Open to senior roles — remote, hybrid or relocation

Keegan Frieslaar

Full-stack TypeScript engineer with production AWS ownership

8+ years building and operating web and cloud systems. I currently build MSA Grid at Safety iO (MSA Safety, NYSE: MSA) — safety-critical software where reliability protects people in hazardous environments — across Angular, Node/TypeScript and AWS.

See my work View CV

keegan.ts

const keegan = {
  role: 'Full-stack Engineer',
  based: 'Cape Town, ZA',
  experience: 8, // years
  stack: ['TypeScript', 'Angular',
           'Node', 'AWS'],
  owns: 'serverless infrastructure',
  offDuty: ['sim racing', 'go-karting'],
};

Years building software: 8+
Currently: Safety iO · MSA Safety
Owns in production: AWS serverless

01 — Selected work

Things I've built

Two systems where correctness mattered: a regulated financial exchange, and a platform people rely on to stay safe at work.

Xago

Live in production

Africa's first XRP (Ripple) digital asset exchange

Visit Xago

The problem: A regulated digital asset exchange has to present fast-moving market data accurately and legibly, while meeting the trust and compliance expectations of a financial platform handling real money.
My contribution: Owned the React front-endat Tenacious Digital

Owned the React front-end of the exchange, still live in production today.
Built real-time trading and price visualisation using react-vis.
Integrated a Swagger/OpenAPI-documented backend via swagger-client, keeping the front-end contract-driven.
Implemented fast catalogue and record search with Algolia InstantSearch.
Delivered location features with Leaflet mapping.

React
JavaScript
react-vis
Swagger / OpenAPI
Algolia InstantSearch
Leaflet

MSA Grid

Live in production

Connected-safety platform for industrial gas detection

About Safety iO

The problem: Safety managers need live visibility of gas-detection fleets and the people carrying them. When a detector alarms in a hazardous environment, the data has to arrive reliably and immediately — this is life-critical software, not a dashboard.
My contribution: Full-stack — front-end, back-end and cloud infrastructureat Safety iO

Build Angular front-ends with NGRX state management and i18next internationalisation for a globally deployed product.
Build Node/TypeScript REST APIs backed by PostgreSQL and DynamoDB.
Own production AWS serverless infrastructure — Lambda, API Gateway and Step Functions — scaling horizontally with concurrent demand.
Ship through automated Bitbucket Pipelines and Jenkins pipelines across demo, staging and production environments.
Cover the stack with unit, integration and end-to-end tests using Jest, Testing Library and Playwright.

Angular
TypeScript
NGRX
Node.js
PostgreSQL
AWS Lambda
Step Functions
CloudFormation
Datadog
Playwright

02 — Skills

What I work with

Every skill below is tied to where I actually used it. Nothing listed that I can't defend.

Languages

TypeScriptSafety iO
JavaScriptSafety iO, Tenacious Digital
SQLSafety iO

Front-end

AngularSafety iO
NGRXSafety iO
ReactTenacious Digital
i18nextSafety iO

Back-end

Node.jsSafety iO
REST API designSafety iO, Tenacious Digital
PostgreSQLSafety iO
DynamoDBSafety iO
OpenAPI / SwaggerTenacious Digital

Cloud & infrastructure

AWS LambdaSafety iO
API GatewaySafety iO
Step FunctionsSafety iO
CloudFormationSafety iO
AnsibleSafety iO
S3 / CloudFrontSafety iO
Linux (Arch)Safety iO

Testing

JestSafety iO
Testing LibrarySafety iO
PlaywrightSafety iO

Delivery & operations

JenkinsSafety iO
Bitbucket PipelinesSafety iO
DockerSafety iO
DatadogSafety iO
CloudWatchSafety iO
Git & code reviewSafety iO, Tenacious Digital

03 — Experience

Where I've worked

Eight years across fintech, e-commerce and safety-critical industrial software.

Software Engineer · Safety iO
Mar 2023 — Present (3 yrs 6 mos)
MSA Safety (NYSE: MSA)
Building MSA Grid, a connected-safety platform that monitors gas-detection fleets and worker safety in hazardous industrial environments. Full-stack across Angular, Node/TypeScript and AWS, within a 6-person sub-team collaborating with teams in Germany and the US.
- Build and operate MSA Grid end to end — Angular front-end, Node/TypeScript REST APIs and AWS infrastructure — for a safety-critical platform where reliability protects workers in hazardous environments.
- Own and operate production AWS serverless infrastructure using Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, DynamoDB and RDS/PostgreSQL, scaling horizontally with concurrent demand.
- Define infrastructure as code with Ansible-driven CloudFormation, and maintain automated Bitbucket Pipelines and Jenkins delivery promoting builds through demo, staging and production.
- Maintain unit, integration and end-to-end test coverage with Jest, Testing Library and Playwright across front-end and back-end.
- Instrument services with CloudWatch and Datadog, routing production alerts to on-call channels.
- Diagnosed and resolved a production outage in which a high-frequency polling endpoint saturated an RDS cluster, restoring stability through targeted database indexing.
- Mentor engineers and review code within a 6-person sub-team, working daily across time zones with distributed teams in Germany and the US.
- Deliver internationalised interfaces with i18next for a globally deployed product.
- TypeScript
- Angular
- NGRX
- Node.js
- PostgreSQL
- AWS Lambda
- API Gateway
- Step Functions
- DynamoDB
- RDS
- CloudFormation
- Ansible
- Jenkins
- Docker
- Datadog
- CloudWatch
- Jest
- Playwright
Software Engineer · Tenacious Digital
Jul 2018 — Mar 2023 (4 yrs 8 mos)
Delivered web and mobile products for clients across fintech and e-commerce, including Africa's first XRP digital asset exchange.
- Owned the React front-end of Xago, Africa's first XRP (Ripple) digital asset exchange — building real-time trading charts, Swagger-driven API integration and search against a regulated financial platform still live in production today.
- Built a customer-facing e-commerce platform for Masterparts, enabling online purchasing across their automotive parts catalogue.
- React
- JavaScript
- Node.js
- REST APIs

04 — About

How I work

Self-taught, and deliberate about it.

I came into software without a degree, which meant the only thing that ever counted was whether what I built actually worked. That shaped how I work: I care about testing, about systems staying up, and about understanding the layer underneath the one I'm working in.

That's how I ended up owning infrastructure as well as application code. If I ship a feature, I want to know how it deploys, what it costs, what happens when it fails at 2am, and who gets alerted.

I work daily across time zones with teams in Germany and the US, mentor engineers on my team, and review a lot of code. Outside work I'm usually chasing lap times — sim racing and go-karting, where the difference between quick and slow is data and consistency.

Certifications

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
Amazon Web Services
In progress

Education

Full-stack & cloud engineering
Self-directed learning · 2018–present
Software engineering course
Life Choices Academy · 2017–2018
National Senior Certificate (Matric)
Bergvliet High School · 2012–2016

Working with me

Based in: Cape Town, South Africa
Time zone: SAST (UTC+2)
Remote: Daily, across EU & US teams
Relocation: Open

05 — Contact

Let's build something.

Open to senior full-stack and cloud roles — remote, hybrid or relocation. Email is the fastest way to reach me.

keeganfrieslaar@gmail.com LinkedIn

Cape Town, South Africa · SAST (UTC+2)