Neil Vella

Malta / Tallinn — open to remote

hello@neil.mt · +356 99002610 · neil.mt · linkedin.com/in/neilvella · github.com/hskyGhst

Summary

Staff-level engineer and tech lead with 13+ years across iGaming, fintech, and consumer platforms. I lead teams but stay hands-on — most weeks I’m both running delivery for a group of 8–10 engineers and shipping production code myself. Strongest in frontend architecture (React, TypeScript, micro frontends, design systems), but I own things end-to-end: APIs, build pipelines, experimentation infrastructure, and the funnel work that sits on top. I bridge engineering, product, and compliance, and I’ve stepped in as PM more than once when the gap needed filling.

Skills

• Frontend: React, React Native, Expo, Next.js, TypeScript, Vue, Svelte, SvelteKit, Astro, PWA, SSR/ISR
• Architecture: micro frontends, monorepos (Nx, Turborepo), BFF patterns, headless CMS, design systems
• Backend & APIs: Node.js, GraphQL, REST, Firebase, Supabase, Convex
• CI/CD & infra: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Argo, Docker, Vercel, trunk-based development
• Testing: Cypress, Playwright, Jest, Chromatic, Meticulous
• Performance: Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse CI, WebPageTest, automated regression in CI
• Monitoring: Sentry, Datadog, New Relic, LogRocket
• Analytics & data: Looker, Heap, FullStory, Google Analytics, SQL
• Design tooling: Storybook, shadcn/ui, Tailwind, Figma, MUI, Polaris, Ant Design
• Experimentation: A/B and multivariate testing, micro frontend–native experiment infra, segmented rollouts, activation flow design
• Leadership: cross-functional teams of 8–10, mentoring, technical strategy, stakeholder alignment across EU/US/AU
• AI-driven development: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, integrated across the dev lifecycle with custom rules and guardrails

Experience

Willow Wealth

Staff Engineer / Tech Lead | Mar 2024 – Present

Tech lead and IC across product engineering. Lead a cross-functional team of 8–10 (BE, FE, QA) across Malta, Brazil, and the US, while still picking up significant delivery work myself.

• Marketplace redesign. Sole engineer on a full rebuild of a core part of the product. Used Claude Code with custom rules, skills, and guardrails tied to our team standards, which let one engineer prototype, test, and deliver at a pace that would normally need a full squad.
• Crypto payment integration. IC on the end-to-end integration of Plaid’s crypto exchange into the platform wallet, so investors could fund positions directly from crypto. Two real constraints made it interesting: compliance meant we couldn’t hold crypto on-platform, so everything had to be converted to USD off-platform via a third party before settlement; and market volatility moved exchange rates noticeably between steps in the flow, which needed extra handling to keep the UX predictable. The feature launched and got strong adoption during the bull market, then dropped off sharply when the market turned, and we eventually sunset it. Useful lesson: validated user intent in surveys doesn’t guarantee sustained behaviour once conditions change.
• Managed portfolio product. Engineering lead for stakeholder coordination, milestone planning, and delivery. Shipped close to a quarter ahead of schedule because we did the platform investment up front, which cleared the blockers before the main build started.
• Broker-dealer compliance readiness. Designed KYC, fraud, and conflict-of-interest workflows. Built onboarding logic to route users into soft-approved and manual review pipelines feeding Salesforce dashboards. Shipped a mandatory KYC questionnaire that initially tanked completion rates; iterated it back to 90% of baseline using intelligent answer pre-fill, with a higher proportion of fully qualified users reaching the end of the funnel.
• Funnel work. Used FullStory, Looker, and Heap regularly to watch funnel performance, find drop-offs, and feed that into prioritisation.
• Team & delivery. Resource allocation and backlog prioritisation across 9 engineers, splitting product work from BAU/platform support. Support runs on a rotating 1 BE / 1 FE basis to protect product capacity, escalating to all-hands for Sev-0/1. Priorities checked against company KPIs and OKRs in regular alignments with the Director of Engineering and CPO.
• End-to-end testing strategy. Drove company-wide E2E using Cypress: stabilised flaky tests, coordinated FE/BE/DevOps, enabled trunk-based development.
• Stepped in to bridge engineering and product during a PM gap, reporting directly to leadership through key launches.

Engineering Lead, Frontend | Mar 2022 – Mar 2024

Embedded in the Investment team, leading frontend roadmap and standards.

• Established the design system and frontend documentation; brought patterns over from Kindred and adapted them so the team could own a design system without building the foundations from scratch.
• Led initiatives to unify UI/UX across product verticals, reducing handoffs and cutting prototyping cycles.
• Mentored engineers and improved team collaboration and feedback culture.
• Set team norms that became the foundation for the cross-functional work that followed.

Kindred Group (OttoKasino & Platform)

Product Owner — Web Application Resources & Platform | Feb 2021 – Mar 2022

• Owned the platform used by all frontend teams, built on micro frontend architecture.
• Owned and scaled Kindred UI Kit, a micro frontend–based design system rolled out to all 12 brands; full SPA brand migration done within a year.
• Owned the roadmap for the UI Kit, SSR framework, dashboards, and tooling used across frontend teams.
• Rebuilt UI Kit documentation and rollout strategy.
• Enabled the “hub-and-spoke” business structure by introducing micro frontend architecture, which shifted teams from brand-based to domain-based and let teams specialise.
• Coordinated stakeholders across EU, US, and AU through task forces and planning workshops.

Senior Frontend Developer / Agile Lead | Sep 2019 – Feb 2021

• Agile lead and main point of contact for a team supporting 4 casino brands.
• Delivered OttoKasino, a Pay N’ Play brand built on the new micro frontend architecture, optimised with PWA, SSR, and pre-rendering, hitting 95+ Lighthouse scores. First brand on the new system, and the launch that proved out the ~40% reduction in time-to-launch the platform was designed to deliver.
• Day-to-day releases, roadmap alignment, and incident response.

Senior Frontend Developer | Nov 2018 – Sep 2019

• Built core React components and maintained the frontend stack.
• Led incident management and frontend operations.
• Supported early phases of the micro frontend rollout that I’d later own as PO.

Threls Ltd

Frontend Architect (first hire) | Jan 2018 – Nov 2018

• Built real-time retail web apps in Vue with server-side rendering.
• Set the frontend architecture and UI standards for high-volume online platforms.
• Introduced headless architecture patterns I later carried into iGaming and fintech work.

TheStudentCampus

Senior Frontend Developer | Oct 2015 – Aug 2017

• Migrated a legacy app from static pages to MVVM (Knockout.js + vanilla JS), with newer parts in Angular.
• Built UI component libraries and user-tested prototypes; established UI standards.

Uniblue Systems Ltd

Software Architect Jr / Senior Frontend / Frontend Developer | Sep 2012 – Oct 2015

• Led frontend development across product, affiliate, and CRO teams.
• Built a hybrid mobile app for storage management.
• Owned the localisation process across 20+ languages over the course of the role; ran A/B tests and UX iterations alongside it.

Keen Ltd

Frontend & PHP Developer | Mar 2011 – Sep 2012

• E-commerce and CMS sites in Magento, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
• Custom plugins and applications for client systems.