Product engineer with 18+ years building for the web — front-end at my core, comfortable across the full stack. I focus on shipping the right thing: understanding the user, shaping the product, and owning the outcome, not just the ticket. My work spans fintech, health, music, and energy trading, usually on complex, data-heavy applications where design systems and interface quality have outsized impact.
At Dare I was Staff Engineer and web team lead on mission-critical ETRM software. I led a monolith-to-micro-frontend migration, built the component library that held it together, and built a new AI product surface for traders: an MCP-backed LLM chat for querying live trade data in natural language. When the chat proved too slow for the tempo traders work at, I shelved it and channelled the effort into MCP-driven generative UI, which is where the lasting value landed. That’s the pattern I bring to AI: build it seriously, judge it on real use, keep what works.
I’m a firm believer in AI-assisted development. A deep understanding of the web platform means I can direct and orchestrate AI agents well — accelerating the right things without sacrificing quality. The engineers who get the most from these tools know when to lean in and when to pull back; throwing too many concerns at an agent at once is a fast path to technical debt.
I care about long-term impact on a team: writing maintainable code, raising standards, and helping the people around me do their best work.
Highlights
- AI-assisted development — Daily driver of agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Amp, OpenCode); hands-on with MCP servers, skills / SKILL.md workflows, and orchestrating agents on real projects.
- Design systems & component libraries — Built design systems at Dare, Curve, and FairFX/Equals, plus ZUI as an open-source multi-framework token library. Storybook, shadcn/ui, MUI, Chakra, Mantine; visual regression with Percy & Chromatic.
- React ecosystem — React, Next.js, TanStack, Remix, Astro, Vite; server-rendered and single-page architectures.
- Full-stack & APIs — Node.js with Hono, Express, Fastify; serverless and edge on Cloudflare Workers and Vercel; Drizzle ORM, Neon Postgres.
- Real-time & messaging — WebSockets and NATS / JetStream for event-driven, real-time data applications.
- Desktop & micro-frontends — Electron apps; micro-frontend architectures with single-spa and RSBuild.
- TypeScript & JavaScript — Deep TypeScript across OO and functional styles; vanilla JS from ES5 to modern ESNext.
- Styling — Modern CSS, Tailwind, CSS-in-JS (Styled Components, Emotion, Stitches), Sass.
- Testing & CI/CD — Vitest, Jest, Cypress, Playwright; GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI. Cloud across AWS, GCP, Vercel, Cloudflare, Netlify.
- GraphQL & data fetching — Apollo, TanStack Query, Hasura.
Side projects
I build constantly to push the web platform and pressure-test ideas, lately much of it while evaluating AI coding agents on real work. Mostly a Cloudflare + Hono + TanStack + Drizzle + Neon stack. Full list at /projects and github.com/mrmartineau.
Professional Experience
Staff Software Engineer
Staff Engineer and web team lead on Dare’s core ETRM (Energy Trading and Risk Management) platform — a complex, real-time system traders depend on daily, built on React, WebSockets, and NATS messaging.
I built a new AI product surface for traders, shipped as its own micro frontend. It paired an MCP-backed LLM chat for querying live trade data in natural language with generative UI for displaying and interacting with trades. The chat worked end-to-end but proved too slow for traders’ tempo, so I shelved it and pivoted the effort into the MCP-driven generative UI, which fed directly into later work.
I led a consolidated real-time trade feed that replaced watching each exchange in its own app. We normalised heterogeneous feeds (multicast and Google Pub/Sub) into one canonical model over NATS / JetStream, added capabilities the native tickers lacked (e.g. historical replay), and rolled it out desk by desk starting with the CEO’s. It won on adoption against the exchanges’ own tools.
I built the company’s component library from the ground up on Tailwind and shadcn/ui, replacing four coexisting styling systems (Sass, Ant Design, MUI, styled-components). It included trading-specific components and layouts, and became the consistency backbone across every micro frontend.
I also led the micro-frontend migration of the 8-year-old monolithic frontend (RSBuild), shrinking deployment blast radius from the whole app to a single section and letting the team ship faster and more safely — and led development on the Electron desktop application while championing stronger testing (Vitest, Playwright) and CI/CD across the team.
Stack: React, micro-frontends with RSBuild, Electron, TypeScript, Tailwind, shadcn/ui, Vitest, Playwright end-to-end tests, WebSockets, NATS, CI/CD with GitHub Actions
Product Engineer
Delivered front-end across concurrent client projects: a crypto exchange platform (Tradeblock), investment-banking apps (Commerzbank, Clearwater Analytics), and a full React rebrand (Cappitech) — each requiring fast ramp-up on an existing codebase.
Stack: React, Next.js, Vite, TypeScript, Node.js services, OpenAPI schemas, MUI, Storybook, Vitest, Cypress, Playwright, CI/CD with GitLab & GitHub
Senior Front-end Engineer
Part of a contractor team rebuilding Rostr 2.0 (“the IMDB for music”) in Remix, bringing server-side rendering and better data-loading than the previous version.
Stack: React, Remix, TypeScript, Node.js services, MongoDB, Chakra UI, Storybook, Cypress, CI/CD with GitLab
Senior Front-end Engineer
Built two core internal platforms — a clinician/patient management tool and a consultation interface used by NHS GPs — and led their migration to a micro-frontend architecture with single-spa.
Stack: React, TypeScript, GraphQL, Apollo, Micro-frontends (single-spa), Formik, MUI, Storybook, Cypress, CI/CD with GitHub Actions & CircleCI
Lead Front-end Engineer
Led a small team to ship two full applications in nine months on a GraphQL/Hasura + Firebase backend with a React front-end, owning architectural decisions across the stack.
Stack: React, TypeScript, GraphQL, Hasura, Firebase, Vite, React Query, React Router, Formik, Theme UI, Radix UI, Nivo charts, Storybook, Cypress, CI/CD with GitHub Actions
Senior Front-end Engineer
Built a bespoke component library and migrated the platform from Shopify to Gatsby in seven weeks, delivering the relaunch ahead of a successful crowdfunding round.
Stack: React, TypeScript, Gatsby, GraphQL, React Query, Storybook, Contentful, CI/CD with CircleCI
Senior Front-end Engineer
Fintech, local government, and e-commerce work across Club View, Hackney City Council (via Digi2al), and doTERRA (via WQA).
Stack: React, TypeScript, Next.js, GraphQL, Apollo, Saleor, Redux, Fastify, PostgreSQL, TypeORM, Storybook
Senior Front-end Engineer
Built the first version of Curve’s web design system and a web component for their Samsung Pay Card integration.
Stack: React, TypeScript, Next.js, Gatsby, xState, Theme UI, Storybook, Contentful
Senior Front-end Engineer
Designed and built the “Fuji” design system, adopted across every web app including React Native.
Stack: React, TypeScript, Next.js, Redux, Redux Saga, Styled Components, Storybook, Prismic CMS
Front-end Tech Lead
Led and grew the web platform team across complex React SPA/SSR apps; established a rigorous code-review process.
Stack: React, Next.js, xState, Storybook, Prismic
Creative Technology Lead
Progressed from Creative Technologist to lead; delivered global brand sites (incl. barilla.com), games, and prototypes as scrum master and lead dev.
Lead front-end developer and designer
Led front-end engineering and design across web projects with a modern, standards-based approach.
Lead Front-End Developer, Designer, Freelancer, Assistant Cameraman
Lead Front-end Developer/Designer at Parker Fox, freelance web design/dev, and Assistant Cameraman on UK film & TV — a mix of technical, creative, and production work.