Hello! I'm Kar Rui.
I work on cool software engineering projects.

Building cool stuff for the public good.
Currently: Lead Software Engineer @ Open Government Products

About

Even though my main interest is in software engineering, I find design interaction a fascinating field, where engineering and design combines to create an efficient, beautiful, and most importantly usable product. I hope I have managed to do that with my personal website, at least!

Off work, I can be tinkering with my 3D printer(s) (Voron owners unite!), messing up my smart home setup, or playing wonderful board games like Carcassonne and Castles of Burgundy.

I also have a slight obsession with mechanical ergonomic keyboards (such as the Charybdis Nano).

Skills

I'm not terrible at:
JavaScript TypeScript ReactJS Next.js NodeJS PostgreSQL git
I have dabbled in:
Flutter Java C C++ Python Swift expressJS

Experience

  • Apr 2024 - Current

    Lead Software Engineer Open Government Products

    We build systems and improve public good. I work across design systems, full-stack product development, and developer infrastructure — and was part of the team tasked to work on Singapore’s COVID-19 response.
    • Evolved OGP’s internal design system into oui, an SSR-compatible successor with 36+ accessible components for Next.js App Router — now the default design system for newly created products across the organisation.
    • Diagnosed ask.gov.sg’s end-of-life framework as a maintainability and open-source risk and led a 4-month rewrite through influence rather than positional authority — zero regressions, with measurable performance and SEO gains; the architecture patterns became the org-wide Starter Kit.
    • Inherited maps.gov.sg as a hackathon POC and hardened it with queuing, auth middleware, and rate limiting — sustaining 20× growth (25k → 502k views) with no app-level incidents before a clean handoff to a dedicated team.
    • Built an internal CLI tool that replaces multi-day manual infrastructure provisioning, generating isolated, production-ready AWS environments with CI/CD in ~10 minutes — now the standard for new product infrastructure.
    • Embedded in the Isomer rebuild to set up engineering foundations: CI/CD, Storybook and Chromatic for design–engineer handoff, and lightweight ADRs — practices that persisted after handoff.
    Oct 2021 - Apr 2024

    Senior Software Engineer

    • Tech-led MyActiveSG+ end-to-end, building a one-day prototype that secured internal buy-in and countered a vendor lock-in (saving ~S$12M), and drove it through two pilots to public launch at ~150k bookings/month at handoff.
    • Led the zero-downtime migration of FormSG’s frontend from AngularJS to React 17, eliminating a critical maintenance liability while keeping the service live throughout.
    • Authored OGP’s internal design system (adopted by 70% of live projects) and the starter kit template used to bootstrap 70% of all products in 2024.
    Feb 2020 - Oct 2021

    Software Engineer

    • Led the full TypeScript migration of FormSG’s REST API, refactoring to RESTful conventions with end-to-end type safety across the backend.
    • Built the clinician-facing frontend for Singapore’s national COVID-19 vaccination appointment system — the primary interface for clinic staff managing patient vaccinations at scale.

    Tech stack:

    TypeScript JavaScript ReactJS Next.js NodeJS AWS
  • May 2019 - Aug 2019

    Software Engineering Intern G o o g l e

    Sorry for the colours. I couldn't help it.
    • Interned for 14 weeks as part of the Google Pay team in Singapore
    • Completed and had full ownership of one new feature in the Android application, including but not limited to high level architecture, design decisions, implementation, and testing
    • Work closely with peers to ensure good architectural design and strong software engineering principles in code commited

    Tech stack:

    Java Android

For a more detailed view, check out my resume

Want to chat?

Write to me at hello@karrui.dev, or fill in the contact form below!