Shaun O'Connell

Consulting and contracting as a front-end developer, building design systems, static sites, and web applications. This has given me the opportunity to work in several industries, and across the marketing, product, design, and development disciplines.
Being a front-end developer means I've worked on many different tech stacks, such as: Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Django, and ASP.net MVC

During this time, I've also been developing my own UI pattern library; to make documentation and development of UI patterns easier and more maintainable.

Te Whatu Ora's Data & Digital team wanted a second opinion on their fledgling Design System. They called me in to consult on this Design System.
This gave me an excellent chance to demonstrate how working with Web Platform technology (such as Web Components), could end up saving the organisation thousands of dollars in consultation fees, and making the web applciations more reliable for NZ residents.

Upon returning to New Zealand, I wanted to continue working in a socially-conscious way, so I joined Ackama. I worked on various CMS themes for non-profits, and government organisations.
I particularly enjoyed working on the ZX Security and Yarra Valley Water website projects.

This opportunity was a chance to exercise my tutoring skills and do something meaningful: enrich the lives of 20 students. So, in early 2020, I fly to Madagascar, and worked on delivering a custom curriculum in Git, Bash, web development, and later specialising in front-end development.
The students, having never touched a computer before, (and having only learned entry-level English the year prior) flourished. It felt truly meaningful to be a contributor in their progress.
Feel free to read more about this adventure on my blog.

After contract web performance optimisations for Flick were completed, I had an opportunity to join the Product team. Here, we created Flick's Design System, maintaining consistency and reliability in the web-based UI.
This Design System was implemented in seven distinct Rails front-ends, and on the company blog, helping to consolidate their use of UI, creating a more cosnsitent user experience.

With Abletech's help, I relocated to New Zealand, where I worked on both the internal product (AddressFinder) and as a consultant for Abletech's clients.
Most of the work was in Ruby on Rails front-ends, and building complimentary pattern libraries using Middleman. These pattern libraries gave the rest of the team a head-start on any front-end development tasks.
One of the highlights of my time at Abletech was working on Trade Me's design system: Tangram; writing HTML, CSS, and JS at scale.

In 1998, After a 4-month course in COBOL, I worked at Dimension Data.
It wasn't until I joined the web development division that I felt like I had found my niche.

Three years later, I joined Consology, where I was responsible for developing and theming a white-labelled self-service web application for Oracle.
This was the start of my career as a front-end developer.

I then worked in South Africa for several other organisations over 8 years, including: 22seven, Kalahari.com, Yola, and CareerJunction.
At Yola, I worked with both the product and the engineering teams, doing low-fi design, and then implementing it during development. I started learning valuable skills such as User Research, Interaction Design, and Usability Testing during this time.