Handcrafted. Quality over quantity.

I began working at Hofmann Language Services, a private language school, as a freelance web developer in January 2012. My first project was the school's international website. The previous site had been untouched for nearly a decade, so I was given complete freedom to design and build the new one from scratch. I approached it with a clear goal in mind — drive more enquiries by getting the fundamentals right: SEO, responsiveness, and accessibility.

The results spoke for themselves. Within the first month of going live, the school saw an 80% increase in conversions. It was one of my earliest projects, and looking back I can see how much I've grown as a developer since then — but the impact it had gave me the confidence to commit fully to this career path, and I've never looked back.

With the international site wrapped up, I moved on to the Japanese website. This one came with a unique challenge: the design had been created for printed flyers, and I had to find a way to translate it into something that worked on screen without losing its character. On top of that, I had to get up to speed with Japanese web design conventions and how Japanese text flows on a page — things that differ quite significantly from Western web design.

The effort paid off. Feedback from Japanese students was overwhelmingly positive — they appreciated that the site felt like it had been made with them in mind rather than simply adapted from the international version. Conversions from Japanese students saw a significant jump, validating the decision to give this audience their own tailored experience.

In 2026, Hofmann Language Services celebrated its 50ᵗʰ anniversary, and we decided it was the perfect opportunity to rebuild the Japanese website from the ground up with a fresher, more modern feel that also honored the milestone.

As with the original Japanese site, I was initially expected to adapt a flyer-based design for the web. After working through several iterations, the school owner and I decided to go with an original design instead. That decision made all the difference. Free from the constraints of an existing design, I was able to build something truly polished, responsive, and modern. It is, without a doubt, the work I am most proud of — a project that for me represents how much I have grown as a developer since the first website I built for the school.

In January 2019, I joined Jobvalley, a service provider for young professionals, as a mobile engineer. I played a leading role in building the mobile app from the ground up. Since its launch in January 2020, over 100,000 Germans have used it to find work, and in 2022 the company recorded a turnover of €113.4 million alongside 20% revenue growth — numbers that reflect just how much traction the platform gained in a relatively short period of time.

This was my first experience working as an employee in tech rather than as a freelancer, and it turned out to be one of the most rewarding chapters of my career having had the opportunity to work alongside such a talented team. In October 2024 I handed in my resignation, and in January 2025 I moved to the Philippines with my family.

I began working at Bestlearn, an educational tech company and a subsidiary of Perapera, as a web developer and mobile engineer in June 2016. The first project I worked on was the website which would showcase several apps I built including Mirrorim, Tense Master, and Memo.

The website differentiates itself from other websites I've built in that it has a much more playful aesthetic including many SVGs and animations. It also hosted webapp versions of some of the mobile apps as well as a variety of custom-built internal software systems used by both Bestlearn and Perapera such as a content management system, a room booking system, and a Kanban board.

My first app for Bestlearn was Mirrorrim, a memory game built around a deliberately minimal design: dots appear on the top screen in a specific sequence, and players mimic that order by tapping the corresponding spots on the bottom screen. The simplicity is intentional, training short-term memory and concentration without unnecessary distraction, and the game reflects my broader preference for clean, intuitive interfaces.

Mirrorrim surpassed 10,000 downloads and earned strong reviews from students and casual gamers alike, peaking at 4.6 stars on the Play Store. It was also recognized by Google as a "Teacher Approved" app, a distinction reserved for titles that meet specific standards for educational value and age-appropriate design.

My next app for Bestlearn was Tense Master, an educational tool designed to help learners of English as a foreign language master the English tense system. The app offers over 100 lessons alongside an unlimited supply of exercises generated through natural language generation techniques, ensuring practice never feels repetitive. Beyond the base tenses, it covers grammatical aspects such as mood and voice, giving users the freedom to customize each set of exercises to their specific learning needs.

Like Mirrorrim, Tense Master proved equally successful, surpassing 10,000 downloads and earning excellent reviews that peaked at 4.7 stars on the Play Store, a result that reflected the same demand I'd seen with Mirrorrim for tools combining depth of content with flexibility.

The last and largest app I built for Bestlearn was Memo, an educational vocabulary game featuring over 100 categories. Each category consisted of 8 words, available across several languages including English, German, French, and Spanish. The app also featured professional voice acting, a login system, high scores, and multiplayer, making it the most ambitious project I'd taken on at Bestlearn.

After accepting a job offer from Jobvalley in October 2018, I left Bestlearn in January 2019. The mobile apps continued to receive praise for several years before eventually being discontinued and removed from the app stores, though they can still be found archived in the Wayback Machine.

I began working at Perapera, a private language learning school and the parent company of Bestlearn, as a web developer in June 2016. The school owner was having SEO-related issues with his old website and asked me to look into it. After spending some time digging into the problems, we decided to redesign and rebuild the website from scratch with an SEO-first approach. Within just one week of launching, we saw a massive increase in conversions.

Shortly thereafter, I was asked to build the website for Bestlearn along with its mobile apps. The collaboration with Perapera and Bestlearn lasted for almost 3 years until I accepted a job offer from Jobvalley in October 2018 and left both companies in January 2019.