About Me

As a contract software engineer, I've had the privilege to be involved in a wide range of exciting and varied projects, teams, and technical contexts, using different approaches and technologies. This experience has made me adaptable and confident in unfamiliar codebases, able to understand new frameworks quickly, work with existing architectural constraints, and help teams move forward.

I am also the founder of Kavanagh Digital, my London‑based digital transformation assurance consultancy. We work with clients worldwide. I review web platforms and the programmes delivering them, helping organisations understand what is really happening, where the risks are and what needs to happen next.

Next.js has been central to my hands‑on work over the past several years. At Virgin Atlantic & Holidays, I helped lead a phased replatform across both brands, including shared navigation and flight search results. At Nando’s, I helped establish the new platform's front‑end foundations, working across accessibility, performance, and technical SEO. My ongoing work with IMG Licensing includes migration to Next.js and Vercel, changes of CMS, image optimisation, and continued development as the platform evolves.

I work with both the App Router and Pages Router in Next.js, using React, TypeScript, and SCSS, with webpack and GraphQL where the platform requires them.

My experience includes years of development across React, Angular, Polymer, and Clojure ecosystems, integrating with Java, .NET, Python, PHP, Episerver and AEM where the wider platform needed it. I have worked with a wide variety of clients and businesses, from customer‑facing household brands and enterprise software delivery to smaller greenfield projects where the technical foundations mattered from day one.

As an accomplished technical lead and senior software engineer, I am confident taking technical leadership across teams, departments, clients and stakeholders whilst staying close to the implementation detail. I bring a level‑headed mentoring style to my teams. In the ever‑evolving field of web development, I work hard to stay abreast of emerging technologies, and I'm always happy to share that knowledge with others. I document the decisions and constraints that matter, so the team can continue operating and changing the platform without relying on me to explain it.

I've contributed to both the Next.js and Gatsby projects, initially during Gatsby's peak adoption phase, and more recently through Next.js contributions that align with my focus on scalable, production‑grade platform engineering.

That focus on framework‑level engineering began earlier in my career through my involvement in the open‑source development of the SproutCore framework. SproutCore was later adopted by Apple for their MobileMe web applications and eventually evolved into Ember.js, a grounding that helped establish my long‑standing focus on robust front‑end architecture.

I also keep a timeline of my work and life, covering project launches, career changes, and personal milestones.

Away from my laptop, I watch disaster films and occasionally read (and write) sci‑fi. I am a LEGO nerd who was thrilled when my six‑year‑old wanted to build spaceships with me, although I was less thrilled when those same spaceships found their way into the company of her burgeoning unicorn collection...

I once fronted a relatively successful band and toured alongside the sorts of indie and Britpop names you would probably recognise. I starred fleetingly in a popular music video. I am a published author, a retired public speaker, and a proud Blue Peter Badge holder.

I am a qualified rally driver and an everyday petrolhead, although you are more likely to find me driving my family around in a very sensible Volvo now. I am also a trained barista. I enjoy the occasional meal out and have been known to try my hand at cooking, which sometimes results in us getting a takeaway after I've burnt the dinner.

Above all, I am privileged to be a husband and father to two young girls. Since the arrival of our first daughter nine years ago, and our second five years later, you will most likely find me rounding off the day exhausted, covered in stickers or glitter, and uncontrollably humming the Will Smith theme tune to 'human' Aladdin.