Summary
N-SIDE is a Belgian company applying mathematical optimization to decision problems in clinical supply chains and energy markets. Lighthouse is its clinical-trial supply forecasting and planning platform, used by clinical supply chain teams at pharmaceutical sponsors to model trials, run scenarios, and produce demand forecasts.
The underlying problem is hard for unglamorous reasons. Clinical-trial drug supply has to cover uncertain enrollment, multi-country site networks, short expiry windows, and expensive comparators. Over-supplying wastes investigational drug; under-supplying risks stockouts that delay patients. Lighthouse leans on N-SIDE's optimization heritage to target IRT settings — site-level buffer stock, shipment frequency — so sites receive what dispensing actually requires.
Lighthouse was a ground-up rebuild of an older Java product, modernizing both the stack and the modeling layer underneath it.
What I worked on
- Built UI features and data visualizations for the planning and forecasting surfaces of Lighthouse.
- Designed data structures, wrote and optimized queries, and handled migrations across the Postgres layer.
- Worked alongside the lead architect to structure the new application as a reference for the broader stack modernization, shaping patterns the rest of the team would follow.
Tech and approach
The front-end was a standard React SPA with Tailwind for styling. Tailwind gave us a shared language for layout and design without boxing anyone in. On the database side, Postgres with Kysely and Liquibase let us keep light type safety around our queries while retaining full control over the SQL underneath.
The interesting part of the job was the tension between old and new. Lighthouse replaced a system that had been running for twenty years, and you can't just throw that away. The work was about evolving the technology, bringing in modern tooling and fresh ideas, without losing what the legacy system got right. Lots of prototyping, lots of iteration, and a constant back-and-forth between trying something creative and making sure it actually held up.
Status
Lighthouse is in active use by pharmaceutical supply chain teams.