New Year, New Me: Building an AI-Ready Developer Portfolio for the Google AI Challenge 2026

Prolay Panda — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 17:34:03 +0000

This is a submission for the New Year, New You Portfolio Challenge Presented by Google AI

About Me

Hi 👋, I’m Prolay Kumar Panda, a full-stack developer with strong experience in backend systems, SaaS platforms, and API-driven applications. Over the years, I’ve worked extensively with PHP (Laravel, CodeIgniter), Python, FastAPI, MySQL/PostgreSQL, NodeJs, NextJs, NestJs, and AI integration with modern frontend tools, building scalable applications for real-world use cases.

With this portfolio, my goal was to clearly showcase:

My technical skill set
The kinds of problems I enjoy solving
My ability to design, build, and deploy production-ready applications

This project is also part of my effort to start the new year with a strong, modern, and cloud-native developer presence.

Portfolio

Below is my live portfolio, deployed on Google Cloud Run and embedded directly into this post 👇

Deployment reference (DEV community friendly):

gcloud run deploy my-portfolio-app \
  --source . \
  --region europe-west1 \
  --no-allow-unauthenticated \
  --labels dev-tutorial=blog-devcommunity2026

How I Built It

🧰 Tech Stack

Backend / App Framework: Python (FastAPI)
Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript (clean, minimal UI)
Deployment: Google Cloud Run
Containerization: Docker
Cloud Platform: Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

🧠 Design & Development Decisions

Kept the UI simple, clean, and recruiter-friendly
Focused on performance, fast load time, and clarity
Designed sections to highlight skills, experience, and projects without clutter
Used Cloud Run for serverless scalability and easy deployments

🤖 Google AI & Cloud Tools

While this project is lightweight by design, Google Cloud tools played a major role:

Google Cloud Run for seamless container deployment
Google Cloud Build for automated builds
Leveraged AI-assisted development workflows for code optimization, content refinement, and UI clarity

This setup allows me to easily extend the portfolio later with AI-powered features like chatbots, project explainers, or resume analyzers.

What I'm Most Proud Of

✨ Live, serverless deployment – My portfolio isn’t just static; it’s a real cloud-hosted application.
✨ Clean architecture – Easy to maintain, extend, and scale.
✨ Professional presentation – Optimized for recruiters, hiring managers, and collaborators.
✨ Cloud-native mindset – Built with modern deployment practices, not just local hosting.

Most importantly, this project represents my commitment to continuously learning, adapting, and building with modern technologies as I move into 2025.

Thanks to DEV and Google AI for hosting this challenge and encouraging developers to showcase their growth and creativity.
Happy coding, and happy new year! 🎉👨‍💻

DEV Community: Prolay Panda