I thrive.

I'd be ecstatic about the opportunity to work with you, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you soon.

In any case, thank you so much for reading through the end. I hope you enjoyed this small peek into my life and work, and this cute little website I made for you.

P.S. I know this looks a lot like my personal website, but I kinda developed them at the same time. I hope you don't mind!