James Maclean

Senior frontend developer with UX design experience. I work best in collaborative environments and like to develop deep product knowledge to inform technical decisions.

I have a strong grasp of frontend fundamentals (HTML, CSS, JS) and use that to create effective solutions in React.js and Next.js.

Technologies

Work History

Senior Frontend Engineer

Jun 2022 - Present

Lendable

• Helped build and maintain a 'white-label' theme system that supports 5 different brands.
• Reduced technical debt by seeking out depreciated features and coordinating efforts with backend teams.
• Working with product, design and backend teams in a financially regulated environment.
• Took on delivery focused management duties which helped balance workload, increase collaboration with other teams and ensured smooth delivery of multiple projects.
• Ensured high accessibility standards though use correct HTML and constantly evaluating the visual design.
• Worked with products and design teams to create clear interfaces and wrote copy that complies with FCA standards.
• Designed, developed and maintained features on the Next.js frontend that also work across multiple other brands.
• Contributed to the development of a company-wide design system, ensuring seamless integration across all products.
• Coached junior engineers to improve their confidence presenting technical proposals and communicating effecting with product and backend teams.

Frontend Engineer

Nov 2019 - May 2022 · 2 yrs 7 mos

MyBuilder

• I used product, design and front-end skills to increase sign-up of new trade members by 5% year on year.
• Built a mini Email design system with PHP - This provides an intuitive interface to advanced Email HTML styling techniques allowing non-front-end-specialists to work on emails with confidence.
• Maintenance of various ReactJS apps throughout the main site. The projects are built with: React, CSS-in-JS, Styled Components, Node, Yarn (workspaces), Webpack, Jest and some Typescript
• Created a CSS framework, site and accessible (Symfony) forms in an FCA regulated insurance environment. This project was built with Symfony 5, Docker, Webpack Encore, SASS, Twig, PHPUnit and Vanilla js.
• Implemented a design system to be able to share styles between React apps and older Symfony systems. Some tech was tried but rejected: Styled System, Rebass, a custom rebuild of Styled System in Typescript. The final project was delivered using: Tailwind, PostCSS to allow class names to be used alongside Styled Components / CSS-in-JS whilst referencing the same core design tokens.
• Collaborated with product team to design and implement conversion optimizations that was a major contributor to the business unit moving into profitability.
• Increased the 'speed' of key SEO pages by 50% https://tech.mybuilder.com/get-started-with-web- performance

Frontend Developer

Aug 2019 - Nov 2019 · 4 mos

Objective Manager

• Addressed 7 years of CSS tech debt and build a methodology for the team to modularise new CSS so they could actually make changes.
• Implemented a custom Bootstrap 3 build that fit the specific needs of the business in a flexible way

Senior UX Designer

Jun 2016 - Jun 2019 · 3 yrs 1 mo

Fidelity International

• I was instrumental in the re-design of the FundsNetwork advisory investment platform which has gone on to win industry awards.
• I mentored Junior and Mid level UX designers to develop their technical and presentation skills.

UX Designer

Sep 2015 - Mar 2016 · 7 mos

Citi Bank

• I was the first person to do user research on the trading floor at CitiBank. After an extensive ethnographic study, I designed features for a UI responsible for moving billions of dollars per day.

UX Designer, Junior UX designer, UX Intern

May 2013 - Sep 2015 · 2 yrs 5 mos

Caplin Systems

• Designed key product features for the ‘Sales Trader’ product that are still part of the key offering 10 years later.

Artworker

Jan 2013 - May 2013 · 5 mos

CashZone

• Working part time to support my part-time Masters degree studies.
• Designing vinyl wraps, custom surrounds and points of sale for cash machines.

Junior Graphic Designer

Mar 2009 - Aug 2012 · 3 yrs 6 mos

Wates Construction

• My favourite part of this job was producing peoples presentations. They came to me for ‘just’ PowerPoint and I gave them more speaking confidence by listening to their pitches.
• Designed, printed and hand-bound tender documents.