About
I’m a frontend engineer with more than 14 years of hands-on experience, eight of which I’ve spent deeply engaged in SaaS application development. I love leading from the trenches, combining technical and servant leadership, while staying hands-on with coding and delivering the final products.
Writing clean, testable code is always the goal, while keeping in mind that everything has trade-offs and technical debt is inevitable. I strive to manage and mitigate any impact from accrued debt effectively.
I’m actively expanding my fullstack skills, focusing on system architecture, backend and DevOps processes along with their related technologies.
My strengths
- My self-awareness enables me to discern when I can contribute and when I need to solicit help.
- I strive to foster a positive team environment by recognizing and promoting the excellent work done by my colleagues.
- With a natural inclination for problem-solving, I tackle both technical and personal challenges with equal fervour.
- My passion for staying updated with the latest tech excites me more than the latest Netflix drop. I find immense joy in my work!
- I set high standards for myself, focusing on personal growth and excellence rather than imposing expectations on others.
- I embrace change, even when it invokes fear, as I believe the most significant growth and purpose often reside in overcoming challenging or daunting circumstances.
Career Progression
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Sr. Frontend Engineer BoardPro | SaaS Startup | AKL, New Zealand
BoardPro is a SaaS platform designed to streamline board governance and compliance across global markets.
Responsibilities
- Spearhead, sustain, and develop new features for the primary Angular SaaS application.
- Onboard new developers.
- Proactively minimise technical debt.
- Collaborate with the PM, UX, and QA to swiftly ideate, prototype, test, and deploy new features.
- Develop POCs for potential new features.
Achievements
- Architected our Angular application into a new Nx monorepo, simplifying build processes and reducing build times by over 90%.
- Introduced Azure B2C Auth with MFA to our Angular application, earning high praise from BoardPro's board director for the simplicity, smoothness, and seamlessness of the integration.
- My in-depth research and POCs on MFA auth providers led us to select a previously overlooked provider, resulting in significant cost savings for the business.
- Resolved recurring inconsistencies of static content/assets across our dev/test/uat environments using Terraform while integrating with our CI and storing the Terraform state in our Azure storage for seamless deployment across all environments.
- Executed full-stack features in our new billing system, rapidly familiarising myself with concepts such as DDD, Event Sourcing, CQRS, and tech including React, Next.js, and Nest.js, which I don't typically use.
- Developed a POC for logging Azure B2C events, gaining hands-on experience in setting up multiple tenants, analytic workspaces, resource groups, Azure monitor, and event hubs.
- Improved testing and debugging of complex response types and edge cases by employing Mock Service Worker to intercept and appropriately modify requests.
Tech Used
Angular (v16) | React (v17) | JavaScript ES6+ | TypeScript | NodeJS | Nest.js | Next.js | Remix | Event Sourcing | CQRS | NgRx | RxJS | Jest | Cypress | Storybook | Playwright | REST | GraphQL | Sass | Material | Mui | Emotion | Figma | Jira -
Lead Frontend Engineer - Product Team InfoSlips | SaaS Startup | PTA, South Africa
InfoSlips is a B2B SaaS that provides a scalable communications platform that helps vendors deliver interactive and personalised digital experiences instead of static correspondence.
Responsibilities
- Maintain and drive the development of new features for two AngularJS (1.2) applications: the B2B SaaS app and the end-user app.
- Lead sprint planning for the frontend and backend teams, including other agile/scrum ceremonies.
- Lead frontend product team comprising 3 developers
- Interview, train and mentor junior developers for the template team.
Achievements
- Architected a new monorepo system utilising Nx, Angular 8, NgRx, and Jest.
- Lead the hands-on overhaul of the end-user application, incorporating comprehensive testing, a shared component library, and a reusable design system across applications.
- Collaborate with the template team to establish a React/Webpack-based build system that accelerates template development, supplanting the original Gulp/AngularJS system I created.
Tech Used
AngularJS | Gulp | Angular 2-8 | React 16 | Webpack | JavaScript ES6+ | TypeScript | NgRx | RxJS | Jest | Cypress.io | Storybook | REST | Sass | CSS3 | GIT | Jira | Adobe XD -
UX Frontend Engineer - Template Team InfoSlips | SaaS Startup | PTA, South Africa
InfoSlips is a B2B SaaS that provides a scalable communications platform that helps vendors deliver interactive and personalised digital experiences instead of static correspondence.
Responsibilities
- Collect technical requirements from clients to establish project scope, working closely with project managers.
- Design solutions centred on UX principles using an outcomes-based approach with tools like Balsamiq and Photoshop.
- Collaborate with C# developers to design efficient JSON payloads for client documents.
- Create InfoSlip document templates (small packaged web apps) based on client brand guidelines.
- Interview, train and mentor junior developers, ensuring code quality through pair programming and code reviews.
Achievements
- Significantly enhanced maintainability and productivity for our template developers by creating:
- A HTML/Sass/Bootstrap base template with best practices learned from past clients.
- A base HTML email template that’s optimised for all email clients.
- An AngularJS/Gulp/Sass/Babel build system
- Worked closely with some of the largest South African insurance, telecoms, banking and transport companies with high praise from our PMs for my effective comms and workshops.
- Trained multiple junior developers, enabling them to take over my responsibilities as I transitioned to the product team.
Tech Used
HTML | CSS3 | Photoshop | Bootstrap | AngularJS | Gulp | JavaScript | jQuery | Kendo UI | Sass | GIT | SVN | Jira -
Creative/Technical Director CAS Web Design Studios | JHB, South Africa
CAS was a digital agency that serviced SMBs with creative, online marketing solutions.
Responsibilities
- Created client proposals.
- Attended local small business meetings and ran presentations on how to build online businesses.
- Managed strategy sessions with new clients.
- Helped small businesses with online marketing (email, Facebook, Google Adwords).
- Designed logos and websites using Photoshop.
- Developed website designs in HTML/CSS/jQuery/WordPress.
- Managed 3 employees and 2 interns (designer, developers - 3 of which 2 were interns, sales).
Tech Used
HTML | CSS3 | Photoshop | Bootstrap | jQuery | JavaScript | WordPress