Experience & approach

Twenty years of shipping, leading & learning.

London ·Software engineer ·Since 1999

01What I have been up to.

Founding Engineer (2025-present) Odokai. / Senior engineer at WPP (2025-2026) building an AI platform. / UI software engineer. Unitary ai (2025). Senior full-stack engineer at M&S (2022–2025), leading Contentful and federated GraphQL across the online platform. / Lead UI engineer at Informa (2022): seventy-plus production websites on Remix and AWS. Lead engineer at Gousto (2021–22): a five-engineer founding team, a twelve-month roadmap, build times cut by a third. Senior engineer at Fidelity (2017–21): a global digital wealth platform on AWS serverless, delivered with a sixty-person team. Before that: Barclays Investment Bank, Dentsu Aegis, and agency years at AKQA, Glue Isobar and Steel London for clients including Merrill Lynch, McKinsey and Aviva.

02The names on the badge

03How I work

Understand the business, not just the ticket.

Architect for the next five years, not the next demo.

Build in public, ship in days.

Leave the team stronger than I found it.

04 The stack, in one honest object

const lewis = {
  languages: ["TypeScript", "JavaScript", "Node.js"],
  frontend: ["React", "Next.js", "GraphQL"],
  cloud: ["AWS", "Azure", "Vercel"],
  ai: ["Claude", "GPT", "Gemini", "DeepSeek"],
  practices: ["Scrum", "Kanban", "DevOps", "CI/CD"],
};

05Questions

What kind of work do you take on?

Senior and lead contract engineering, fractional tech leadership, and architecture reviews. Usually three to six months, London or remote.

What's your stack?

TypeScript end to end — Node, React, Next.js and GraphQL, running on AWS or Azure. Whatever serves the problem.

Do you work with AI?

Yes. LLM integration is a specialism: Claude, GPT, Gemini and DeepSeek, plus the guardrails and evaluations that make them safe in production.

Are you available?

Taking bookings from Q4 2026. Email is fastest, LinkedIn works too.

06Who you get

Lewis Barclay

Software engineer & leader

Twenty-plus years. Hands-on daily.

Engineering

Hands-on delivery

TypeScript, React, Node, GraphQL, AWS — written and shipped personally.

Experience

UX-led front end

Interfaces designed and built by the same pair of hands.

Enablement

Mentoring & agile

Teams levelled up: Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, honest DORA numbers.

07Said about the work

“Lewis was always approachable, even at the most stressful of times and played an integral role of getting our project(s) delivered successfully.”

— CTO

“A brilliant Tech Manager with not only exceptional technical knowledge but also a brilliant addition to any team.”

— Director, UX Strategy team