Ross Mackay

About

I'm a full-stack developer based in London with a proven track record of breaking down problems, identifying efficient solutions, and delivering results. Over the past 10+ years, I've worked across industries - from early-stage startups to established agencies. My focus is on writing clean, functional code that solves real business needs.

My core tech is Node.js, React, Typescript and their respective ecosystems, but I'm comfortable working in, and contributing to services built in a range of programming languages. I'm particularly interested in opportunities involving functional languages like Elixir or Clojure.

phone: +447805284648

email: hi@rossmackay.co
github: mcky

Work experience (contract)

Essensys (02-04 2025)

I was brought in to modernize and maintain a business-critical Next.js application powering their networking infrastructure migration. I converted the codebase to TypeScript, modernized state management and data fetching patterns, while adding new functionality. To ensure reliability during the migration, I established integration & e2e test coverage, enabling confident refactoring of legacy code.

Stack: Next.js, Typescript, MUI, Playwright

Oak National Academy (2021-2024)

Oak National Academy are a public body that provide teachers with free lesson planning and teaching resources. Between 2021 and 2024 I was hired by Oak to work on a number of different projects.

AI Labs: In 2023 I was approached by Oak to help them take their LLM experiments from prototype scripts to production services. We launched 2 new AI tools to assist teachers, utilizing a novel approach of streaming LLM responses as structured JSON to the client, improving the UX of long-running prompts. Productionising these entailed instrumenting and adding authorization/access control, observability, reporting, custom back-office dashboards and service hardening. Ultimately the experiments proved successful and Oak are now integrating the AI features into their main apps.

Stack: Next.js, Typescript, Postgres (w/ Prisma), Clerk, Inngest, Langhchain, LLMOps, Retool, Redis, tRPC

Prior to AI labs I worked on many different projects at Oak, with responsibilities spanning the entirety of their tech stack, from feature work and performance tuning to video processing pipelines and large scale migrations. I also championed Typescript adoption at Oak, convincing key stakeholders on the engineering team, mentoring team members on advanced Typescript techniques, and leading later efforts on E2E/runtime type-safety

Stack: Next.js, Typescript, Serverless architecture (GCP, Cloudflare workers), Postgres (w/ Hasura), GraphQL, Sanity.io, Playwright

Zero-1 / Lifted care (2019-2020)

Zero-1 are Corporate Venture Builder & Startup Studio, giving me the opportunity to work on both their established businesses (Lifted) and new startups.

Lifted care: Lifted care provide in-home care, facilitated by both client and carer-facing apps and complex backoffice software. I worked with Lifted to add and improve features in their react native apps, react based admin web-apps, carer payroll calculation and reporting workflows

Aside from Lifted I worked on Zero-1's other experiments, iterating quickly to try and validate product viability. Another large part of my responsibilities was supporting their junior developers through mentoring, pair programming and code review.

Stack: Typescript (+ tsoa, TypeORM, TypeGraphQL), Nest.js, Next.js, React Native, Postgres, AWS, Cypress

Zappar (2022)

Zappar worked with Britvic to create a gamified WebAR experience. While Zappar's internal developers handled the AR via Three.js, I was tasked with implementing the game progression logic and third-party backend integration, while maintaining state synchronization between React and ThreeJS contexts for a seamless experience.

Stack: React, Zustand, Three.js

y'all (2021)

Implemented a custom authentication/access control system across the serverless stack, CMS and Next.js app. Deep sanity integration for user group and permission management.

Stack: sanity.io, auth0, Next.js, AWS

JAAM (2021)

Created an interactive learning experience for medical professionals to learn about new immunotherapy treatments. Implemented in React as a game-like experience with branching learning paths, with each state and path declaratively represented in a dependency graph.

Stack: React, Typescript

Moving Brands (2019, 2020)

I've worked with Moving Brands on a number of projects, including:

Adding realtime session functionality to deliver virtual tours of a large manufacturer's facilities during COVID-19.
Building a marketing site for a california based electric vehicle company, including user generated content submissions.

Stack: Next.js, Hapi, sanity.io, Serverless framework (AWS), Typescript, Gatsby.js

YunoJuno (HQ) (2019)

Re-platformed YunoJuno's hard-coded gatsby marketing site to be CMS driven.

Stack: React, Gatsby.js, Contentful, GraphQL

Wizarding World (via Huge) (2018)

Led a team to build the first stages of a the Wizarding World web platform.

Stack: React (SSR), GraphQL, Node, Contentful, Jest, CSS Modules

Ekino (2017)

Built a financial dashboard powered by a modular CMS, integrating with both new and legacy APIs.

Stack: React, RxJS, D3.js

Beamly (2017)

Built the platform to power the next generation of marketing sites for a range of household beauty & fragrance companies.

Stack: Node, Express, Chai, Cucumber

StinkDigital (2016)

Created cutting-edge digital experiences including a digital treasure-trail housed in a web-based OS and a webGL + AI-powered fashion designer.

Stack: React, Redux, OS.js, Express

2PAx (2016)

Built both the prototype and v1 of a real-time restaurant management platform.

Stack: React, Redux (& Sagas), websockets, Stripe integration

Instinctif Partners (2016)

Redeveloped a legacy site whilst implementing a new design system to be used across microsites. Built a custom data visualization microsite.

Stack: React, Jekyll, Wordpress

Unmade (2016)

Refreshed marketing site to reflect new brand direction, extracted shared components from marketing & e-commerce projects into a component library.

Stack: ES6, CSS, Gulp

The Rumpus Room (2015)

Built large scale innovative campaigns for clients such as the UN, sporting celebrities and musicians. Rapid prototyping of campaigns in conjunction with creatives.

Stack: React, Redux, Django integration

The Telegraph (2015)

Developed a tool for journalists to enrich articles with contextual information, with similar tools now used by many big name digital news sites.

Stack: React, Bootstrap

Work experience (permanent / other)

WhatLeadsTo (2015)

Built the early stages of a platform to help charities and business better measure and report their social impact. Worked closely with designers and stakeholders to rapidly prototype and test features.

Stack: React (w/ Flux architecture), Node, Express, MongoDB

Kota Creative (2014)

Led development on a host of wordpress websites for clients in the hospitality sector.

Stack: JS, CSS, Wordpress

FuelStory / Converge Collective (2013)

Worked on the rebranding and strategy for a rapidly growing London coworking space and prototyped a number of small apps and wordpress websites, handling everything from design to competitor research and market analysis.

Stack: JS, CSS, Wordpress

Comprehensive work experience & client history available online at rossmackay.co

Education

BA Digital Media Design (2012-2015)

London College of Communication

A multi-disciplinary degree focusing on creative applications of technology, in my final year I focused on applications of wearable technology. For my thesis I developed a prototype 3D-printed wearable, using BLE to communicate with a companion iOS app (Obj-C) and the accompanying web services backing it.

Skills: Creative coding, hardware, motion graphics, 3D modelling, video production