Kai Nakamura
SENIOR FRONTEND ENGINEER · OPEN TO NEW ROLES
I build interfaces that scale.
I'm Kai — a frontend engineer with 7+ years of experience
shipping design systems, scaling component libraries, and
leading web performance initiatives for teams from seed to
Series C. I care deeply about developer experience,
accessibility, and the small details users feel but never see.
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ABOUT ME
I started my career bridging design and
engineering at a healthcare startup, where
I realized most product delays came from
handoff friction, not talent shortages. Since
then, I've specialized in the overlap:
building design systems that let product
teams move fast without breaking
consistency, and architecting frontend
platforms that stay maintainable as teams
grow.
How I got here
My background is in civil engineering — I spent
two years drafting structural plans before
teaching myself JavaScript to automate report
generation. That side project turned into a role
on the engineering team, and eventually into a
specialty in component-driven UI architecture.
How I work
I pair closely with designers to define bounded
components before any code is written. I write
tests alongside implementation, ship
incrementally behind feature flags, and treat
accessibility as a baseline constraint rather than
a polish pass. I believe the best code is the code
you can delete six months later without breaking
anything.
LinkedIn
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Résumé
Email
Portland, OR · Willing to relocate · kai.nakamura.dev@email.com
© 2026 Kai Nakamura
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