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
Contributed to two core internal front-end applications — 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
Set up and built most of the front-end for two full applications, shipped in nine months on a GraphQL/Hasura + Firebase backend with React, owning architectural decisions across the stack. Both are still in use today.
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
Migrated the platform from Shopify to Gatsby in seven weeks, delivering the relaunch ahead of a successful crowdfunding round.
Built a bespoke component library and rolled it out across the product pages of the main site. Built custom GreenSock animations for the homepage and product pages.
Stack: React, TypeScript, Gatsby, GraphQL, React Query, Storybook, Contentful, GreenSock (GSAP), 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.
Joined for a greenfield partner project with Samsung Pay: a small Next.js and Express app that sat inside the wider user journey and talked to both the partner’s APIs and Curve’s own Golang back-end, built in close collaboration with the mobile and API teams. Created the first version of Curve’s web design system on Theme UI, initially for product apps. It has since grown to cover all of Curve’s web properties. Finished by rebuilding curve.com on Gatsby and Contentful, which put the design system into everyday use across the web team.
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.
Joined as the second React-focused front-end hire, ahead of a large re-platforming project. Led development on several projects, then moved to the team building the account area for Equals Go, a new multi-currency card launched in August 2019. Maintained the monorepo of shared company code, worked full-stack across AWS Lambdas and Node servers, and mentored junior developers. FairFX rebranded to Equals during my time there.
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.
Hired to lead and expand the web platform team. In under a year we shipped a range of web and React Native projects. Alongside hands-on work on single-page and server-rendered React apps, I wrote technical approach documents and contributed to pitches.
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.