MicroTut

Tag: Leadership

  • From Hobbyist Sites to Principal Consultant – 15 Years of Clean-Code Front-End

    From hobbyist sites to lead engineer: my 15-year quest for clean, scalable front-end code

    1. A hobby that turned into a career (2008 – 2014)

    I started out building e-commerce sites for local shops in Warwickshire.


    Those evenings taught me that users don’t care about frameworks – they care about speed and clarity.

    Tools then: PHP, plain JavaScript, SEO on a shoestring.

    2. Shipping faster through teaching (2014 – 2020)

    At eTech Solutions I wasn’t just a senior dev – I became the in-house trainer.
    Over 5.5 years I introduced:

    • Git branching (we killed “last-day-merge” panic).
    • Agile ceremonies (stand-ups that finish on time 🕒).
    • Docker & Kubernetes POCs (cut dev-box setup from hours to minutes).

    Lesson #1: Teaching forces you to master the “why”, not just the “how”.

    3. Leaning into leadership & micro-frontends (2020)

    At Mortgage Advice Bureau I inherited a monolith drowning in technical debt.
    We reacted by:

    1. Refactoring to stateless RxJS + immutable data.
    2. Splitting the codebase into micro-frontends and private Nexus libraries.
    3. Coaching a team of three to deliver business value and raise the bar.

    Result: build times down 40 %; new features released weekly instead of monthly.

    4. Principal consultant era (2021 – 2023)

    Virgin Media TV Streaming

    • Angular + Apollo GraphQL
    • Storybook for design-system governance
    • Led six-person squad; coordinated with product, design, QA.

    Lesson #2: Clean code isn’t an aesthetic choice – it’s a performance lever.

    5. Bringing AI into the workflow (2023 → present)

    At Actify I:

    • Integrated GitHub Copilot into our review cycle – 22 % fewer low-value PR comments.
    • Built a GPT-powered Angular schematic that scaffolds unit tests; team adoption hit 90 % in two sprints.

    6. What I can do for your team (summary)

    • Framework depth: Angular 2 → 18, React, RxJS signals.
    • DevEx: CI/CD in Azure DevOps, micro-services, Storybook, Cypress.
    • AI leverage: prompt-engineering, OpenAI API, cost monitoring.
    • Leadership: mentoring, standards, outcome-first agile.

    7. Let’s talk

    I’m open to permanent or contract roles where clean code, functional patterns and AI-assisted delivery matter.
    👉 Linkedin