David Yates

Senior software engineer with 15+ years, contracting independently through my own company, Built By Up (previously Upnorth), and via Apex Enterprise Consulting. I am most often brought in when a platform already exists and is in trouble: re-platforming Sky Casino, decoupling Missguided's storefront from a legacy Magento stack, picking up Low6's World Cup product mid-flight. Nearly always in regulated or high-traffic environments, across fintech, betting and gaming, insurance and e-commerce.

Node.js and TypeScript specialist, React on the majority of engagements, Laravel where the stack is PHP, and enough Docker and Kubernetes to own the delivery pipeline rather than wait on someone else's.

Through Built By

Up I lead a small team of developers I bring in and mentor when an engagement needs extra capacity.

Software Engineer - Naturecan

(2026-05)

Building and maintaining features for a high-volume e-commerce platform.

• Shipping to 40+ countries with localised, multi-currency storefronts.

Full Stack Engineer - Low6

(2026-02 - 2026-05)

Delivering features on Spin to Win, a World Cup prediction product, picking up an in-flight codebase and shipping to hard, tight deadlines.

• Delivered against a fixed tournament deadline, with traffic peaking in the tens of thousands of concurrent users during match windows.

Node Engineer - CDP

(2025-02 - 2026-02)

Node engineer on CDP's environmental data platform, building and maintaining services that process corporate environmental disclosure data.

• Services processing environmental disclosures from around 25,000 companies, representing roughly two-thirds of global market capitalisation.

Senior Engineer - Hargreaves Lansdown

(2024-03 - 2025-02)

Led a project to digitise multiple client-facing processes and integrate them into the Salesforce CRM.

• Digitised client-facing processes for a FTSE 100 platform serving over 1.8m retail investors and more than £150bn in assets under administration.

Senior Engineer - BBC

(2023-02 - 2023-12)

Key member of the account team delivering features on new and existing projects, contributing to product and engineering planning alongside feature development.

• Delivered features on BBC products reaching an audience in the tens of millions.
• Worked within an account team of around eight, contributing to product and engineering planning alongside delivery.

Software Engineer - PepsiCo and education startup

(2023-01 - 2024-03)

Delivered smaller-scale projects while mentoring junior developers, including a React Native app for PepsiCo and a GPT-enabled auto-marker for an education startup.

• Mentored three junior developers across both engagements.

Senior Full Stack Engineer - General System

(2022-02 - 2023-02)

Built a next-gen realtime analytics platform using Node.js microservices on Docker and Kubernetes, with emphasis on applications designed to run in air-gapped environments.

• Around 15 Node microservices on Docker and Kubernetes, designed to run in air-gapped environments.

Software Engineer - Sky Betting & Gaming - Remote

(2021-11 - 2022-02)

Returned for a short engagement to move authentication onto the shared service while the group consolidated. Java and PHP work on the existing casino stack.

• Came back in to carry the authentication migration as the platform consolidated, working directly with the platform team.

Lead Node Developer - GoDaddy

(2021-06 - 2021-11)

Helped build a new team and maintain stateless Node.js microservices (RamdaJS, Fluture, Flow). Stabilised deployment pipelines on Jenkins and Kubernetes/OpenShift, and introduced new working practices to a growing team.

• Grew a new team to around seven engineers.
• Maintained roughly 12 stateless Node services supporting a customer base of over 20m.

Senior Software Engineer - Good Things Foundation - Remote

(2021-03 - 2021-06)

Led a small team of developers on the platform behind the UK digital inclusion charity, delivering features on an Angular front end over an AWS backend with the whole estate managed as Terraform.

• Led a team of junior developers, reviewing their work and setting delivery standards for the engagement.
• Standardised the AWS estate as Terraform so infrastructure changes went through review rather than by hand.

Full Stack Web Developer - Sky Betting & Gaming

(2020-09 - 2021-03)

Re-platformed the Sky Casino Next.js implementation, enforced stricter standards, and brought the software up to date. Upgraded Node and PHP versions and carried out heavy DevOps work around Docker and Jenkins.

• Re-platformed the front end of Sky Casino, one of the UK's largest online casino products, serving a customer base in the millions.

Head of Front End - Radius Payment Solutions - Crewe

(2020-07 - 2020-09)

Front-end strategy for hundreds of micro-sites and a shared component library, plus the Live Maps offering of their telematics platform.

• Shared component library adopted across more than 200 micro-sites.

Full Stack Engineer - Missguided - Manchester

(2019-12 - 2020-03)

Decoupled the front end from a legacy Magento stack as part of a digital transformation and e-commerce scale-up.

• Decoupled the front end from Magento during a scale-up period at one of the UK's largest fast-fashion e-tailers.

UX and Front End Tech Lead - Assurant - Crewe

(2019-07 - 2019-11)

Managed front-end and back-end development of customer support tools across complex insurance journeys.

Principal Software Engineer - LateRooms - Manchester

(2019-05 - 2019-07)

Guided architecture and best practice on a white-label travel product (React over a C# microservices stack), including mentorship and hiring.

Full Stack Developer - Vitality Group Inc - Bournemouth

(2018-09 - 2019-05)

Built new insurance products with a Sitecore backend.

Senior Applications Developer - Inprofit Traders - Manchester

(2018-03 - 2018-05)

Solved complex problems on an online trading platform.

Software Developer - CoinSchedule

(2017-11 - 2018-02)

Worked on CoinSchedule, a cryptocurrency market platform covering initial coin offerings, token sales and exchange data during the 2017 crypto boom.

• Tracked ICOs and token sales across the market, surfacing crowdsale and exchange data as the 2017 cryptocurrency boom peaked.

Software Developer - ERPaaS

(2017-08 - 2017-11)

Built features on an enterprise resource planning platform, working across an AngularJS front end, an Oracle database and a bespoke JavaScript layer that predated the modern framework era.

• Shipped features across the full stack of an ERP platform, from AngularJS views through to Oracle.

Web Developer - CF Woodford Investment Fund - Oxford

(2017-01 - 2017-08)

Delivered a data-driven internal dashboard.

Senior Front End Developer - Toriga Energy - Leeds

(2014-03 - 2016-02)

Built auditing software and owned the whole front-end process.

Web Developer - Creative Emporium - Leeds

(2013-07 - 2014-03)

Bespoke e-commerce sites with custom CMS, plus client support.

Web Developer and Founder - Upnorth Creative Media - Kirkwall

(2009-01 - 2013-01)

PHP, HTML, CSS and jQuery solutions for local clients, plus hardware and technical support.