Laura-Anne Austin

Laura-Anne Austin

Senior full-stack engineereight years building · twelve in computing science

The bit I’m best at is asking how does this actually feel to use? and then building it properly underneath.

Previous employers have called me a hybrid developer because of the people side of it. Forward-deployed isn’t my title, it’s how I work: I run the weekly demo to the business, sit with product on the roadmap, and take client feedback straight into the build. I lead the UI and own the design system, and I still write the code across the stack: React, Next.js and TypeScript on the front end, Python and FastAPI behind it.

Get in touch
LinkedIn
Based
Newton-le-Willows
between Liverpool & Manchester
Now
Door Ventures
senior full-stack, promoted twice
Studied
BSc Computing Science
four years, First Class Honours
Looking
Open to new roles
remote or hybrid · happy to travel

Career highlights

What I’ve actually shipped

Ordered by what I would point at first, not by date.

  • Cut UI deploy time from an hour and a half to six minutes, and UI hotfixes to under an hour.
  • Rebuilt both sides of a due-diligence platform in three months, with clients running on the original throughout.
  • Built a new-to-market escrow product from nothing, holding funds for multi-million-pound class-action settlements.
  • Built and owned the design system and component library at two companies, to a WCAG 2.1 AA standard.
  • Brought AI into a live product, an uploaded document through Bedrock extraction to figures in a shared grid and a populated workbook.
  • Removed the ceiling on questionnaire size by streaming the review page, replacing a whole-response fetch that failed for the largest clients.
  • Rebranded three bank brands onto Virgin Money across 80 separate repositories, inside a bank’s change and governance process.
  • Wrote whole test suites from nothing more than once, Cypress and React Testing Library through to Playwright.

Skills

What I work with

Ordered by how much I use them, most first.

See what gets copied

Laura-Anne Austin, senior full-stack engineer. 8 years in software, around six of them in financial services. Front end: React 15 to 19, Next.js, TypeScript, styled-components, TanStack Query. Back end: Python, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, Liquibase. Infrastructure: AWS Lambda, Step Functions, SQS, Terraform, Docker. Testing: Playwright, Cypress, React Testing Library. Also owns design systems and UX decisions (Figma, theme tokens, WCAG 2.1 AA) and the product side: roadmap, product calls, live demos and coded prototypes. Portfolio: lauraanneaustin.com

Front End & Design

  • React 15 to 19
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • styled-components / Emotion
  • TanStack Query
  • Design systems & theme tokens
  • Figma
  • WCAG 2.1 AA
  • Coded prototypes & live demos

Back End & Data

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQLAlchemy
  • Liquibase
  • REST API design
  • OAuth
  • Role-based access control

AWS & Infrastructure

  • Lambda
  • S3
  • CloudFront
  • API Gateway
  • Step Functions
  • SQS / SNS / EventBridge
  • SES
  • CloudWatch
  • Amplify Gen 2
  • Terraform
  • GitHub Actions

Testing, Product & AI

  • Playwright
  • Cypress (e2e & component)
  • axe DevTools & axe-core
  • PostHog
  • Scoping & prioritisation
  • Running product calls
  • Agile / Scrum
  • Claude Code
  • MCP servers

What I am in most days, grouped as they are on my CV.

What makes me different

What are we actually trying to solve here?

I’d rather ask it at the start than halfway through the build

  • I’ve shipped AI into a live product, not a demo: a document goes in, the figures come out.
  • When a conversation needs something real to point at, I build the prototype rather than describe it.
  • I work across all four codebases at Door: the design system, the front end, the API and the database.
  • I’ve worked at both ends of the scale: a brand-new product at Shieldpay, and a bank wrapped in process.
  • I still keep the original Java platform running while we build its replacement, because our clients are still on it.
  • I hold the product to WCAG 2.1 AA, checked against what actually renders rather than what the mock-up said.
  • I’ve written whole test suites from nothing more than once: Cypress end-to-end and component tests, React Testing Library and Jest, and now Playwright. The tool changes; the habit started at Virgin Money.
  • The tokens on this site are documented from the stylesheet itself, every colour measured where it sits, so the docs cannot drift. See the design system.

Where I’ve worked

The journey so far

It started on the front end and kept widening: design systems, then the design and UX decisions, then the API, the database and the services too.

See what gets copied

Laura-Anne Austin, senior full-stack engineer. 8 years in software, around six of them in financial services. Currently Senior Full-Stack Engineer at Door Ventures, promoted twice in under three years (UI Engineer 2023 → Senior Software Engineer 2024 → Senior Full-Stack Engineer 2025). Previously Shieldpay, Equator, Virgin Money and Traveltek; a freelance contract for Stanford University; and co-founder of ScotLAN, the biggest LAN gaming event in Scotland at the time, now TLP Events in the North West, where she is still on the team. Senior title within three years of starting. Based Newton-le-Willows, between Liverpool and Manchester. Open to remote or hybrid, and happy to travel. Portfolio: lauraanneaustin.com

  1. Apr 2023to now3 yrs 7 mos

    1. Senior Full-Stack Engineer
      Oct 2025 to present · 1 yr 1 mo
      1. Delivered on a fully serverless architecture, API Gateway and Lambda front to back on Aurora Serverless v2, and built the Step Functions and Lambdas behind the document pipeline.
      2. Built client error telemetry end to end, reporting even while the page redirects or logs out, through a FastAPI endpoint into Grafana, with breadcrumbs and an error code users can quote to support.
      3. Delivered reporting and exports across both sides, nine reports with shareable filtered views and a self-serve Exports page.
      4. Built the permissions model and the notification engine, with per-client access, SES delivery and bounces handled.
      5. Partnered daily with product on the roadmap, turning client feedback into delivery priorities, and ran the weekly demo to the business.
      6. Rebuilt doornetworks.com single-handedly on Next.js and Amplify with an admin area the marketing team publishes through.
      7. Took the work through to production on a live platform, writing the release notes and running the deploys.
    2. Senior Software Engineer, UI
      Oct 2024 to Oct 2025 · 1 yr 1 mo
      1. Cut UI deploy time from an hour and a half to six minutes, and UI hotfixes to under an hour, pulling the React front end out of a nine-year-old Java monolith into a standalone Vite app on S3 behind CloudFront.
      2. Took ownership of the design system, the component library and the colour and status vocabulary the product is built from.
      3. Rewrote end-to-end testing from Cypress to Playwright, with extensive coverage against deployed environments.
      4. Modernised the classic platform from Node 14 to the current release, clearing the dependency blockers, and reskinned it.
      5. Promoted to Senior Full-Stack EngineerOct 2025
    3. UI Engineer
      Apr 2023 to Oct 2024 · 1 yr 7 mos
      1. Built DoorFrame, the in-house component library, themed across platform versions so old and new UI ran side by side.
      2. Replaced third-party packages with in-house components where they had become a constraint, including HandsonTable, the largest.
      3. Mentored junior engineers across the front end and the back end.
      4. Promoted to Senior Software Engineer, UIOct 2024
  2. May 2021to Apr 20232 yrs

    1. UI Engineer, React
      May 2021 to Apr 2023 · 2 yrs
      1. Built a new-to-market escrow product from nothing, holding funds for multi-million-pound class-action settlements.
      2. Built the component library from scratch with theme tokens to the designers’ Figma.
      3. Moved the full deployment onto AWS CDK and migrated the pipelines from CircleCI to GitHub Actions.
      4. Pre-wrote the Cypress suite alongside the QA team.
  3. Jan 2022to Jan 20231 yr 1 mo

    1. React Developer
      Jan 2022 to Jan 2023 · 1 yr 1 mo
      1. Owned current and future feature requests on the student learning portal, working directly with the customer with no agency in between.
      2. Scoped, prioritised and demoed the work personally, and shipped AWS serverless to production.
  4. Dec 2020to May 20216 mos

    1. Senior Web Developer, React
      Dec 2020 to May 2021 · 6 mos
      1. Delivered 25+ client sites in three months for big-brand clients, working to their brand standards and their deadlines.
      2. Brought in to raise React capability across a team that had barely used it.
      3. Mentored junior members of the team alongside the delivery work.
  5. Oct 2019to Dec 20201 yr 3 mos

    1. React Developer
      Oct 2019 to Dec 2020 · 1 yr 3 mos
      1. Rebranded Clydesdale, Yorkshire and B onto Virgin Money across 80 repositories, inside a bank’s change and governance process.
      2. Built a customer support application still in use today.
  6. Mar 2018to Oct 20191 yr 8 mos

    1. Frontend Web Developer
      Jun 2018 to Oct 2019 · 1 yr 5 mos
      1. Won Star of the Year 2018, awarded to the top 5% of the company.
      2. Moved from design into development within three months of joining.
      3. Built and maintained the booking front ends travel operators sold through.
    2. Web designer
      Mar 2018 to Jun 2018 · 4 mos
      1. Designed travel sites on a three-month contract straight out of university, converting to permanent.
      2. Promoted to Frontend Web DeveloperJun 2018
  7. Mar 2018to now8 yrs 8 mos

    1. Co-founder, now crew
      Mar 2018 to present · 8 yrs 8 mos
      1. Started a non-profit LAN event alongside a full-time job.
      2. Grew it into the biggest LAN in Scotland at the time, with attendance more than tripled and events selling out inside a day.
      3. Handed it over to TLP Events in the North West, remaining on the crew rather than running it.
  8. Sep 2014to Jun 20184 yrs

    1. BSc (Hons) Computing Science
      Sep 2014 to Jun 2018 · 4 yrs
      1. Studied four years of computing science at the University of the West of Scotland.
      2. Graduated with First Class Honours in June 2018, three months into the Traveltek contract.

Side projects

Postcards from things I’ve built

Built end to end, design included. It started with my own wedding site, and after that friends started asking.

The DoorNetworks home page

DoorNetworks

Live

The company marketing site, rebuilt from nothing. Every commit is mine.

  • 119 of 119 commits, a solo build
  • Custom admin CMS the team publishes through
  • Next.js 15 on AWS Amplify Gen 2

Next.js 15 · React 19 · AWS Amplify Gen 2 · Cognito · SES · styled-components · PostHog

2025 to 2026doornetworks.com
The Judo NW home page

Judo NW

Live

Tournament registration and a club shop, taking real money every week.

  • Weight categories, belt grades, age divisions
  • Stripe checkout, webhooks, per-size stock
  • Admin area so the club runs it themselves

Next.js 15 · React 19 · Prisma · PostgreSQL / Neon · NextAuth · Stripe · Ant Design

2025nwjudo.com
The Our Wedding home page

Our Wedding

Archived

Booking, payments and a shared photo album for our own wedding.

  • Guests booked and paid for their rooms
  • Stripe gift registry with custom gifts
  • HEIC conversion in-browser, ZIP the gallery

Next.js · Prisma · Stripe · Vercel Blob + KV · Sharp · Framer Motion

2025borelands-laura-and-joe.com · offline now
The Rebecca & James home page

Rebecca & James

Live

The wedding site I built for friends after they saw mine.

  • Code-validated RSVP over a party model
  • Photo and video upload, shared gallery
  • Admin area they use without me

Next.js App Router · React 19 · Prisma · Vercel Blob · Sharp

2025 to 2026rebecca-and-james.com
The Becky Airways home page

Becky Airways

Live

A hen do in Benidorm, themed end to end as an airline.

  • Boarding pass, departure board, itinerary
  • Twenty games I illustrated myself
  • Mobile-first, because nobody opens a laptop on a hen do

Vite · React · TypeScript

2026beckys-airways.com

…and plenty more

Not everything gets a postcard. Some of the rest, over the years:

  • The ScotLAN site. React on the front, fully serverless behind it: Lambda, Cognito, DynamoDB, API Gateway and IAM.
  • The TLP.GG site. Next.js, Express, Passport and MongoDB, for the event ScotLAN became.
  • A betting tracker for my husband. Profit and loss across horse racing, football, golf and rugby, with bookmakers, free bets and tipster performance. Next.js 16, Prisma, Neon and Recharts, and still being built.

Outside work

A bit about me

I’m training for my Private Pilot Licence, which is where all the paper planes come from. When I’m not flying or building something it’s hill climbing, PC gaming and Formula 1, and I’ve been on the crew of a LAN event since 2018.

On a team, I like being in the room with the people who use the thing. I’ll say when I think we’re solving the wrong problem, I’d rather hear the same back, and I don’t mind which stack we do it in.

Off the clock: Flying · PC gaming · Formula 1 · Hill climbing · Music · Interior design · Football

Get in touch

I’m at Door Ventures and not in a rush, but I am looking. What I would like next is a team where I can keep doing all of it: the front end, the design decisions and the product thinking, with people to learn from. I am happy in a startup or somewhere larger, because I have done both. I am not precious about the stack: I have shipped in Java, Python, Node and jQuery-era front ends, and I would pick up Rails the same way. If you think I’d fit something, I’d love to hear about it.

lauraaustin_13@outlook.com+44 7407 257 138LinkedIn
See what gets copied

Laura-Anne Austin, senior full-stack engineer Newton-le-Willows (Liverpool / Manchester) · lauraaustin_13@outlook.com · +44 7407 257 138 lauraanneaustin.com · github.com/LSmithDoor (work) · github.com/Smitttxx · linkedin.com/in/laura-anne-austin 8 years in software, around six of them in financial services: Virgin Money, Shieldpay and Door. Currently Senior Full-Stack Engineer at Door Ventures, where she works across the front end, the API, the database and the design system on a fully serverless architecture, and where she was promoted twice in under three years. Her speciality is how a product feels to use, backed by the engineering to build it. Previous employers have called her a hybrid developer for the people skills. She makes the design and product decisions as well as writing the code: the design system, the interaction patterns and the WCAG 2.1 AA standard are hers, and she manages the roadmap, runs the product calls and gives the live demos. Stack: React 15 to 19, Next.js, TypeScript, Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, AWS Lambda, Step Functions, SQS, Playwright. Range across both ends of the scale: a new escrow product at Shieldpay, and multi-million-pound programmes across 80 repos inside a bank at Virgin Money. First Class BSc in Computing Science. Open to remote or hybrid, and happy to travel, abroad included.