Michael Cook

contact@michaelcook.tech

Senior Engineer with + years professional experience, based in Sheffield and working remotely.

About

A conscientious engineer with extensive experience designing and building scalable, accessible digital products and design systems for the web, with a focus on frontend architecture and UX-driven product development at scale.

Skills

Work Experience

Senior Product Design Engineer

The Tech Dept

Jan 2026 - May 2026 (5 mos)

Owned end-to-end product feature delivery across design and frontend, working directly with clients on requirements, specifications, and UX direction. Translated product and UX needs into scalable React + TypeScript implementations. Evolved components, frontend patterns and architecture for consistency, performance and minimising technical debt while guiding and mentoring other engineers in their application. Drove UI decisions with product and design stakeholders from discovery to delivery. Recent projects include:

Chatsworth House - chatsworth.org, shop.chatsworth.org

The popular destination site running on a full Umbraco content and events system, as well as their online store which I fully devised and built, including a variety of bespoke dynamic React features such as its Hamper Builder.

Amrita Nutrition - amritanutrition.co.uk

Health supplements Shopify store which has a uniquely complex account relationship system whereby they have healthcare practitioners that can prescribe, well, prescriptions to their own clients and gain commission from orders largely using React/Svelte for the many dynamic features.

Persi - yourpersi.com, chintiandparker.com

An AI clothing plugin built with React with GraphQL to cleverly generate recommendations based on the users' inputs, preferences, uploaded images and browsing behaviour with engagement tracking and analytics. Designed and developed in a fast-paced, agile style with full E2E ownership.

Vaccination Track - qh-solutions.com/vaccinationtrack

System for the creation and management of Flu/Covid vaccinations sessions used widely within the NHS. It was handed over in a heaving mess of broken React but I led a full overhaul with TypeScript followed by many years fixing, adding and refining features.

Chatsworth Garden Map

An interactive map SPA for an on-site visitor experience, designed to work under limited and unreliable connectivity on all devices. Included layered overlays and dynamic points of interest, with a strong focus on performance and resilient loading behaviour.

Flutterlab - butterfly-air.com

Monitoring dashboard for a network of IoT devices deployed across office buildings. Displaying rich real-time graphs and alerts for air quality metrics, focusing on clarity and visual polish.

UX Engineering Lead

The Tech Dept

Sep 2023 - Jan 2026 (2 yrs 5 mos)

Led UX engineering across multiple products, defining frontend standards, reusable component architecture, and design system alignment. Led and partnered with clients to design and scale consistent UI systems across products. Improved frontend maintainability across long-term projects and reduced technical debt through React + TypeScript architectural improvements. Mentored engineers and influenced early-stage product UI decisions to reduce rework and improve usability.

Frontend Engineer

The Tech Dept

Sept 2017 - Sep 2023 (6 yrs 1 mo)

Built and maintained scalable React and Angular applications with TypeScript across greenfield and legacy systems. Contributed to design systems and reusable component libraries, improving UI consistency and developer efficiency. Refactored older codebases, improving performance, maintainability, and accessibility. Working closely with clients on UX design and delivery in an agile JAMstack-oriented environment to deliver accessible, responsive interfaces.

Frontend Web Developer

The Tech Dept

Jun 2017 - Sept 2017 (4 mos)

Worked on enterprise Angular projects, producing UX style guides, refactoring and improving style architecture for scalability and collaborating with designers and senior engineers to improve UI consistency and quality.

Frontend Web Developer

Evoluted

Jan 2012 - Jun 2017 (5 yrs 6 mos)

Worked as part of a multidisciplinary Agile team delivering hundreds of bespoke, responsive websites for demanding clients with strong accessibility requirements. Built and maintained reusable frontend architectures, grid system frameworks, UI libraries, compilation software, and guided the team to improve consistency and developer efficiency across projects. Focused on accessibility (AA/AAA), cross-browser compatibility, and UX quality across a wide range of devices. Acted as the go-to frontend specialist, supporting developers with project setup, debugging, and implementation guidance while keeping up with evolving frontend practices in a pragmatic, production-focused way. Largely e-commerce, some notable examples include:

2017

2016

2015

  • Spark and Fuse
  • Football Kits and Trophies
  • Artistic Flair Crafts
  • Bag It Don't Bin It
    bidbi.co.uk

2014

2013

Web Developer

SuccessfulSites

July 2011 - Sept 2011 (5 mos)

Remotely built various brochureware sites from mockups with high accessibility requirements, learning to very rapidly develop pages from strict designs with/without design libraries.

Multimedia Developer

Sheffield Hallam University's E-learning Development Team

Summers 2008/2009/2010

Designed and built educational websites for teacher/mentor trainee placements and presentations for use by senior lecturers at the university, as well as their department’s website at the time.

Freelance Web Developer

Freelance

2008 - 2010 (2 yrs)

Built WordPress websites for various clients, including midlux.co.uk, alt-sheff.co.uk, theextremeleaders.com and some more interesting things such as:

Person Spec (Live Audience App)

A real-time audience interaction app for a theatre production, enabling live voting, structured inputs, and dynamic data visualisations projected during the performance. Focused on reliability, latency handling, and live state updates under unpredictable load.

Education

Graduate of BSc Computer Music Technology with Digital Media from Manchester Metropolitan University. Which, despite the title, involved mostly: