— Career
Where I've been & what I've done
20+ years in the murky waters between design and engineering. From writing semantic HTML at agencies to leading front-end practices at scale — always championing accessibility, design systems, and the craft of the UI layer.
Lead Front-End Design Engineer
One of the UK's largest mutual life, pensions, and investment companies. The design system team is six people with a remit spanning the entire digital estate. Focus has been on two things: getting the token architecture right, and making the system something teams actually want to use. That's meant building a Figma-to-CSS pipeline using Style Dictionary, developing framework-agnostic components in vanilla CSS, and working closely with the internal accessibility centre of excellence on standards and testing.
Design Systems
Token Architecture
Style Dictionary
Accessibility
Vanilla CSS
Tech Principal – Front-end
Brought in to help shape AND's front-end practice and raise standards across client delivery teams. A short tenure — the role ultimately wasn't the right fit in terms of direction.
Front-End Standards
Consultancy
Practice Leadership
Engineering Practice Lead
cinch was scaling fast, and with that growth came the familiar tension between moving quickly and maintaining quality. The focus was org-wide front-end standards — writing golden paths and health checks, and reviving two communities of practice (front-end and accessibility) that had stalled under the weight of being run by volunteers on top of everything else. Having dedicated capacity made the difference. The role ended with a redundancy round driven by financial pressures in the business.
Practice Leadership
Front-End Standards
Communities of Practice
Golden Paths
Lead Front-End Design Engineer
Lead engineer on the design system — building shared components, shaping contribution models, and helping teams ship consistently.
Design Systems
Accessibility
Inclusive Design
Leadership
Principal UX/UI Developer
Advocated for accessibility and inclusive design across the platform. Worked in the space between design and engineering, championing web standards and semantic, accessible code.
UX/UI
Accessibility
Web Standards
Semantic HTML
UI Engineer
Took on the challenge of building a bridge between front-end and UX in the world of car finance. Focused on crafting cohesive user experiences.
UI Engineering
UX
Prototyping
Senior Front-End Developer
Nearly eight years progressing from developer to Senior Front-End Developer. Built a deep foundation in semantic HTML, CSS, responsive design, and web standards — at a time when those things still needed explaining to clients.
HTML/CSS
Responsive Design
Web Standards
Mobile-First