Joseph Luck

I'm a software engineer with expertise in front-end, user interface design, user experience and functional programming in JavaScript and TypeScript.


Skills

I am particularly experienced building products in TypeScript using frameworks and libraries such as React, React Native, Next, Redux, GraphQL, Jest, Cypress, Node, AWS, Docker, Terraform amongst others. Aside from my technical skills, I'm proficient in user interface and user experience design and enjoy establishing design systems and user-centric product development.


Experience

NatWest (Mettle) Senior front-end software engineer - July 2020 to Present

Mettle is a free digital banking app for small and medium-sized businesses, which is operated by NatWest. I work on Mettle's Web, iOS and Android applications in cross functional teams.

  • Led a migration away from FlowType to TypeScript for Mettle's React Native application
  • Operated as technical lead in a cross-functional agile squad of engineers, QAs and designers
  • Architected and built the Mettle Web application, liaising with architecture, security and the wider engineering organisation including senior stakeholders
  • Devised an output-driven integration testing strategy using Apollo GraphQL mocks
  • Built and maintained a design system, including visual regression testing
  • Worked on a variety of features in the Mettle mobile application, including a large refactor of a complex onboarding journey
  • Leading various efforts to modernise the codebase including testing strategy, TypeScript, coding standards, directory structure etc

NatWest (Bó) Senior front-end software engineer - February 2020 to July 2020

Bó was a challenger bank from NatWest ventures. Bó offered a current account, a debit card and a banking app. I worked for Bó as a senior front-end software engineer in cross-functional product teams.

  • Helped design and built a "check-in challenge" feature encouraging regular balance checks
  • Introduced output-driven unit testing strategy
  • Assisted with the eventual closure of Bó, including conducting technical research for Mettle during the transitional period

Fantastec Front-end lead - April 2018 to February 2020

Fantastec is a sports technology start-up dedicated to helping sports fans engage with their favourite sports, teams, and players. I led Fantastec's front-end team and liaised with the wider product team and stakeholders to build several web and mobile products.

  • Established and maintained a core front-end architecture around React, React Native, NextJS, TypeScript and Styled Components across multiple web and mobile products
  • Worked closely alongside the product lead in defining a robust product strategy
  • Designed, architected and delivered features
  • Worked closely alongside the back-end lead and CTO on wider architectural changes
  • Built out the front-end team including a mixture of contractors and permanent hires

Goodlord Senior software engineer - November 2016 to April 2018

Goodlord is a property technology company building a software platform for estate agents and tenants in the UK. I worked at Goodlord during a period of high growth both commercially and internally. I joined when there were 6 engineers and helped scale the team to over 20 strong. During my time at Goodlord, I established a modern front-end tech stack consisting of React, TypeScript and a custom framework I authored specifically for Goodlord's complex form-management requirements called Helix.

  • Designed and built a custom front-end framework, Helix, to solve complex form state management requirements
  • Worked across multiple web applications delivering features in a mono-repository
  • Developed the front-end automated testing strategy
  • Assisted with the recruitment of the front-end team
  • Developed a strategy for including React SPA code in to a legacy PHP codebase

Commusoft Front-end engineer - March 2016 to November 2016

Commusoft is a large customer relationship management system catered for the service industry.

  • Led Commusoft's small front-end team for 8 months
  • Lead role in product and design as well as developing the front-end for the customer facing and internal products
  • Developed using a mixture of technologies such as Angular, React and Backbone
  • Mentored junior front-end engineers and liaised with an off-shore back-end team

Commusoft Junior front-end developer - July 2014 - March 2016

I started my software engineering career at Commusoft where I quickly became autonomous under the direction of a senior front-end engineer.


Open Source

I'm a keen contributor to open-source and often publish my work on GitHub and Npm. I'm particularly proud of Stately, a simple functional state management library and Helix, a batteries included functional front-end framework providing state-management, routing and rendering with React.


Personal Projects

During my free time, I like to experiment with new technologies and improve my design and user experience skills. To this end, I enjoy building my own tools and products:

Stately is a simple, functional and immutable state management library for TypeScript complete with bindings for React Hooks and Next.js.

Internote is a distraction-free note editor built on top of a modern "serverless" stack consisting of TypeScript, React, Next, Styled Components and Twine on the front-end and TypeScript with AWS Lambda, DynamoDB and a slew of other AWS services on the back-end.

Keepies is a chrome extension that automatically takes screenshots of web apps at set intervals to aid front-end developers and designers curate their portfolio. Keepies is open-source and is written in TypeScript with React.

Wtf.js (What The Forecast?!) is a terminal weather app written in TypeScript. It was written on a particularly cold winters weekend.


Education

Ravensbourne BA(hons) Sound Design - November 2011 - July 2014

I achieved a first-class honours from Ravensbourne where I studied sound engineering, acoustics, synthesis and audio programming. For my final project, I built an audio-only horror game using a combination of C# and JavaScript in the Unity game engine. During my studies I became a freelance web designer whilst founding the filmography unit, Three Men and a Camera, where I handled all audio responsibilities shooting documentaries and promos for many of London's leading digital agencies.


References

A selection of references are available on my website, and bespoke ones are available upon request.


Interests

I play table tennis competitively and compete for Kent and in local leagues around South East London. I'm also a keen traveller and have been fortunate to scuba dive in many of the worlds famous dive sites including the Great Barrier Reef. I'm an avid musician and music fan and frequently go to gigs in London and the south-east.