Bath, United Kingdom • gav_jackson@yahoo.com • LinkedIn • GitHub • Website
Frontend engineering leader with 20+ years' experience designing scalable web applications, engineering platforms and frontend architecture.
Technical leader through two successful company acquisitions and creator of ICX, a proprietary metadata-driven frontend application platform powering enterprise wealth management software.
Specialises in building engineering platforms, tooling and automation that enable teams to deliver complex software rapidly without accumulating technical debt.
- Creator and Chief Architect of ICX, a metadata-driven frontend application platform that standardised development across 14 enterprise products and significantly accelerated product delivery.
- Led frontend engineering for wealth management platforms supporting clients managing over £400 billion in assets
- Delivered digital products for Nike, Disney, Intel, HP, Mattel and Estée Lauder
- Established a metadata-first architecture where applications, documentation, automated tests and developer tooling are all generated from a shared source of truth.
| Leadership | Engineering | Frontend | UX |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frontend Architecture | Design Systems | JavaScript | Design & Animation |
| Technical Strategy | Component Libraries | HTML5 | White Labelling |
| Engineering Leadership | Metadata-driven Architecture | CSS3 / LESS | Information Architecture |
| Team Leadership & Mentoring | Developer Experience | React / Vue / Svelte | Wireframing & Prototyping |
| Hiring & Technical Interviews | CI/CD | Web Components | Understanding & Estimating Requirements |
| Stakeholder Management | Code Reviews | Automated Testing with Cypress | Video Editing / Creation |
| Product Strategy | API Design & Data Structures | Responsive Design | Interaction design & Microinteractions |
| Agile Delivery | Git / Azure DevOps | Cross Browser | Accessibility |
| Technical Roadmaps | AI-assisted Development | Performance | Analytics |
2011 – Present
Leads frontend engineering across the company's flagship wealth management platform, defining architecture, engineering standards and long-term technical strategy, collaborating closely with backend engineers, solution architects and product leadership to deliver enterprise software.
- Conceived, architected and built ICX, a proprietary metadata-driven frontend application platform used to deliver award-winning, enterprise wealth management software for organisations including 7IM (£27 billion AUM), Aegon (£240 billion AUM), Canada Life UK (£39 billion AUM) and Nucleus (£100 billion AUM)
- Played a key technical leadership role during two successful company acquisitions
- Led frontend engineering across multiple product teams
- Mentored and developed 8 frontend engineers, establishing engineering standards, mentoring practices and a culture of technical excellence.
- Worked with senior leadership to define frontend strategy and long-term technical direction
- Introduced AI-assisted engineering workflows using GitHub Copilot, custom instruction files and code-generation techniques, improving developer productivity
- Supported pre-sales activities, technical demonstrations and enterprise customer engagements
- Expanded ICX into a complete engineering platform including:
- Frontend application framework
- Reusable component library
- Shared metadata architecture
- Living documentation platform
- Visual regression testing platform
- Accessibility framework
- Build tooling and code generation
Internal Frontend Developer Platform
Designed and built ICX, a proprietary metadata-driven frontend application platform that fundamentally changed how enterprise applications are developed within the organisation.
Rather than building each application independently, ICX enables complete enterprise applications to be assembled from metadata while retaining the flexibility for bespoke development where required.
Today ICX underpins 14 enterprise applications and has remained the foundation of frontend development across the organisation for more than a decade, continually evolving alongside product and engineering requirements.
Key capabilities include: Dynamic forms • Dashboard framework • Workflow engine • Validation engine • Theme engine • Responsive layouts • Reusable UI component library (35+) • Plugin architecture • Developer tooling • Build automation
Designed and built a living documentation platform inspired by the developer experience of Storybook, but extended so that documentation, live examples and automated tests are all generated from shared JSON manifests, ensuring documentation remains permanently synchronised with the implementation.
Features include: Automatic API documentation from component manifests • Embedded code examples • Markdown-authored guides and tutorials • Version-controlled documentation • Zero duplication between implementation and documentation • Feature usage tracking (during test runs) and reporting directly in the documentation
The platform became the primary reference for frontend engineers, significantly improving discoverability, onboarding and adoption of the shared component library. The documentation platform also serves as the foundation for automated testing, allowing every component, configuration variant and example to be continuously validated for visual, functional and accessibility regressions.
By treating documentation as metadata rather than static content, engineers always work from documentation that reflects the current implementation.
You can access the ICX documentation here
Created a visual regression platform that tests application routes, generates interactive site maps, records feature usage and performs visual and accessibility regression testing across the entire application.
Reduced regression testing effort while increasing confidence in releases.
An example site map and prototype app
Defined accessibility standards, reusable components and development processes that embedded WCAG and ARIA compliance throughout the software development lifecycle, making accessible development the default rather than an afterthought.
Introduced benchmarking, profiling and bundle analysis to ensure applications remained responsive as the platform evolved while shipping only essential JavaScript to production.
Before specialising in enterprise FinTech, delivered digital products for agencies and consultancies across the UK (and one in Australia), working with brands including Nike, Intel, Disney, Mattel, HP, Jo Malone, Estée Lauder and the Victorian Government.
| Company | Type | Location | Dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| GDS International | Contract | Bristol | Feb 2011 – Mar 2011 |
| Estée Lauder | Contract | Remote | Jul 2010 – Dec 2010 |
| Oakwood DC | Contract | Bristol | 2009 – 2010 |
| Enable Interactive | Contract | Bristol | 2009 – 2010 |
| Bray Leino | Contract | Remote | 2009 |
| Oakwood DC | Permanent | Bristol | 2007 – 2009 |
| Publicis Mojo | Contract | Melbourne | 2006 |
| Sol-Tec | Permanent | Reading | 2003 – 2005 |
| Strudwick & Young | Permanent | Reading | 2002 – 2003 |
| ACS | Contract | High Wycombe | 2000 – 2002 |
Designed and developed an online GPX processing tool that automatically detects uplift-assisted downhill mountain bike sessions and removes the uplift sections before uploading to Strava.
Built a browser-based version of Guess Who during a one-day internal hackathon using existing avatars of Dunstan Thomas employees. You can play it here
BSc (Hons) Multimedia Computing — First Class
Graduated top of the class.
Outside work I enjoy mountain biking, road cycling and skiing, and regularly build personal software projects to explore new technologies. My latest project, StravaDH, combines mapping, GPX processing and frontend engineering to solve a real-world problem for downhill mountain bikers.