Sealift Systems was a two-and-a-half year build — a maritime logistics platform designed to coordinate sea rescue and cargo operations across distributed fleets. I came on as the lead front-end developer and ended up owning a significant chunk of the back-end too. This was 2016, so the stack was exactly what you'd expect: HTML, CSS, PHP, and vanilla JavaScript. No frameworks, no shortcuts — just clean, deliberate code.
The core of the work was building a real-time vessel tracking dashboard and an operations management interface that field coordinators could actually use under pressure. PHP handled the server-side logic and data layer, while JavaScript drove the dynamic UI — live status updates, interactive maps, form-heavy workflows. I wrote a lot of CSS from scratch, building a component system before that was even a common term.
By the time we wrapped in early 2019, the platform was handling live operational data for active rescue coordination. It's one of those projects where the constraints — the era, the stack, the stakes — pushed me to write better, leaner code than I might have otherwise. I'm proud of what we shipped.