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Building the future, one line of code
at a time.

I'm Aleksi Salmela — a product-minded developer
and team lead who improves products, solves customer problems, and modernizes legacy systems.

Let's talk Discover my work

From curiosity to craft.

Started writing code in 2006 out of pure curiosity during elementary school and never stopped. From shipping my first real product at school to leading a development team at giosg, every step has been driven by a simple belief: software should genuinely help the people using it.

  1. 2006

    First line of code

    Wrote my first PHP webpage on MikroBitti magazine's free web hosting space for subscribers. Realised I could build things that actually worked — and got hooked.

  2. 2010

    First shipped product

    Built InfoTV at school to replace an ugly PowerPoint-based system that only worked in IE. Learning what it means to ship something real.

  3. 2017

    Nokia internship

    Joined an international team in Espoo building an internal test environment reservation system. Learned Django, MySQL, and what it's like to work across time zones with colleagues in Hangzhou.

  4. 2018

    BirdLife — rewriting Tiira

    Civil service turned into a paid role. Helped rewrite Finland's national bird observation service from a static prototype, introduced modern CI/CD, and learned what it takes to build for a mission-driven team.

  5. 2019

    Software Engineer at giosg

    Joined a fast-growing SaaS company. Deepened expertise in PostgreSQL performance, helped distribute test execution across multiple nodes, and transitioned into React development after a team restructuring.

  6. 2023

    Development Team Lead at giosg

    Led a development team while staying hands-on: clarified customer problems, shaped technical solutions, reviewed implementation plans, and helped modernize product areas without stopping delivery.

I believe great software is invisible.

I am at my best in roles where I can polish product experiences, understand customer problems, and improve systems that have grown complex over time. I enjoy working close to users and stakeholders, while still staying deep enough in the code to make the solution practical.

I work across the stack — from React frontends to PostgreSQL query plans — with a focus on product quality, maintainability, and incremental modernization. Outside of work, I enjoy baking, electronics, and experimenting with new technologies.

"Code is finished when junior developer can change it with confidence."
TypeScript
React
Node.js
PostgreSQL
Security
Architecture
Linux
Django

Product work and experiments.

nanoInkscape

Tried building a small vector graphics editor after discovering SVG support on modern web browsers. The color wheel and path editing experiments from this demo later showed up in other browser tools I built.

Text editor

A WYSIWYG editor side quest from InfoTV, built in plain JavaScript without frameworks. It taught me how hard browser rich-text editing really is and why I am happy to use Slate in my current and future work.

Pelix

Wrote a parser, interpreter, and debugger for a small toy language during a personal two-week hackathon in Lapland. I wanted to teach programming to my cousin. The off the shelf generic parsing library was rewritten after hitting performance limits with error handling.

The right amount of process
for each problem.

  1. Understand

    Clarify the customer and stakeholder problem before choosing a solution. Understand where the request is coming from and what would make the product better.

  2. Design

    Shape a practical path through the product, codebase, and customer setups. Consider usability, internationalization, and the legacy constraints that affect delivery.

  3. Build incrementally

    Ship small, working pieces when the feature is large enough. Avoid over-engineering and keep reviews focused so the team can keep moving.

  4. Refine

    The first version does not need to be perfect. Measure, learn, and iterate. Leave the product and codebase easier to improve next time.

Trusted by those
who ship things.

These are some of the things people have said about me that have stuck with me. They are all paraphrased from memory. So not literal quotes.

  • Wow, you really care about the project.

    I wanted to talk with him about an issue. I do not remember the exact issue anymore, but that comment stuck with me.

    Teammate from hangzhou office Nokia
  • Aleksi is such coding god (fin. koodijumala)

    A few times I helped a colleague after he had been stuck on Django issues.

    Member of AI team giosg
  • You have a nice mix of technical and commercial skills.

    After a meeting where we talked through product direction and technical tradeoffs.

    C-level manager giosg

Let's build something
together.

Have an idea in mind, a problem worth solving, or just want to say hello? My inbox is always open.