Lead Frontend Developer
Conor Kemp
Lead engineer with six years building production web applications end to end — React, Next.js and TypeScript interfaces on the front, serverless AWS backends on Lambda, API Gateway and SQS behind them. Currently setting technical direction for a six-engineer team on an enterprise data platform.
Skills
Core
ReactTypeScriptJavaScriptNext.jsNode.jsMongoDBWebSocketsFull-Stack Development
Frontend & UI
Tailwind CSSstyled-componentsTanStack QueryZustandRedux ToolkitFramer MotionGSAP
Cloud & Infrastructure
AWSAWS LambdaAWS API GatewayAWS SQSAWS SNSAWS EC2AWS IAMAWS CloudWatchAWS CloudFormationAWS BedrockInfrastructure as CodeServerless ArchitectureEvent-Driven Architecture
Platform & DevOps
VercelTurborepoGitLab CICI/CDDockerJestPlaywrightUnit TestingIntegration TestingEnd-to-End TestingSentryLaunchDarklyOAuthAI-assisted development
Leadership & Delivery
Technical LeadershipMentoringHiring & InterviewingCode Review StandardsAgileScrumProject PlanningTechnical StrategyStakeholder Management
Experience
Configur
Lead Frontend Developer- Set the technical direction for a six-engineer team on an enterprise data platform serving finance, healthcare and logistics clients. The platform doubled revenue and tripled its client base over the period.
- Own the architecture the team builds against: selected the stack and core libraries (Next.js App Router, TanStack Query, Zustand, Turborepo) with the CTO, and write the design documents setting out service boundaries, API contracts and data flow for new platform work.
- Worked on the platform's real-time WebSocket system on AWS API Gateway, and shipped AI-assisted features on Bedrock through its serverless Lambda API, using CloudWatch to trace failures and hold latency and model spend down.
- Cut reported bugs by 75% per month with a layered testing strategy of unit tests in Jest, integration tests and end-to-end coverage in Playwright, with defects tracked in Sentry; supported external penetration testing of the platform.
- Halved page load times and increased workflow speed by 33%, eliminating duplicate requests and reworking client-side data fetching.
- Introduced the design-system conventions, code review and PR standards, and release and branching model the team works to, and cut CI build times by a third optimising the GitLab pipelines behind them.
- Run delivery as scrum master, from sprint planning and estimation through to project scoping with stakeholders and quarterly platform planning with the CTO; interviewed 10 candidates resulting in 2 hires, and mentored two junior developers, both since promoted.
ReactTypeScriptNext.jsTanStack QueryZustandTurborepoPlaywrightSentryAWS LambdaAWS API GatewayAWS BedrockAWS CloudWatch
Configur
Full Stack Developer- Led the V2 migration of a legacy React application to Next.js in an eight-person team, rebuilding the platform architecture from the ground up.
- Moved client-side data fetching to TanStack Query, introducing caching, request deduplication and server-state management across the application.
- Built the product's first design system and introduced unit testing with Jest, establishing the testing baseline the team still works from.
- Built and maintained the platform's API endpoints as AWS Lambda functions, with SQS queues handling asynchronous processing and inbound webhook delivery, and diagnosed live failures from CloudWatch logs.
- Wrote the MongoDB aggregation pipelines behind the platform's reporting and data views, shaping and summarising large collections server-side instead of in the client.
ReactTypeScriptNext.jsTanStack Querystyled-componentsNode.jsMongoDBAWS LambdaAWS CloudWatch
Raytheon UK
Software Engineer- Built and shipped internal tooling adopted by around 20 teams at a large defence contractor, providing skill-based search, filtering and project-history tracking.
- Replaced a manual resourcing process, giving leadership a faster and clearer way to staff projects across the business; delivered through a formal PR review, QA and deployment process.
- Containerised the application with Docker so the React frontend, Express API and its dependencies ran identically in local development and on deployment, removing environment drift between engineers and the hosted build.
- Defined the application's AWS infrastructure as code in CloudFormation, provisioning EC2 instances, SQS and SNS for queued processing and notifications, and the IAM users and roles governing access to them; achieved AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification during the role.
TypeScriptReactNode.jsExpressDockerAWS CloudFormationAWS EC2AWS SQSAWS SNSAWS IAMCypress
Gtech
Creative Frontend Developer- Sole frontend developer at a 250+ person consumer goods manufacturer, delivering the migration of its e-commerce platform from Magento 1 to Magento 2 end to end.
- Built and launched a separate international storefront, opening the business to Germany and subsequently markets across the EU.
- Delivered the localisation and multi-region setup behind it: currencies, languages and regional content.
Magento 2PHPJavaScriptSCSSjQueryBootstrapGit
This is Union
Junior Developer- Built custom WordPress themes from scratch for clients across varied industries at a marketing agency.
WordPressPHPHTMLSCSSjQuery