My Journey with Django
The Foundation: Django Docs & Emi Shop
Timeline: Summer 2023
My journey with Django began in the summer of 2023 after my second year of university. I started by exhausting the official documentation and immediately applied those concepts to Emi Shop, an e-commerce platform.
Tech Stack: Gunicorn, Django, DRF Spectacular, Django REST Framework, DRF Nested Routers, FCM Django, Whitenoise, Pillow, JWT (SimpleJWT), AWS S3, PostgreSQL, pyotp, xhtml2pdf,
My first commit: Ecommerce Backend First Commit
Github: Ecommerce Backend Repository
School Project: Shemachoch – Government Rationing System
Timeline: December 2023
Throughout my third year at campus, I focused heavily on solidifying my core backend skills. This led me to build Shemachoch for a school project, where I engineered a backend system designed to streamline how the government distributes sugar and oil to citizens in Ethiopia.
Tech Stack: Django REST Framework, PostgreSQL, Firebase Auth
Github: Shemachoch Backend Repository
iCog Labs: Django & Neo4j
Timeline: July 2024
When I joined iCog Labs as an intern in the summer of 2024, they examined my technical capabilities with a practical entry assessment. For my skill test, I built a prototype Django backend integrated with a Neo4j graph database.
Tech Stack: Django, Neo4j, Django Neomodel
Details: iCog Labs Work Experience
Cricket Betting Platform: Live Odds
Timeline: December 2024 – April 2025
LinkedIn matched me with a client who needed a Cricket Betting Application. I designed the complete backend infrastructure using Django to handle complex transaction state logic, managing diverse betting types, user balances, and slip placements. To keep the platform updated in real time, I integrated live third-party sports APIs to constantly fetch, recalculate, and stream dynamic match odds to the system.
Tech Stack: Django REST Framework, DRF Nested Routers, django-filter, JWT (SimpleJWT), AWS S3, Whitenoise, Pillow, PostgreSQL, pgvector, Paypal Rest SDK,
Github: Cricket Betting Repository
Eureka: Yeshi Real Estate (Paletial)
Timeline: December 2024 – March 2025
Looking to build real-world client systems, I partnered with my friend Kaleab under the name Eureka. We took on a project for a connection who was launching a brand called Yeshi Real Estate (which later rebranded to Paletial). I stepped in to develop a free full-stack website for them, using Django REST Framework and Vue.js to architect a clean, scalable API layer that handles their property listings seamlessly.
Tech Stack: Gunicorn, Django, Django REST Framework, django-filter, JWT (SimpleJWT), AWS S3, Whitenoise, Pillow, PostgreSQL, pgvector
Github: Yeshi Real Estate Repository
Upwork: Django Templates to React Migration
Timeline: March 2025 – April 2025
I landed my second job on Upwork, which dropped me straight into a massive legacy migration project. I had to go deep into an existing codebase to completely replace traditional server-rendered Django HTML templates. I didn’t just rewrite the frontend in React.js; I completely modified the backend views to transform them into endpoints returning structured JSON data.
Tech Stack: Django Templates – Jinja2, React.js
View Upwork Profile: My Upwork Profile Link
School Project: Digi Attend – Biometric Signature Verification
Timeline: April 2025 – May 2025
For our university graduation project, our group wanted to build a secure identity verification system, so I built the backend for Digi Attend. I designed the system to use vectorized signature embeddings to instantly verify identity and log attendance at events or classes. Users scan a QR code or type short codes to find the event and sign, and the API securely verifies their signature matrix to prevent credential sharing, while giving administrators clean, real-time access to the attendance data.
Tech Stack: Django, Django REST Framework, DRF Spectacular, DRF Nested Routers, django-filter, Tensorflow, Scikit-learn, Pillow, PostgreSQL
Github: Digi Attend Backend Repository
Eureka: Betegna Real Estate – A 3D Experience
Timeline: February 2025 – July 2025
Back at Eureka, my partner and I started an endeavor to change how people browse properties online, leading to the creation of Betegna Real Estate. I built the backend with a specialized Django schema designed to hold image groups (either a 360-degree panorama or four directional photos) and organize them under specific rooms according to their relative positions in space. By serving these spatial coordinates and image groups to the frontend, the system allows the website to render a smooth navigation experience where users can virtually walk through rooms with a real 3D feel.
Tech Stack: Gunicorn, Django, Django REST Framework, django-filter, JWT (SimpleJWT), AWS S3, Whitenoise, Pillow, PostgreSQL, pgvector
Github: Betegna Real Estate Repository
Semantic Search Bot Platform & Multi-Tenant Management Dashboard
Timeline: July 2025
I designed and deployed an intelligent content ingestion pipeline for an automated Telegram shopping platform. The bot captures post streams from telegram groups it has been added to, feeds data into an LLM pipeline to compute structured tags and summaries, and commits them to a pgvector database. Users query the live bot via natural language, triggering semantic similarity searches to immediately match and retrieve target items.
Once the core telegram bot was running smoothly, I wrapped it completely in a Django web-serving layer and built a custom management interface. This transformed the backend into a self-service platform where users can create their own custom bots, securely link them to Telegram groups, and manage their ingested data.
Tech Stack: Django, Django REST Framework, Python Telegram Bot, Sentence Transformers, PostgreSQL, pgvector
Github: Telegram Bot Platform Repository
Upwork: Chromos
Timeline: August 2025 – October 2025
I collaborated with my friend Nebeyou to build a full-stack platform with deep LLM capabilities. I took complete ownership of the intelligent backend layer, engineering complex multi-agent execution graphs using LangChain and LangGraph, while utilizing Django as the central engine for web serving.
Tech Stack: Django, Django Rest Framework, LangChain, LangGraph
View Upwork Profile: My Upwork Profile Link
VentingApp: Launch & Public DevLog
Timeline: October 2025 – February 2026
I wanted to build a safe, scalable social platform where people could express themselves, so I took an idea from my friend Natnael Mulugeta and built Venting App. I engineered the complete backend using Django. I recorded my entire coding screen throughout the journey, compiling every milestone into a step-by-step architectural DevLog on YouTube before purchasing the domain and launching the live site.
Github: Venting App Repository
Youtube: Building a Venting App Playlist
Website: venting-app.com
Tech Stack: Gunicorn, Sphinx, Django, Django Rest Framework, django-filter, JWT (SimpleJWT), AWS S3, Whitenoise, Pillow, Polar SDK, Google Gen AI, Scipy, PostgreSQL, pgvector, pyotp, redis