Ben Counsell

Frontend Engineer

Fishbrain

April 2019 - January 2021
Stockholm, Sweden.

  React   Typescript   GraphQL
  Tailwind.css & Styled components   Sketch & Framer X

Working in a cross-functional team, my days were split between React, Typescript, CSS, and UX. I helped take fishbrain.com from a marketing site to a modern web app serving 10+ million users. Working across the full spectrum, from initial idea to implementation, I enjoyed focussing on user experience.

My biggest project was leading the web team in building a custom design system / component library. We built this using styled-system, styled components, and Typescript.

I strived for the highest standards in HTML and CSS, for both accessibility and quality. The design system improved workflows, developer experience, and design consistency.

This system gave the team a solid, highly performant foundation to build custom web-based UI's with.

I worked on design and prototyping in Sketch, Zeplin, and Framer (love Framer for the interactive prototyping)

Senior Full-stack Engineer

Realmac Software

May 2005 - Present
Remote.

  Full-stack development of a subscription based App Store.

Building a subscription based marketplace with React, Next.js, Tailwind.css, and Laravel for the backend. I focus a lot of energy on UX, and enjoy analysing data for conversions from free users to paid subscribers. Work also includes working with external payment provider APIs, database management, and server maintenance.

Previously I built a video training platform using server side rendered templates. Similar to how Hotwire.dev works, we sent SSR templates over the API, rather than JSON. This meant the heavy lifting was done the server (and allowed us to heavily optimise for performance), leaving the front-end mostly for the presentation layer.

The backend is written in Laravel. The front-end is based on server side rendered components and uses utility-first CSS with Tailwind. The end result is a super fast web app with a minuscule footprint; less than 30K CSS, and under 60K JavaScript.

I have also:
  Hosted and produced a weekly podcast.
  Run a weekly developer newsletter.
  Produced video training courses.

Software Engineer

iZettle

January 2014 - February 2014
Stockholm, Sweden.

Front-end web development for iZettle.com.

. Interacted with external APIs
. Updated the support portal with a tightly integrated experience with third-party services