About me

Hi! My name's Ed and I'm a front-end developer based in Christchurch, New Zealand. I love to build websites and apps that are beautiful, fast, accessible and standards-compliant.

Aside from writing and reviewing high-quality code, I believe that a good front-end developer should act as an advocate for the end user. That means prioritising elegant UI and intuitive UX solutions and ensuring that releases are usable on all devices, from screen-reader equipped desktops to mobile phones with spotty data connections.

Work history

Between 2016 and 2022, I worked as a Senior Front-End Developer for TimeZoneOne, a full-service digital agency with offices in Chicago, IL and Christchurch, NZ.

I previously lived in London, UK, where I worked for Intohand, a mobile and web development agency, and before that MACK Books, an art and photography publishing house.

I have spent the last year living in Vancouver, Canada, and will return to New Zealand in December 2023. During my time in Canada I've worked part-time as a freelancer while also bringing up my daughter, who was born in March 2022.

Experience

I joined my previous employer, TimeZoneOne, as an intermediate developer in 2016, progressing to senior level in 2019. During my there, I:

• Collaborated as part of a cross-discipline team, developing and maintaining web and hybrid apps for a broad range of clients.
• Implemented best practices for accessibility: a number of our clients were funded by the US government, and so were required to hit AA WCAG compliance as a minimum.
• Was involved with clients at all stages of the product life-cycle, including on-going maintenance.
• Led initiatives to continually update our coding best-practice. In 2022, I led development of an update to the agency’s in-house boilerplate for web projects. This update:
  • increased our indicative mobile performance score on Lighthouse from 40 to 93
  • increased our indicative accessibility score from 72 to 100
  • decreased our generated CSS by 75%
  • decreased our generated JS by 50%
  • replaced monolithic, render-blocking downloads with dynamic imports

Extracurriculars

When I'm not in front of a computer, you'll probably find me:

• Running and hiking (preferably uphill)
• Reading
• Listening to and making music

My claim to fame...

...is that I once composed the music for a BBC Radio 4 drama!