# Andy Russell > Senior Full Stack / Product Engineer. Available for contract. I've spent 18 years building software for startups and large enterprises, mostly at the frontend end of full stack, and I'm happiest when a well built product is in users' hands. These days I'm deep into AI assisted engineering: shaping codebases that coding agents can work in safely, and building AI powered products of my own. Through DevTown, my own company, I'm building Dot, which turns customer enquiries into organised work in Slack. I also created Harbr, an open source terminal app for moving between repositories, worktrees and tmux sessions, because I live in the terminal: tmux, Neovim, OpenCode and Lazygit. ## Links - [Email](mailto:andy.r@dev-town.com): andy.r@dev-town.com - [Interactive CV](https://andy-r.dev/): the CV laid out as `git log --graph` - [Printable CV](https://andy-r.dev/cv): the same CV as a plain page - [dev-town.com](https://dev-town.com/) - [GitHub (andymrussell)](https://github.com/andymrussell) - [GitHub (dev-town)](https://github.com/dev-town) - [LinkedIn (andy-russell-39984128)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-russell-39984128/) ## Enjoying right now TypeScript, React, Effect, Turborepo, Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, Workflows, Alchemy, Tailwind, Twilio, LLM integrations, transcription ## Projects ### Dot by DevTown (in development), since Jun 2026 Building Dot, which helps service businesses turn customer enquiries into organised work. It captures calls and website enquiries, uses AI to add the customer's context, and brings each one into Slack for the team to route, assign and follow up. - Frontend: React, TypeScript, TanStack Start, TanStack Router, TanStack Query, Tailwind CSS, Radix UI, Vite. The authenticated account and onboarding interface. - Backend: Effect v4, OpenAPI, Better Auth, Drizzle ORM, Slack, Twilio, Stripe. Schema-defined HTTP APIs, Slack integration, Twilio voice and Stripe billing. - AI: Workers AI, AI Gateway, Flue, Code Mode. Workers AI for the Dot agent, structured interaction analysis and call transcription; AI Gateway for model traffic; Flue for durable agent conversations; Code Mode for controlled access to product APIs. - Platform: Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, D1, R2, Queues, Workflows, Tunnel, Alchemy, OpenTelemetry. Alchemy manages infrastructure and deployment; OpenTelemetry supports traces and logs. - Engineering: pnpm, Turborepo, Vitest, Oxlint, Oxfmt ### Harbr (open source), since May 2026 Built Harbr, a keyboard driven terminal app for developers working across many repositories and monorepos. It finds the right project or module in a few keystrokes and drops you into its tmux or Herdr session, creating a Git worktree when a new task needs its own copy of the code. - Developed a TypeScript terminal UI with React, OpenTUI, Zustand, and contextual keyboard commands. - Designed a Bun and Turborepo monorepo with separate domain, configuration, Git, scanner, reconciler, database, and runtime adapter packages. - Implemented Git worktree discovery and creation, module scanning, and reconciliation of observed Git and runtime state into SQLite. - Used Effect services and layers for dependency injection and orchestration; used Drizzle ORM and migrations for persistence and Zod for configuration validation. - Added Vitest tests, GitHub Actions checks, compiled Bun binaries, and optional OpenTelemetry tracing for startup and sync profiling. - Stack: TypeScript, Bun, React, OpenTUI, Zustand, Effect, SQLite, Drizzle, Zod, Git, tmux, Herdr, Turborepo, Vitest, GitHub Actions ## Experience ### Contract Senior Software Engineer, Wealth Wizards Mar 2024 – Sep 2026 Worked across a suite of financial guidance applications, including the Equity Release programme of customer and adviser apps, Planner, Lump Sum Advice and AI workflow tooling for the advice team. - 3 months → 3 weeks to deliver a new application - 1 sprint → 2 days to build a new page - 0 production bugs across three new apps - 0 downtime or data loss across four app AWS migration - Created a Turborepo monorepo platform for React Router applications, cutting new app delivery from a typical three months to around three weeks and new pages from a sprint to a couple of days. Used to build Income & Expenditure, Benefits Checker and Concepts with zero production bugs. - Guided engineers on the platform's patterns and handed over applications and shared packages to existing teams through documentation and knowledge transfer, enabling them to scale independently. - Built shared packages providing forms, route schemas, copy contracts, progressive disclosure, dynamic validation and calculations, page guards, journey state and navigation, error handling, PII removal, automatic MI events, and data submission via typed REST adapters and AWS persistence. - Designed the platform as a paved road for engineers and AI coding agents, where a page schema drove layout, validation, typed copy, analytics, guarding, accessibility and storage, keeping each page to minimal configuration. - Built responsive WCAG AA interfaces from Figma designs, passing external and internal audits, promoted several components to the design system, and authored a technical review that led to fixes making it extensible. - Integrated with FactFind using transformation layers and OAuth M2M authentication. Implemented OAuth user login and adviser impersonation, and built typed integrations from Swagger/OpenAPI specifications using Zod schemas. - Migrated four applications to dedicated development, staging and production AWS accounts with stricter policies, consolidating two PostgreSQL databases into DynamoDB via Step Functions with zero downtime or data loss. - Designed an agentic workflow framework using LangGraph and LLMs for webhook driven multimedia production, including PII removal, script generation, dynamic polling, audio and video generation, human in the loop approval and delivery. - Rebuilt Playwright end to end testing to run locally and against ephemeral and deployed environments, reduced flaky CI failures by fixing hydration timing issues, and hardened supply chain security with a pnpm minimum release age. Tech: TypeScript, React, React Router, Next.js, React Hook Form, Zod, Zodios, Node.js, Hono, REST, Swagger/OpenAPI, AWS Lambda, Step Functions, DynamoDB, ElectroDB, PostgreSQL, SST, Pulumi, LangGraph, Playwright, Cypress, Vitest, Jest, React Testing Library, Rollbar, OpenTelemetry, Turborepo, GitLab CI/CD ### Contract Senior Software Engineer, BAE Systems Digital Intelligence Nov 2021 – Jan 2024 Returned to lead the rebuild of a legacy Event Analysis application, moving it from a monolith to a modern micro frontend architecture. Designed and developed GraphQL APIs to handle a complex dynamic data model, and created bespoke analytical tools. - GEO Analysis: A map application for analysing geo data, with advanced filtering, custom layers, tile sources, points, clusters and drawing tools. - Dashboard Builder: Create and share multiple custom dashboards, with resizable drag and drop widgets. - Timeline Event Explorer: Explore large volumes of events in a timeline visualisation. Aggregate information is displayed in time buckets, allowing users to zoom into ranges and inspect finer grained detail. - Data Grid: A feature rich dynamic data grid supporting sorting, filtering, pagination, grouping, custom cell renderers per value type, and dynamic context menu per cell. - Shell / Core App: Handled global configuration, authentication and routing for the micro frontends. - Developer Tooling for rapid generation of Micro Frontends: Built a CLI tool to scaffold new micro frontends and back end services, including setup for Storybook, component scaffolding, i18n, global themes, code generation, Node.js servers, bundling, testing frameworks, pre commit hooks and CI integration. Tech: TypeScript, React, Next.js, React Router, Apollo Client, GraphQL, REST, React Query, Codegen, Jotai, Storybook, i18next, Emotion, Material UI, Vite, AmCharts, AG Grid, OpenLayers, React Grid Layout, yFiles, Jest, React Testing Library, Apollo Server (federation), Express, Docker, Husky, Rollup, Git ### Lead Software Engineer, Acin (acquired by Cube) Oct 2020 – Nov 2021 · FinTech Led the development of a new SaaS product for Operational Risk and Control management for top tier banks. - Provided leadership and mentorship to a team of front end developers, ensuring their growth and effective contribution to project goals. - Worked with BAs, UX designers, data scientists, back end developers, and SMEs to refine requirements. - Architected a scalable micro frontend framework. - Championed, designed and implemented federated GraphQL APIs. - Developed tooling for rapid software development. - Developed a custom component library based on the design system. - Created bespoke visualisations within the product. - Implemented solutions to allow the onboarding team to map client data to Acin's network of Risk and Controls. Tech: TypeScript, React, Next.js, React Router, Webpack, Apollo Client, Storybook, Styled Components, Tailwind, Jest, React Testing Library, Plop, Node.js, Apollo Server (federation), Express, GraphQL, REST, Rollup, Husky, Git, Docker, CI, Headless CMS ### Contract Senior Software Engineer, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence Oct 2015 – Jun 2020 · Intelligence Software Led the transition from a legacy entity based Angular application to a suite of applications with a shared design system, style guide, and core component library. Built multiple micro frontends using React (hooks), Redux, Apollo, Webpack and Styled Components, designed and implemented multiple APIs with Express and Apollo Server, and played a key role in building, training and mentoring teams. - Entity Builder: Dynamic data model entity creation. - Entity Knowledge Base: Entity search and visualisations. - Network Chart App: Exploration and analysis of entity connections. - Connection Search Application: Network based attribute search. - Facial Recognition App: Search results based on likeness. - Audio Transcription App: Audio player with editable transcriptions. - Reporting App: CRUD app for generating reports, including image annotation. Tech: TypeScript, React, Redux, Redux Observable, Webpack, Apollo Client, GraphQL, React Intl, Draft.js, Wavesurfer, AG Grid, D3, Storybook, Styled Components, Sass, Jest, Enzyme, Node.js, Express, Apollo Server, REST, Git, Docker ### Contract Senior Full Stack Engineer, My People Ltd Jun 2015 – Oct 2015 · SaaS HR Software Tech: Angular, JavaScript, D3, HTML5, CSS3, Less, Bower, Grunt, Node.js, Express, MongoDB, MySQL ### Contract Senior Software Engineer, Brave Bison (formerly Rightster) Jan 2014 – Jun 2015 · Video distribution and monetisation platform Tech: Angular, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Sass, BEM, Memcached, Redis, Bower, Grunt, PostgreSQL, PHP, Zend, Composer, Jasmine, Jenkins, Vagrant, Puppet, Git ### Various Clients 2008 – 2014 Including Adobe, Vodafone, Autodesk, Cisco, Ozy.com and OgilvyOne DNX. Tech: AngularJS, Backbone, Bootstrap, CSS, D3, HTML, HTML5, JavaScript, jQuery, Less, MooTools, RequireJS, CodeIgniter, Laravel, PHP, REST, MySQL, Composer, Memcached, AWS, Chef, CVS, Git, Grunt, SVN, Vagrant ## About this site The page is laid out as `git log --graph`: newest at the top, the CV as commit messages, and a graph of the tools used over time on the left. In browsers that support WebMCP, the page also offers read-only tools for agents (`get_profile`, `list_experience`, `find_experience`, `show_section`).