CV | Billy Watson

Creative, full-stack Product Engineer with 14 years' experience spanning agency, in-house and freelance roles - from early-stage startups to enterprise-scale organisations - including Next, Node, React (+ Native) and TypeScript.

I leverage AI to deliver faster without cutting corners and care about accessible, performant and engaging user experiences. Away from work, I like to go mountain biking or scuba diving.

Digits:

Experience:

Principal Product Engineer

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Contract

  • Promoted to lead 15 engineers on complex e-commerce platform with 7M+ monthly visitors
  • Expanded delivery beyond core Pets site into Vets project and, more recently, Insurance app
  • Partnered with other principals to prioritise the roadmap and share ownership of tech debt
  • Triaged incoming bugs, ensuring they were refined and ready to fix before hitting squads
  • Ran a site-wide accessibility audit, lifting WCAG compliance, usability, conversion and SEO
  • Piloted AI tools (Copilot, Claude and Cursor) to accelerate delivery and assist problem-solving
  • Migrated linting and formatting from ESLint/Prettier to OxLint/OxFmt, saving an estimated 15+ hours a week, locally and in CI

Technical Lead

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Contract

  • 7x extended contract at FTSE250 retailer, supporting a major digital transformation
  • Upskilled existing engineers while building and launching a new Next site
  • Delivered key features - search, find-us, bookings, subscriptions and health plans
  • Led three of six squads, mentoring developers to grow in-house knowledge
  • Shaped strategic technical decisions, embedding performant and scalable coding practices
  • Defined coding standards and PR practices to raise code quality and test coverage
  • Established advanced mocking and accessible testing across Jest and Playwright

Senior Software Engineer

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Contract

  • Developed software UI used by thousands of companies and millions of customers
  • Applied advanced React patterns (hooks, callbacks, memoisation) for lean, fast code
  • Built extensive testing strategy for components, hooks and context to reduce bugs
  • Extended the Chakra design system with advanced Storybook docs, aiding adoption
  • Published packages to NPM with Rush monorepo for consumption by other projects
  • Spun up Verdaccio via Docker, enabling local testing without publishing
  • Switched build tooling to Vite, cutting local dev and test feedback loops

Senior Software Engineer

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Permanent

  • Led and mentored development team of 5 as a T-shaped engineer at travel company
  • Used TypeScript and GraphQL extensively in an Agile, product-focused environment
  • Contributed to component library shared by web (Next) and mobile (React Native)
  • Thoroughly unit tested code with Jest, explored functional and E2E tests with Cypress
  • Improved code performance to enhance UX by reducing render and loading times
  • Drove a codebase accessibility audit, increasing usability for all users as well as SEO
  • Integrated feature flags and implemented AB testing in collaboration with data team

Lead Front End Developer

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Permanent

  • Promoted to lead role after building out multi-faceted team of different seniority
  • Mentored and line-managed whole team; mapping objectives and running 1-2-1's
  • Honed bleeding edge agency tech stack - Next, TypeScript, Node, Sass and Jest
  • Embraced GraphQL, using it in headless instances of Shopify and Contentful
  • Introduced modern unit testing with Jest // React Testing Library for code confidence
  • Remained hands-on, developing major projects for Umbro, Lucy & Yak and CitySuites
  • Shaped DX strategy, including branch workflow and Azure DevOps migration

Senior Front End Developer

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Permanent

  • Headhunted for senior role at service design agency after relocation to Manchester
  • Introduced ES6+, TypeScript, React and React Native as well as GSAP and Webpack
  • Implemented advanced React concepts like custom hooks, context and suspense
  • Expanded agency's expertise into mobile via creation of a TypeScript React Native app
  • Turbocharged performance and SEO of agency website utilising Next and SSR
  • Developed Alexa app with Node and Lamba, led agency’s official Alexa certification
  • Championed the PWA, leveraging advantages with an offline-capable Vue project

Front End Developer

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Permanent

  • In-house JavaScript expert at major ISP whose site receives millions of hits per year
  • Mentored placement student during project to rebuild Service Status in React
  • Introduced unit testing using Mocha and Chai, used Selenium for functional testing
  • Rebuilt old Grunt build stack in Gulp, saving the department 3 day's dev time per year
  • Developed new prototype Member Centre in Angular after conducting user testing
  • Completed code reviews for entire department to encourage clean, manageable code

Front End Developer

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Permanent

  • Promoted to mid-weight following advancement of skills and knowledge as a junior
  • Key member of development team, initiated and led both individual and team projects
  • Acted up and ran department during replacement for outgoing Head of Front End
  • Honed JS skills with use of Knockout, Require and writing custom Handlebars helpers
  • Mentored junior devs, advising on key decisions and best practices to develop skills
  • Responsible for scheduling and timelines, hiring freelance resource where necessary

Junior Front End Developer

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Permanent

  • Given full time role as a junior developer after impressing during placement
  • Developed websites, apps and eDetails; including for various client CLM platforms
  • Collaborated with mobile team for iOS apps, using TeamCity and provisioning profiles
  • Involved in developing new build stack, moving from Jekyll + Zepto to Grunt + jQuery
  • Used templating tools like Handlebars, Assemble and Jade to avoid code repetition
  • Ran rapid prototyping - overnight app development for global company conference

Placement Developer

Placement

  • Offered placement after being headhunted at university Creative Showcase
  • Furthered experience to modern web technologies including HTML5, Sass and Zepto
  • Gained exposure to Back End technologies by working on PHP and .NET websites

Skills:

My huge wealth of experience in engineering has equipped me with a broad toolkit across web and native technologies, and a genuine focus on code that's tested, scalable, performant and accessible. Next, Node, React Native and TypeScript are my usual stack; but I prefer reaching for the right tool over the familiar one, and keep pace with the evolving ecosystem - recently branching more into Back End with Nest, Go and Rust.

I'm a T-shaped engineer who values working closely with other disciplines. Mentoring is where I do some of my best work - there's nothing more satisfying than watching someone I've mentored get promoted - though I'm equally at home solving a hard technical problem myself.

Qualifications:

Leeds Metropolitan University

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First Class BSc (Hons) in Multimedia Technology

Lady Manners School

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12 GCSEs and 3 A-Levels

Profile:

References:

Richard Ogden

Head of Software Delivery, Pets at Home

LinkedIn

Mattia Battiston

Engineering Manager, Pollen

LinkedIn

Rob Dorsett

Technical Director, Absurd

LinkedIn