James Sanford

I am a lead/senior developer with 20 years’ experience in programming, most recently specialising in front-end. I plan, design and deliver large projects, and support my developers so that together we produce a high quality, consistent code base. I work with product and UX to understand their needs and help them understand ours, reaching the best approach for everyone. Excited about elegant coding patterns, intuitive and extensible code, clean UX for complex features, functional programming, giving users the features they need, and most of all helping my team and supporting their growth and well-being.

In my last role I rose to become FE Lead Developer within the first year, and delivered the following major results:
- I led our ProService customer portal project, leading to 38% increase in business and UK Business Tech Awards win in 2024 and delivered on schedule
- I led our codebase transition to TS + React Query, roughly halving dev time
- Mentored junior developers to reach higher performance, with one developer going from zero experience to mid-level in one year

I have worked mostly in teams as a permanent employee, but have also delivered full stack systems solo and as a freelancer. Skilled in TypeScript, React, and previously Java, iOS ObjectiveC + Swift, PHP, Database design & SQL, amongst others. I have a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Physics from Imperial College London. I've also demonstrated initiative and self-reliance in the past with my massage (+massage training) business and professional musical performances.

I'm currently looking for a Lead or Senior Developer role, working fully remote (or hybrid with up to 1 day/week in London), ideally in an area such as AI, tech-for-good, medicine, building, engineering, infrastructure, government, or any industry with practical and tangible benefits to people. But I'm open to any business or organisation with good people and a great culture!

Sep 2020 - Jan 2025: FE Lead Developer at AnyJunk/HSS ProService Marketplace (Full-time, fully remote)

       Lead FE developer: technical architecture, feature design and specification, code reviews, feature development as well as ancillary tools and patterns, using React, Typescript, React Query, React Hook Form, Tailwind, HeadlessUI, Monet, Ramda, Open API tools (and HTML + CSS of course). Strong emphasis on pure functional programming and patterns such as monads, point-free etc. Also supporting legacy code in Flow, Redux, ImmutableJS, react-bootstrap. Managing, mentoring, helping and training my team. Liaising both within and outside business. Leading on technical interviews/recruitment.

In this role I delivered:

- ProService Marketplace in 4 months, leading to 38% increase in business as customers added to platform.

- New technical approach and patterns for transition to TS + React Query, approx. doubling development speed while maintaining code quality and reducing incident rate.

Our team was awarded UK Tech Company of the Year at the UK Business Tech Awards 2024 for the ProService online marketplace.

(Our entire tech team was moved from AnyJunk to HSS ProService under TUPE in Oct 2023.)

BSc (Hons) Physics, Imperial College London