Career Tracker App

Overview

A personal full-stack project that solves a real problem: tracking job applications, cert progress, and skill milestones during a career transition. The goal is also to demonstrate end-to-end ownership — backend API, frontend UI, containerized deployment, and OCI Free Tier hosting.

Status: In progress. Architecture is finalised, backend scaffolded. Frontend in development. Live at sandeeprn.in/tracker once deployed.

Architecture

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                sandeeprn.in/tracker                │
│                                                    │
│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │            React Frontend (Vite)             │  │
│  │  Job Board · Cert Progress · Skill Timeline  │  │
│  └─────────────────┬────────────────────────────┘  │
│                    │ REST API                      │
└────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┘
                     │
┌────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┐
│          Oracle Cloud Free Tier (ARM VM)           │
│                    │                               │
│  ┌─────────────────▼────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │               FastAPI (Python)               │  │
│  │    /applications  /certs  /skills  /stats    │  │
│  └─────────────────┬────────────────────────────┘  │
│                    │                               │
│  ┌─────────────────▼────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │       SQLite (dev) → PostgreSQL (prod)       │  │
│  └──────────────────────────────────────────────┘  │
│                                                    │
│  Docker Compose · Nginx reverse proxy · HTTPS      │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Backend: FastAPI

from fastapi import FastAPI
from pydantic import BaseModel
from datetime import date

app = FastAPI(title="Career Tracker API")

class Application(BaseModel):
    company: str
    role: str
    applied_date: date
    status: str  # applied | screening | interview | offer | rejected
    notes: str = ""

@app.post("/applications")
async def create_application(app: Application):
    # persist to DB
    return {"id": 1, **app.dict()}

@app.get("/stats")
async def get_stats():
    return {
        "total_applied": 24,
        "in_progress": 5,
        "offers": 1,
        "response_rate": "29%"
    }

API endpoints planned:

• POST /applications — log a new job application
• GET /applications — list with filters (status, date range, role type)
• PATCH /applications/{id} — update status as pipeline progresses
• POST /certs — track cert progress (name, % complete, target date)
• GET /stats — aggregated metrics for the dashboard

Frontend: React + Vite

Three main views:

1. Job Board — Kanban-style columns (Applied → Screening → Interview → Offer/Rejected)
2. Cert Progress — progress bars for active certifications with target dates
3. Timeline — visual arc of skills and certs by year

OCI Free Tier Deployment

Oracle Cloud’s Always Free tier provides an ARM-based VM (4 OCPUs, 24GB RAM) — more than enough to host this stack permanently at zero cost:

# docker-compose.yml on OCI VM
services:
  api:
    image: sandeeprn/career-tracker-api:latest
    env_file: .env
    restart: always

  frontend:
    image: sandeeprn/career-tracker-frontend:latest
    restart: always

  nginx:
    image: nginx:alpine
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
      - ./certs:/etc/letsencrypt
    restart: always

What This Demonstrates

• Full-stack ownership — API design, frontend, deployment, and DNS wiring end-to-end
• OCI Free Tier — practical use of cloud free tier for personal projects (relevant to cost optimisation)
• FastAPI + Pydantic — modern Python API patterns with automatic OpenAPI docs
• Docker Compose — production-like deployment without Kubernetes overhead for a small project