Product and backend
- Laravel
- PHP
- APIs
- permissions
- forms
- testing
Systems / Images / Infrastructure
About Dean
I’m Dean Johnston, a full-stack software engineer from Newcastle upon Tyne. I build practical systems across product engineering, infrastructure, automation, and astrophotography.
“I like the messy parts of systems: APIs, queues, telemetry, deployment, monitoring, and the interfaces that make them usable.”
My work sits between application engineering and the operational systems around it: backend APIs, full-stack product features, deployment paths, observability, and the small internal tools that keep teams moving.
Outside day-to-day product work, I use personal projects as a practical test bench. SQMeter explores embedded telemetry and field measurement. dean0.space is where astrophotography, metadata, and publishing workflows meet. The homelab keeps the infrastructure side grounded in real services that need to stay understandable.
How I work
Prefer clear systems over clever ones.
Make operational state visible before it becomes a production problem.
Build interfaces that explain the underlying workflow without getting in the way.
Keep deployment, observability, and maintenance in the design from the start.
What I care about
Frontend systems
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Astro
- interfaces
- content
Infrastructure
- Docker
- Traefik
- Cloudflare
- deployment
- monitoring
- homelab
Telemetry and imaging
- ESP32
- MQTT
- REST
- Grafana
- InfluxDB
- dean0.space
Next steps
The best overview is the work index. For a direct conversation about software, infrastructure, automation, or imaging systems, contact is the right route.