Ollie Smith

I’m currently working as part of a front-end engineering team at Engine.

Few roles offer the variety that I enjoyed in this position. I built greenfield projects for the web using Next.js and Remix, maintained and migrated older platforms from create-react-app tooling to Vite (and in some cases to micro-frontend architectures), and did a significant amount of mobile development in both Swift and React Native.

The work itself spanned various intricate payment use cases, typically involving itemised payment disbursements or utilizing APIs built according to the Open Banking standard to orchestrate peer-to-peer transfers and access account information.

This role offered a unique opportunity to work on a SaaS platform that facilitated the smooth operation of real-world brick-and-mortar commercial real estate. I implemented complex visitor and delivery management systems in a white-labeled portal, as well as a bespoke content management platform that allowed clients to launch and manage mobile apps for their premises.

In addition to refining the portal UI, I worked in a full-stack capacity, delivering functionalities through serverless functions and utilizing AWS’s Serverless Application Model to orchestrate CloudFormation deployments with all necessary infrastructure.

This was a formative career experience, working on an important high-throughput commercial banking platform. The work centred on replacing the legacy platform with a suite of modern counterparts; replicating and augmenting the functionality of a monolithic Java application a suite of micro frontends and microservices. I worked on both, specialising in the frontend.

There was also, unsurprisingly, a lot of regulatory change occurring within the platform: Open Banking, PSD2, Strong Customer Authentication, and Confirmation of Payee all required implementation during my time with the group. Some of these I implemented, others I assisted in the high-level solution design of.

My favourite element of the role was being able to take accountability for accessibility within certain areas of the application while pursuing WCAG AA compliance; this involved routine auditing of the application, collaborating with specialists to implement solutions to issues, and ultimately becoming part of founding cohort of a business-wide Community of Practice.