MERNReact NativeB2B
Anchor (2026)
A B2B marketplace built on the MERN stack with a React Native companion app — recruiter-grade web dashboards plus messaging and payments on mobile.
Anchor — hero mockup
The Challenge
What needed
solving.
Anchor needed a marketplace connecting companies with vetted talent: a data-heavy web dashboard for clients and a lightweight mobile app for candidates — sharing one backend and one source of truth.
The hard part was keeping a complex, multi-role product fast and consistent across web and mobile.
The Approach
How I
built it.
I built a single MERN backend serving both a Next.js web dashboard and a React Native app, with shared types, role-based auth and real-time messaging over websockets.
Payments, notifications and search were designed to behave identically on both platforms, so the product feels like one thing.
Key Decisions
The calls that shaped it.
01 — PRINCIPLE
"A shared backend beats two codebases"
How I applied it
One Node/Express + MongoDB API serves both web and mobile, so business logic lives in exactly one place.
02 — PRINCIPLE
"Real-time has to feel instant"
How I applied it
Websocket messaging and optimistic UI make chat and status updates feel immediate, even on a weak connection.
03 — PRINCIPLE
"Types are the contract between web and mobile"
How I applied it
Shared TypeScript types across the stack caught mismatches at compile time, not in production.
Process
How the work got done.
System design
01
System & API design
Designing one MERN backend to serve web and mobile cleanly.
Dashboard build
02
Web dashboard
A recruiter-grade Next.js dashboard for client teams.
Realtime & payments
03
Real-time & payments
Websocket messaging, notifications and payment flows.
Mobile build
04
Mobile companion
A focused React Native app sharing the same backend.
Selected Screens
A closer look.
Client dashboard
Candidate list
Candidate detail
Messaging
Payments
Admin
Mobile Companion
The app, up close.
App — feed
App — chat
App — profile
Outcomes
The work moved the numbers.
1 → 2
backend serving web + mobile
<100ms
message latency
99.9%
API uptime
100%
shared types across stack
Figures from launch and the first quarter of operation.
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