E-commerce modernization

Context

As a senior software engineer at Tech9 on a staff-augmentation team for Plexus Worldwide, I worked on modernizing their e-commerce website.

Problem

The business needed to modernize its e-commerce experience without abandoning the live Angular 8 application that still served production traffic.

Constraints

• Maintain the existing Angular 8 site during migration.
• Move products onto a modern stack with React, Next.js, and Contentful CMS.
• Improve consistency across projects through reusable components.
• Support debugging with production observability tools.

Role

Senior Software Engineer (staff augmentation via Tech9)

Key responsibilities

• Maintained the existing Angular 8 application.
• Migrated projects to React, Next.js, and Contentful.
• Standardized reusable components across projects.
• Helped the business analyst team investigate bugs using New Relic.

Technical decisions

• Incremental migration rather than a single cutover from Angular.
• Adoption of React and Next.js for modern product surfaces.
• Contentful CMS for content-driven e-commerce experiences.
• New Relic for log monitoring and root-cause analysis.

Architecture

A dual-track approach: keep the Angular application operational while migrating product surfaces onto React/Next.js with Contentful-backed content.

Technologies

Outcome

Supported modernization of e-commerce product surfaces while maintaining the legacy Angular application and improving component reuse and production debugging workflows.

Lessons learned

• Large migrations succeed when legacy systems remain operable during transition.
• Shared component standards reduce inconsistency across parallel product workstreams.
• Observability tooling is essential when business analysts and engineers share bug investigation.

Related writing

• Managing Software Complexity: Why It Matters More Than You Think