bruce thomas

Senior front-end developer & developer educator

contact

profile

Over 10 years production web development, working in London. MA in Graphic Design with a good eye for UI/UX detail. Excellent team player with a relaxed sense of humour.

Excited by AI harnesses and N8N (automation and orchestration), prototyping, teaching and mentoring. After work I run a life drawing community in Hackney, London.

skills

Technologies

• React / JSX
• TypeScript / JavaScript
• HTML5 / CSS3 / SASS
• Node.js
• Tailwind
• Webcomponents
• SVG / Canvas
• Jest / Vitest
• Docker
• Python
• GIT
• JAMstack / Eleventy

AI tooling

• Copilot CLI
• Claude Code
• Antigravity CLI
• Aider / Codex
• N8N automation
• RAG practices

UX / Production

• Graphic design
• Film production
• Script writing / video editing
• DaVinci Resolve / Premiere
• OBS / Riverside Studio
• YouTube channel management

languages

Fluent in English, Spanish & JavaScript 😄

experience

• 2023
  present

  News Corporation

  Senior AdTech Software Engineer · London

  Re-architecture of legacy video advertising. 67% pre-roll revenue uplift. £3,000/day mobile swipe revenue increase per brand. TypeScript migration, telemetry refactor, AI community lead.

• 2021
  2022

  Ably Realtime

  Developer Education · Remote

  Lateral transfer to Developer Relations. Code-as-content tutorials, video production, YouTube channel rebrand and management.

• Apr–Nov
  2021

  Ably Realtime

  Senior Frontend Engineer · Remote

  Ruby on Rails stack. Refactored legacy codebase to React and Tailwind during full corporate rebrand.

• 2019

  NetSupport

  Frontend Engineer, EdTech · ChromeOS

  Research and development of a real-time screen-sharing Chrome extension using WebRTC and WebSockets.

• 15 yrs
  freelance

  Freelance Contractor

  London & Barcelona

  Commercial contracts across London and Barcelona. Agencies include LBi, Sapient, Pressco. Brands include Coca-Cola, Mars, Warner Bros, Cunard, Lloyds and Travelers Insurance.

• early
  career

  Early Career

  London · South Africa

  Limited company founder (6 staff), Head of Studio at a DTP newspaper, Internet division lead at a print company in South Africa.

• 2024
  present

  lifedrawing.art

  Personal Project · Hackney, London

  Non-profit life drawing community and production-risk technology laboratory. Netlify · Imgix · Cloudflare Tunnels · N8N · Immich · Stripe · Gemini AI · JSON-LD SEO.

personal project

lifedrawing.art

Non-profit life drawing community in Hackney, London (founded 2024). A real-world laboratory for emerging technologies and AI automation — production risk, real users, real consequences.

Netlify · Imgix CDN · Cloudflare Tunnels · self-hosted N8N · Immich · Stripe · Eventbrite · Google Sheets API · JSON-LD · Gemini AI chatbot · Instagram automation · JAMstack (Eleventy)

references

Available on request. Direct references from:

• Matthew O'Riordan — CEO & Founder, Ably Realtime
• Iliana Avronova & Christopher Reidy — News Corp BA & Senior Dev
• Neil Cadman — Project Lead, Regus
• Rhian Lewis — Senior Automated QA Tester, AKQA