Design EngineerTailwind Labs

Hi, I'm Phil! I’m based in Vienna, Austria (UTC+1), working as a freelance fullstack engineer. I founded my own company adler.studio in December and have tackled several client projects since. Software isn't the only thing I offer: I also do 3D design and animation using primarily Blender and 2D design and motion graphics using the Adobe Suite and Rive / Figma. In addition, I work closely with Austrian software development and marketing agencies as a part-time CTO / lead-dev. There, I help them build out projects, prototype infrastructure, and jump in when shit hits the fan.

Although I feel like I’m fastest when I work solo, I have plenty of experience working in small to medium sized teams in agile and non-agile environments. I know how to explain technical details to non-tech stakeholders, know how to navigate design hand-offs, and other critical situations. An example of me explaining technical concepts to people unfamiliar is badfile.zip: a site I built back when Google launched .zip TLDs. Another example would be some of my LinkedIn posts where I try to add value to the community by explaining complex topics in a simple way.

I’m a very outgoing and talkative person that often comes across as non-tech at first. I know my way around non-tech as well as tech people and enjoy bridging the gap. I grew up bilingually (English C2, German C2) and picked up Russian (B2) along the way.

Honestly, I've never been as excited about a job posting. Working for Tailwind Labs, a company whose product I use literally every day and that's transformed my professional life would be nothing short of amazing. If I get the chance, I'd love to build out landing pages like the ones you mentioned in the job posting, maybe help you with docs for 4.0? as I love to explain stuff or just tackle any task you throw at me!

I've always had a thing for design, but somewhere in my teens, I realized that traditional drawing, 3D and 2D design just didn't cut it for me anymore. I needed something more. Building actual things with code was the answer.

My adventure began with C# and Unity, and from there, it was a bit of a rollercoaster—I dabbled in embedded, and Swift, improving my understanding of low-level programming, then got my hands dirty exploring the endless possibilities of Rust and Python during my uni days, and eventually made my way to JS, TS, and CSS.

Web development, and CSS specifically, seemed rough at first but I immediately fell in love with the endless possibilities and ways you can go off the beaten path easily. I had finally found a platform that let me design stuff, and share it with anyone, anywhere, instantly. I've been working professionally in webdev for 5 years now and plan on doing so for a long time. Web always wins.

I have a pretty vivid memory of my first encounter with Tailwind in the wild. Similar to Typescript I was a bit cautious at first. But after trying it once, I’ve used it every chance I got, and never looked back. All the context switching—gone. Fighting over classnames and dreading redesigns when working in teams—gone. Struggling with weird CSS quirks—way less.

But one thing about Tailwind is even bigger for me, personally: I love to build solo, fast. What Tailwind has enabled me to do was to design in code. Usually, I sketch out a first prototype of the design in Figma, but move to code pretty early-on and what happens is, I refine the design in-code. I've tried many CSS frameworks but only Tailwind allowed me to enter this very specific design-code flow state.

Tailwind has also upped my CSS game in general. Your guys' docs are incredible at explaining all the different features, and I find myself checking them even if I'm forced to use a different CSS framework. Beyond just using Tailwind in my own projects, I've also had the pleasure of introducing it to devs I've worked with. Many were skeptical or unsure at first, but through hands-on demonstrations they came around pretty quickly. Some of them have even become Tailwind enthusiasts themselves.