Independent software practice

I design how a business runs — and build the software that makes it real.

Enterprise systems architecture and full-stack development, end to end — from the data model down to the code that runs it.

What I do

Whole systems, owned from architecture to running code.

01

Solutions & Systems Architecture

Design how your systems fit together — CRM, ERP, billing, databases — so the same fact means the same thing everywhere.

02

Systems Integration

Make separate platforms talk to each other reliably — NetSuite, Salesforce, Shopify, iPaaS tools like Celigo — through code and configuration.

03

Legacy Modernization

Rebuild aging applications on a modern stack — Java / Spring Boot, Vue, React — without losing the logic that made them work.

04

Data Migration & Modeling

Move data between systems cleanly, define the model everything shares, and surface the quality problems before cutover, not after.

05

Full-Stack Development

Build the application end to end — backend, APIs, and an interface the people who actually use it can understand.

06

Custom Software & Products

From internal tools to SaaS products, built to fit the real workflow in front of you — not a template.

How I work

The part of software that's hard to automate.

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I start with the people who use it.

I sit with your team, watch how the work really happens, and build around that — in plain language, not jargon.

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I own the whole thing.

Strategy and architecture through hands-on build, migration, and testing. Not just diagrams handed off to someone else.

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I build from first principles.

Twenty-five years, largely self-taught from the fundamentals — so I can learn an unfamiliar system fast and go deep when it counts.

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I make the implicit explicit.

The rules and reasoning that only live in people's heads become documentation and architecture your whole team can trust.

Selected work

Systems other teams had stalled on.

01

Quote-to-cash architecture for a B2B subscription business

Defined the canonical data model shared across CRM, CPQ, ERP, and billing, and led the architecture of a full billing-platform transformation — decision records, migration design, and hands-on build.

Architecture / NetSuite / Billing
02

A 2002 Windows application, rebuilt for today

Took a legacy desktop application and rebuilt it on a Java Spring Boot backend with a Vue front end — reconstructing business rules along the way. Now in daily use by a 20-person team.

Spring Boot / Vue
03

eCommerce ERP & warehouse systems

For a specialty online retailer, migrated a legacy platform to a modern multi-channel ERP, integrated Shopify and the warehouse, and built custom support and fulfillment tools designed from the floor up.

ERP / Integration
04

Pricing software for national retail & grocery

Engineered software that made pricing thousands of stores and tens of thousands of SKUs fast and simple — scaling large datasets across four different database engines, in an era before the cloud.

Java / Data at scale

Client names withheld by request. Representative of 25 years of work.

Flagship product · In development

RoundCircle

Scheduling software built for small studios.

RoundCircle started ten years ago as the system I built to run my wife's dance studio. It's been quietly running it ever since. Now I'm rebuilding it as a platform any small studio can use — class schedules, enrollment, and the day-to-day — without the bloat of enterprise tools.

Mel Haynes, Jr., Solutions Architect and founder of New Thinking Designs About

Mel Haynes, Jr.

For twenty-five years — from grocery-pricing engines written in raw Java to enterprise billing platforms — I've been the person who takes on whole systems and makes them work. Often the one brought in after other teams have stalled.

I work at the seam between the business and the software: fluent enough in the commercial logic to know what a system has to do, and technical enough to go build it. New Thinking Designs is where that work lives — independent projects, custom builds, and the products I'm growing on my own.

25 yrs
Building systems end to end
Architecture → code
Strategy through hands-on build
Denver, CO
Working remotely, anywhere
Start a conversation

Have a system that's outgrown its tools?

Or a product you want built right the first time? Tell me what you're working on — I read every message myself.

info@newthinkingdesigns.com Email me (303) 809-1054 LinkedIn ↗