Nikhil Gahlaut

National Review, a subscription news and commerce platform. Built the reader experience (homepage, section hubs, articles, magazine, podcasts, video) on Next.js 16 and React 19 from structured Sanity content packages via GROQ, with tag-based cache revalidation and an embedded Sanity Studio for editors. Worked within a paywall architecture that rewrites gated articles to entitlement-specific cached routes (an 8-hour Recurly lease on the Clerk session), so paid content stays cacheable; implemented return-to-article after checkout. Developed Recurly subscription, donation, gift, and group-plan checkout and account screens, plus a Shopify mini cart and Buy Now checkout, using Zod-validated route handlers and TanStack Query. Added Algolia InstantSearch, contributed to a personalized follows feed (PostgreSQL, Drizzle, Recombee, Customer.io via a transactional outbox), and wrote Vitest and React Testing Library tests and Storybook stories, with GitHub Actions CI on every pull request. Built an executive reporting dashboard end-to-end with Recharts (P&L charts, KPI tables, PDF/Excel export), optimized the underlying MS SQL with indexes and query batching, cut re-renders with code-splitting and useMemo, and built infinite scroll, pagination, and optimistic UI for a content management dashboard on the Next.js App Router. Delivered the frontend architecture for a full RBAC system: a usePermission(action) hook driving rendering across 18 modules, 77 permissions, and 9 action types, with JWT-embedded permissions enforced by Express middleware.

Built the candidate-facing test-taking UI in React.js with timed modules, question navigation, and flow between sections. Implemented autosave using localStorage as a local backup synced to the backend via REST API, so answers survive a page refresh or dropped connection. Rewrote an N+1 query pattern on LevelUp into a single batched GROUP BY query, reducing results-listing page load time by ~60% (from ~4s to under 1.5s) for a platform serving 10,000+ candidates. Wrote Jest unit tests for core components and used React Testing Library for UI-level test coverage on assigned modules. Implemented JWT authentication with RBAC enforcement, and built Node JS cron jobs automating recurring report generation and emailing, removing manual weekly export work for the team.