Honest Fit Assessment
Job fit analysis that blends deterministic checks with LLM reasoning. On this site: paste a JD for a quick read on Ken’s profile.
- AI
- Product
Ken Downey
I work where architecture, design systems, and AI-enabled interfaces meet. Actual hands-on experience in real-world production systems, too ;
- React
- TypeScript
- Design Systems
- AI Output Governance
Core strengths
- Actual hands-on experience in real-world production environments
- React and TypeScript single-page applications
- Design systems and reusable component libraries
- Accessibility-first UI architecture (WCAG, ARIA, semantic HTML)
- Frontend platform and developer tooling
- B2B SaaS workflows and internal tools
- Data-heavy, operational UIs (dashboards, queues, review flows)
- End-to-end feature ownership across UI, APIs, and data contracts
Featured work
Second Brain
Personal OS with autonomous agents, ingest pipeline, Mission Control, and live trading tournament.
- TanStack Start
- Python
- Postgres
- OpenClaw
Design Systems
Contract layer for AI-generated UI — validated against design system constraints before it ships.
- React
- TypeScript
Trading tournament
Parallel strategy bots, shared market sim, and live charts — Claude-powered decisions.
- TypeScript
- Claude API
- Postgres
Recent thoughts...
Design systems that get adopted
Most design systems die because they're component libraries without governance. Tokens, constraints, and adoption pathways matter more than the components.
Constraining AI-generated UI
LLMs can write React, but they can't follow your design system. The missing piece is a contract layer that validates AI output against real component APIs before it ships.
Building systems that run without you
The best infrastructure is the kind you forget about. My Second Brain runs tournament rounds every 3 hours, proposes strategies every 12, and updates its own documentation on command.
Fixing messy frontends
I step into legacy React codebases, untangle shared state, extract reusable patterns, and leave behind systems that scale. Most of my career has been creating solutions to problems.
About Me
I build interfaces where design systems, runtime performance, and AI-assisted workflows meet.
I'm also a software engineer, athlete, and entrepreneur.
Outside the keyboard: 2 wheels, 2 skis, and the occasional gold pan.
