About

Work Experience

• Contract Frontend Developer, Pitchero

  Nov, 2024 - Dec, 20241 month

  A short contract in the run up to Christmas, to improve the performance of a Next.js front end for Sports Club Websites.

  • Improve the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
  • Greatly reduce AWS Bandwidth costs incurred by over-caching in a Service Worker
  • Reduce the amount of JavaScript required to render the page
  • Migrate Node.js, Next.js, React, and others from very old versions
  • Create custom Codemods to perform refactors, migrations, and breaking changes to 100s of files – saving weeks or months of manual work
  • Reduce the number of origins required to serve the site, to reduce DNS lookups and improve performance

• Principal Frontend Engineer, Cuckoo

  Mar, 2023 - Sep, 20241 year 6 months

  • Proposed and implemented A/B test experimentation, feature flagging, phased rollouts, and extremely detailed user behaviour analytics.
  • Architected, developed, and guided the development of a Broadband signup flow.
  • Sought to promote a culture of data-driven decision making, and a focus on user experience.
  • Worked closely with Designers and Product Managers to ensure the best possible user experience.
  • Helped Developers junior to me to learn and grow whenever possible.

• Lead Frontend Developer, SHIFT Retail

  Feb, 2020 - Feb, 20233 years

  • Managed delivery of a multi-tenant Next.js Ecommerce front end, and the websites built using it.
  • Guided a team of between 3-5 Developers on feature development, and refactoring and improving what we already had in-place.
  • Provided a productive environment via Scrum, CI/CD, automated testing.
  • Architected and guided the development of an Ecommerce checkout flow.

• Technical Reviewer, Smashing Magazine

  Dec, 2013 - Mar, 20206 years 3 months

  One of the 30 members of Smashing Magazine's Experts Panel which was created in late 2010 to maintain the high quality of all Smashing Magazine’s articles. My role was to review Smashing Magazine’s articles related to my areas of expertise before they get published, to keep and improve the high quality of their online publications by double-checking all facts and techniques presented.

• Senior Frontend Developer, Sky

  Apr, 2017 - Nov, 20192 years 7 months

  • Member of a team responsible for developer experience and tooling.
  • Our goals were to improve communication and knowledge-sharing, reduce bottlenecks and waste, and to increase the throughput, correctness, and consistency of designs and code.
  • We achieved this through organising events and workshops, creating and maintaining documentation, and developing tools and processes.
  • Tooling included the creation of custom Codemods, Danger Rules, ESLint Rules, GitHub Actions and Bots, Monorepo tooling, and tools to support the development and maintenance of a component library and design system.

• Frontend Development Consultant, Fold Left Ltd

  Aug, 2012 - Nov, 20197 years 3 months

• Senior Frontend Developer, Sky Betting & Gaming

  Oct, 2016 - Mar, 20175 months

  Working as part of a small team responsible for improving the display and performance of Sky Bet's mobile Sportsbook. This included efforts to; improve the Company's ability to target Customer Segments and perform A/B experiments, reduce wait-time over poor network conditions, and release enhancements to the Request-A-Bet, Cash-Out, and In-Play Betting services.

• Senior Frontend Developer, William Hill

  Nov, 2014 - Jul, 20161 year 8 months

  Leading the User Interface Development of William Hill's brand new Self Service Betting Terminals (SSBTs). The successful delivery of this project made William Hill the first Bookmaker to create their own bespoke Betting Terminal in-House (at the time of writing, other high street Bookmakers shared a white-label product with similar features and limited opportunities for branding).

  The Terminals we created featured two touch-screens communicating over WebSockets, real-time prices and statistics, and interacted with hardware devices such as barcode scanners and cash readers, plus other back-office applications we created to manage SSBTs in each store and across the nationwide estate.

• Senior Frontend Developer, The Premier League

  Dec, 2014 - Jun, 20156 months

  Working with the Barclays Premier League, I designed and developed an iPad application to be used by staff working closely with Match-day Officials. The application was developed using Angular.js, Inuit.css, Apache Cordova, and features full offline support.

• Web Performance Consultant, Shell

  Oct, 2014 - Nov, 20141 month

  Working on behalf of DigiNut Ltd and Wunderman UK, I reviewed, presented, and implemented steps to improve the loading and runtime performance of an existing advertising campaign for Shell Helix Ultra that made use of parallax scrolling, canvas animation, particle physics effects, and video.

• Senior Frontend Developer, IOVOX

  Sep, 2014 - Nov, 20142 months

  Working on behalf of DigiNut Ltd, I was tasked with building an Angular.js application to be used by Iovox's customers. The application features a filterable dashboard featuring charts and graphs, a campaign manager, and contact manager.

• Senior Frontend Developer, Sky Sports Online

  Sep, 2012 - Nov, 20131 year 2 months

  As part of a phased redesign of SkySports.com, I was responsible for the JavaScript architecture to be used. I implemented an evented, modular architecture that is extensible, promotes reuse, supports lazy loading and is easily configurable from markup. I also provided front-end automated test suites with coverage reports, plus code and documentation build systems.

  I then supported the team that planned and built an AngularJS Live Score Centre to replace their previous Web, iOS and Android applications with a single codebase.

• Senior Frontend Developer, Crisp Thinking

  Apr, 2011 - Jul, 20121 year 3 months

  Crisp developed an automated, real-time content moderation and management platform for online communities, massively multiplayer online games, virtual worlds and traditional social media. Operating in more than 10 languages, Crisp's customers include Yahoo!, Nokia, Sony, MTV, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Nickleodeon.

  My job at Crisp was to develop an Enterprise-scale in-browser CRM and real-time dashboards to be used within the businesses that Crisp supports - businesses which are vastly different; Some are virtual worlds aimed at children for example, whereas others are consumer electronics companies with large social media portfolios.

  To support these variances, plus the many spoken languages - I used a modular/plugin application design with the MVC software architecture. The application includes a powerful Event Bus, Configuration and Authentication Managers, a client-side Routing system, plus a suite of many other extensible components for various purposes.

• Senior Web Designer, Sky Betting & Gaming

  Jul, 2007 - Apr, 20113 years 9 months

  Working full time on Sky's Betting and Gaming products. In addition to the typical responsibilities of a Senior Web Designer/Developer, my job was to use my understanding of how both the User Experience and Technology disciplines operate and act as a liaison between the two.

  • I worked with other Designers to help make our designs more responsive, interactive or effective through the use of technology.
  • I created and manage an internal front end code library, working with others to encourage reuse, loose coupling and other good coding practices.
  • I created a UI stencil library, encouraging designers to identify patterns and think of design elements as reusable entities. As more stencils are created, our brand is better controlled, wireframes are quicker to create and of a lower fidelity. This, combined with the code library, lets us design/develop less and implement more.
  • I worked with Business Owners and/or Business Analysts to propose, analyse and negotiate business requirements, and translate them into technical requirements.
  • I looked to identify any potential technical hurdles a design proposal may present early on, discussing them with others in the technical team to ensure they can be realised in full, or to highlight early any genuine design constraints needing rework, should they ever occur.

• Junior Web Designer, Sky Sports Online

  Mar, 2004 - Jul, 20073 years 4 months

  Designing banners, splash pages, microsites, wallpapers and other assets for Skysports.com and the official websites of Premier League football clubs such as Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Southampton, West Ham, Sunderland and Leeds United.

• Graphic Designer, Web Designer and Developer, Naked Intruder

  Jan, 2002 - Feb, 20053 years 1 month

  Naked Intruder was a freelance Design collective consisting of myself and Jonny Goodall, with some collaboration with other Designers in 2004-2005. We worked mostly for music industry clients as well as Tattooists and some other Agencies.

  We built up something of a following within fans of the bands we worked for, as many of the bands and record labels were of a similar genre. some people collected posters we'd designed and bought T-Shirts bearing our logo. Some bands mentioned us in their sleeve notes and we were interviewed in a magazine sold nationally and abroad.

  It was a really fun time and the portfolio we built is what first got us our careers in Design.

• Technical Support Advisor (karoo.co.uk), Kcom

  Dec, 2003 - Dec, 20052 years

  Call Centre Advisor on the Technical Support line for Kingston Communications' Internet Service Provider: Karoo.

• Web Design Intern, DOC Opleiding en Training

  Jul, 1999 - Feb, 20006 months

  I was lucky enough to get an internship with DOC in Doetinchem, the Netherlands. As my Dad lives in Holland I spent a lot of time over there when growing up and picked up a lot of the language. Alongside my work designing and maintaining their Website, I was able to get private tuition in Dutch.

References