Cathopic is a media SaaS platform similar to Unsplash, focused on curated Catholic visual resources and a circular-economy model where creators earn from premium downloads. My collaboration with Cathopic was not a one-time engagement, but a returning partnership over multiple phases of the product’s evolution.
Phase 1 – Platform v2 Architecture & Launch (Sep 2022 – Jul 2023) I joined Cathopic as a Senior Software Engineer when the team was building version 2 of the platform with the goal of launching into the US market. Working alongside two other senior engineers, I helped define the core architecture and technical foundations of the new version.
I was primarily responsible for designing and implementing the asynchronous media processing pipeline, using queues and custom FFmpeg filters to safely handle uploads, conversions, watermarking, preview extraction, and validation workflows without impacting user-facing performance.
Once the pipeline was stable and polished, I contributed to improving the admin and verification workflows (Laravel Nova), making the human review and approval process significantly smoother for the content team. I later led the implementation of the creator payouts system, enabling automated monthly payments based on Cathopic’s collaborative economy model. With these components in place, Cathopic v2 was successfully launched.
Phase 2 – Performance, Search & Delivery Optimization (2025) In early 2025, Cathopic reached out again to address performance and scalability challenges as the platform continued to grow. I led two key improvements:
Search optimization with Algolia, dramatically improving relevance and reducing average search response times from ~5 seconds to ~1 second.
Cloudflare Images with aggressive caching, significantly improving image delivery speed and overall user experience.
These changes resulted in a noticeably faster platform, better engagement, and a strong improvement in perceived quality for end users.
Outcomes:
Long-term, returning collaboration based on trust and results
2,000+ active creators
42,000+ premium media assets
~900,000 searches per month
Search latency reduced from ~5s–8s to ~1s
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