Ryan Kirby

Senior full-stack engineer and technical lead with 12+ years of software engineering experience, specialising in TypeScript, Node.js and modern web applications. Experienced in leading distributed engineering teams, modernising complex legacy systems, improving platform stability and delivering client-facing features alongside large-scale technical change. Strong focus on clean architecture, testing, maintainability and pragmatic delivery.

Comfortable working across front-end, back-end, cloud infrastructure and data layers, with experience leading engineers, contractors and consultancy teams.

Technical Lead at PlannerPal (2026-01 – 2026-08)

Led a distributed engineering team of 4 UK-based engineers and 4 India-based contractors, with responsibility for technical direction, architecture, engineering standards and delivery across an AI-powered financial adviser platform. Inherited a large and unstable legacy codebase while the business continued to require new client features and rapid production support. Led its incremental modernisation without interrupting delivery.

• Introduced TDD, unit testing and E2E testing, alongside stronger engineering and code-review standards.
• Refactored highly coupled legacy code, including files exceeding 10,000 lines, into smaller, testable components using dependency injection and clearer separation of concerns.
• Significantly improved platform stability, maintainability and production reliability while continuing to deliver client features and resolve live issues.
• Introduced structured logging and improved observability, making production issues easier to diagnose and resolve.
• Strengthened application and infrastructure security across the platform.
• Established more sustainable engineering practices, reducing technical risk and improving confidence when changing legacy functionality.

Senior Engineer / Technical Lead at Bodyswaps (2023-04 – 2025-12)

Technical Lead for Bodyswaps, a VR e-learning platform focused on soft-skills training. Managed the cloud software platform across the Vue front-end, Node/TypeScript services, databases and GCP infrastructure. Led teams of up to 8 engineers plus a tester, while also coordinating UK and India-based consultancy teams.

• Led major front-end and back-end legacy refactors while maintaining ongoing feature delivery.
• Oversaw the transition from legacy front-end architecture to a modern Vue-based application.
• Introduced dependency injection, unit testing and E2E testing, significantly improving testability and code quality.
• Introduced Agile practices within the engineering team which were subsequently adopted more widely across the company.

Software Engineer at Elastic Path / Moltin (2019-11 – 2023-04)

Worked across both front-end and back-end engineering within a cloud-native e-commerce platform.

• Built and maintained React applications and Go-based backend services.
• Worked within distributed microservice and event-driven architectures on AWS, using SNS/SQS (Pub/Sub) for asynchronous inter-service communication.
• Developed reusable services, CRUD handlers and database wrappers, improving development speed for new endpoints by approximately 25%.
• Contributed to architecture, feature delivery, testing and production support across a large-scale SaaS platform.

Senior Software Engineer at Leighton (2018-01 – 2019-11)

Developed full-stack applications for client projects using Node.js, TypeScript, Angular and PostgreSQL.

• Delivered production software across multiple client projects and deadlines.
• Designed reusable backend services and maintainable application architecture.
• Contributed to technical decision-making, code quality and engineering standards.

Software Engineer at Layers Studio (2016-11 – 2017-12)

Built modern web applications across React, Angular and Vue projects, working closely with designers and clients to deliver responsive user experiences.

Research Associate / Software Developer at Newcastle University (2014-09 – 2016-10)

Developed software applications supporting university research projects, working across front-end, backend and database technologies.

MSc in Computer Science – Newcastle University

BEng in Civil Engineering

BTEC in Electrical & Electronic Engineering

GCSEs