Jabran Rafique

Senior Software Engineer & Tech Lead
London, GB.

About

Jabran Rafique is a seasoned Senior Software Engineer and Tech Lead with over a decade of experience in developing high-performance, scalable web applications. He excels in agile development, code optimization, and enhancing user experience, consistently integrating cutting-edge technologies to deliver transformative web solutions that align with strategic business goals.

Work

Sky
|

Senior Software Engineer & Tech Lead

London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Summary

Leading technical initiatives and team mentorship to enhance Sky's global online portfolio across US, Europe, and Africa, ensuring high performance and strategic alignment.

Highlights

Directed performance optimization efforts across web applications, significantly enhancing user experience and driving business results through strategic and technical improvements.

Spearheaded test-driven development (TDD) and developer experience (DX) initiatives, leading to measurable improvements in code quality and workflow efficiency.

Mentored and coached a team of engineers, fostering technical skill growth, career progression, and a culture of continuous improvement.

Provided strategic technical leadership, guiding architectural decisions and engineering roadmaps to ensure alignment with overarching business objectives.

Collaborated extensively with cross-functional stakeholders, including product and design teams, to translate business requirements into impactful technical decisions.

Rated People
|

Staff Engineer

London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Summary

Guided strategic technical direction and planning for engineering efforts, aligning initiatives with long-term business goals and market trends at Rated People.

Highlights

Led the successful migration of legacy web applications to a modern ReactJS and NodeJS ecosystem, significantly enhancing platform performance and reliability.

Oversaw comprehensive CI/CD pipelines utilizing BitBucket, Bamboo, AWS, and Cloudflare, ensuring seamless, continuous development and deployment cycles.

Drove web performance enhancements, achieving up to 55% speed improvements across the web platform using tools like Lighthouse and WebPageTest.

Championed Progressive Web App (PWA) technologies, revolutionizing mobile user experience and substantially increasing engagement metrics across digital platforms.

Fostered a culture of continuous learning and technical excellence through hands-on mentorship, elevating team capabilities and driving innovation within the engineering department.

Rated People
|

Front-end Tech Lead

London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Summary

Led front-end development and technical leadership, spearheading critical migrations and API development for Rated People's digital platforms.

Highlights

Led the development of a high-performance REST API in NodeJS and Redis, serving over 500,000 requests daily as a proxy for Java microservices, ensuring robust user authentication.

Spearheaded a complex micro-frontend migration utilizing ReactJS, NodeJS, and Remix, significantly enhancing system performance and optimizing user experience.

Collaborated with cross-functional teams to implement technical improvements, leveraging Cloudflare Workers, VWO, and SEOClarity for A/B testing and user experience enhancements.

Cultivated engineering excellence by mentoring front-end developers, elevating code quality standards, and optimizing workflow automation processes.

Implemented comprehensive monitoring systems with AppDynamics, Heap, and Site24x7, ensuring platform stability, proactive issue resolution, and system reliability.

Actively contributed to building a high-performing engineering team through recruitment and talent acquisition aligned with long-term technical objectives.

Rated People
|

Front-end Web Developer

London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Summary

Developed and optimized front-end web applications, contributing to platform migrations, rebranding efforts, and enhancing user experiences at Rated People.

Highlights

Participated in a significant front-end stack migration to AWS, enhancing platform performance and scalability for critical business operations.

Contributed to a major platform rebranding initiative in 2016, leading to improved user engagement and strengthened brand perception.

Modernized the front-end tools chain, streamlining development workflows and significantly boosting developer experience.

Spearheaded and developed a new customer-facing application using LAMP stack and Symfony2, revolutionizing user signup and vetting processes.

Pioneered the implementation of cutting-edge UI/UX designs, significantly enhancing user engagement and overall site functionality.

Led the adoption of Docker and AWS technologies, revolutionizing deployment strategies and substantially enhancing system scalability and reliability.

Influence Digital
|

Lead Web Developer

London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Summary

Led web development projects, enforced quality standards, and mentored junior developers to deliver robust and high-performing client applications at Influence Digital.

Highlights

Enforced rigorous quality standards in code and documentation, ensuring the delivery of robust and maintainable applications across diverse client projects.

Spearheaded the adoption of cutting-edge technologies, guiding the development team on industry trends and elevating the company's overall technical capabilities.

Mentored junior developers and freelancers, cultivating a culture of knowledge sharing and driving team productivity within agile development sprints.

Pioneered the use of MVC frameworks for custom web applications, enhancing code reusability and streamlining development processes for high-profile clients.

Optimized in-house social media application frameworks, significantly improving performance and user engagement for client platforms.

Partnered effectively with design leads and project managers to maintain development sprints, ensuring seamless project execution and timely delivery for high-profile clients.

Volunteer

Google
|

Community Leader & Mapper

Mountain View, California, United States of America

Summary

Led community efforts for Google's Map Maker project, focusing on mapping unmapped areas in developing countries.

Highlights

Contributed to Google's Map Maker project, mapping unmapped areas in developing countries to enhance global geospatial data.

Served in various community-leading positions, guiding a global community of mappers and fostering collaborative efforts.

Established regional mapping standards, organized community events, and led training sessions to enhance mapping accuracy and participation.

Education

Staffordshire University
Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

MSc

Computer Science (Web Development)

Skills

Languages / Technologies

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, SQL, Bash, Apache, Java, Ruby, Docker, AWS, Cloudflare, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Firebase, Elastic, Swift, React Native, Linux, MacOS, Windows.

Frameworks / Libraries

ReactJS, NodeJS, Redux, Express, Remix, 11ty, jQuery, Backbone, Underscore/Lodash, Symfony, WordPress, Laravel, Bootstrap, Tailwind, Create React App.

Workflow Concepts

REST, TDD, BDD, Cucumber, Unit Testing, Integration Testing, End-to-End Testing, Smoke Testing, Stress Testing, Performance Testing, MVC, Agile, Waterfall, Kanban, Scrum, DRY, KISS, BEM, Progressive Enhancement & Graceful Degradation, Monorepo, Micro Front-ends, Micro services.

Data / APIs / Web Services

XML, JSON, JSONP, Google APIs, Facebook Graph API, Twitter API, Instagram API.

Tools

Jest, Enzyme, React Testing Library, ViTest, Git, GitHub, GitHub Actions, BitBucket, Confluence, JIRA, Bamboo, Concourse, Jenkins, Artifactory, F5 Shape Defence, BitBucket Pipelines, Redis, Cypress, Playwright, Trello, NPM, Bower, Composer, Sass, Less, PM2, Jekyll, Webpack, Grunt, Yeoman, Functional/Reactive programming, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, VWO, AppDynamics, Miro, Figma, Salesforce, Invision, BranchIO, Postman, Swagger, Storybook, Lerna, Volta, Prettier, ESLint, Android Studio, XCode, Wrangler, Miniflare.

Projects

Reason to Follow

Summary

A browser extension for remembering reasons to follow accounts on social platforms.

Childcare Vouchers

Summary

A directory of businesses accepting childcare vouchers as payment.

Guess Where

Summary

A geo quiz app built with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Google Maps API.

Postcode.io

Summary

PHP library for postcodes.io API.

Work Clock

Summary

MacOS menu bar utility app written in Swift for remote work in different timezones.

Google Maps API React Hook

Summary

Custom React hook to integrate Google Maps JavaScript SDK in React apps.

Facebook API React Hook

Summary

Custom React hook to integrate Facebook JavaScript SDK in React apps.

Covidonation

Summary

Directory of organizations helping during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Covid19 Today

Summary

Daily updated figures for COVID-19 for every country and continent.