Joakim Strandell

20+ years in UX/UI Design and Fullstack Engineering

From Soapbox Cars to Enterprise Products

I’ve always liked building things. As a kid it was boats, soapbox cars, and questionable DIY cigarettes. Later it became websites, apps, and digital products. The tools changed, but the curiosity stayed the same.

In my twenties I started my first company, built a few SaaS tools before “SaaS” was even a thing, and later co-founded a small digital studio that ended up working with brands like H&M, MTV, and BMW.

For the last decade working as a consultant, I’ve operated at the intersection of UX/UI Design and Fullstack Engineering.

Most recently, I spent 7 years with Stockholm Exergi, designing consistent user experiences and transitioning their platform to a modern, type-safe React architecture and API layer.

My experienceCV as PDF
Old man laptop

My Philosophy

Great products are built in the overlap.

For too long, design and engineering have lived in separate rooms. Designers dream up interfaces that are hard to build, and engineers build systems that are hard to use.

I believe the best work happens when those walls come down. By combining UX strategy with fullstack engineering, I remove the friction of the "hand-off." I don't just hand over a design file and hope for the best; I write the code that brings it to life.

This approach allows for rapid iteration and pragmatic decision-making. We can fix design flaws in the code and fix technical limitations in the design. The result is a product that feels cohesive, performs beautifully, and ships on time.

Pragmatic Craftsmanship

I believe in the space between detail and pragmatism. Great software needs to feel polished and substantial, but it also needs to ship. I focus my energy on the 20% of details that provide 80% of the value, ensuring the product feels premium without getting stuck in the weeds.

Zero-Loss Translation

The biggest risks in product development happen during the hand-off. Because I speak both languages, design and code, nothing gets lost in translation. I build what I design, ensuring the final product matches the initial vision down to the last pixel.

Built to Last

Software shouldn't just be functional; it should be maintainable and humane. I treat code like a craft, building robust architectures and intuitive interfaces that respect the users time and the developerss sanity.

Experience

In recent years, I’ve focused on uniting user-centered design principles with frontend engineering — working closely with product teams to design thoughtful experiences, build scalable frontend infrastructures and developer tooling, and bring clarity between design and code through documentation and shared best practices.

Stockholm Exergi · 2018-2025

Contract · 7 years · UX/UI Designer and Frontend Developer

As a long-term consultant for Stockholm Exergi’s Intelligy Solution Platform, I led initiatives spanning UX/UI design, frontend development and infrastructure. I helped transition multiple products from a Python/Django-based interface to a modern React architecture, and later focused on building scalable frontend systems – including design systems, shared libraries, developer tooling, and documentation – to improve consistency and efficiency across applications and teams. In recent years, I’ve focused on uniting user-centered design principles with frontend engineering — working closely with product teams to design thoughtful experiences, build scalable frontend infrastructures and developer tooling, and bring clarity between design and code through documentation and shared best practices.

  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Design Systems
  • Frontend Development
  • Developer Tooling

I joined Stockholm Exergi as a UX/UI Designer for Intelligy Solutions – a platform used by property owners to monitor, control and analyze district energy usage, subplant capacity, and indoor climate across single buildings or large property portfolios. My work centered on creating intuitive, data-driven interfaces to enhance usability and deliver clear, actionable information to users.

After my initial work in UX/UI design, I was contracted to contribute to frontend development. My responsibilities began with implementing a new GUI within the existing Python and Django stack. As the platform evolved, we transitioned to a single-page application architecture in React, establishing a clear separation between backend and frontend.

Over five years, I worked across multiple Intelligy Solutions products, primarily internal tools for managing installations and load balancing in district energy networks, with a focus on both UX/UI design and frontend development.

In recent years, I have concentrated on frontend infrastructure – designing and building design systems, component libraries, tooling for application configuration, API SDK generation, and shared libraries for formatting and translations, all maintained in a shared monorepo for consistency and efficiency across applications.

As the frontend team grew, I supported onboarding new developers and took the lead in creating comprehensive guidelines and documentation. This included not only Git workflows and commit strategies, but also API specification and design guidelines, deployment strategies, and best practices for working within our shared codebase. These efforts helped ensure consistency, clarity, and efficiency as the team and product portfolio expanded.

Technical Stack

I rely on a modern, type-safe stack that prioritizes developer experience and long-term maintainability. My go-to architecture leverages React 18+ and TypeScript, using TanStack Query for robust server state data management and Zod for end-to-end validation. I am a JavaScrip first kind of developer, but I am also comfortable with other server side languages like Python and PHP.

Design

  • Miro
  • Sketch & Figma
  • Affinity & Adobe

Frontend

  • React
  • Next.js
  • Tailwind CSS
  • TypeScript
  • Shadcn UI

Backend

  • Node.js
  • Express
  • PostgreSQL

Tools

  • Git
  • Docker
  • CI/CD

Tools

  • Git
  • Docker
  • CI/CD