Toby Retallick
Technical lead and senior full-stack engineer.
I am a technical lead and senior full-stack engineer with 12 years of consulting and contract experience in the UK and Australia. My clients include government, financial services, aviation, global e-commerce and startups.
I am looking for hands-on technical lead or senior engineer roles in product engineering, on any web stack. I prefer contract work, and I am open to fixed-term or permanent roles for the right organisation.
Skills
- Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, Python. Earlier: Java, Scala, Clojure.
- Front end: React, Next.js, Vite, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui and Radix, React Testing Library, Figma.
- Back end: Node.js, NestJS, Ruby on Rails, Laravel, GraphQL and REST APIs, PostgreSQL, Supabase, Stripe.
- Cloud and delivery: AWS, Azure, Vercel, Cloudflare Workers, Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, Jenkins.
- Quality and operations: unit, integration and end-to-end testing, Datadog, Sentry, SonarQube, security and static-analysis scanning.
- Practice: technical leadership, architecture, discovery, legacy modernisation, mentoring, pre-sales and estimation, AI-assisted engineering.
Education
- Makers, Computer Software Engineering, 2014.
- University of Canterbury, Graduate Diploma in Management.
- University of Canterbury, Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing.
Experience
Technical Principal, Technical Lead and Senior Software Engineer, Equal Experts
Sep 2025 to present · Melbourne and remote
Led a team stabilising a global student housing platform. Covered a super fund's member portal for five months. Did the technical research for a bid with a global energy software platform.
Lead Engineer, Terem
May 2025 to Sep 2025 · Sydney and remote
Led engineering on a new flight scheduling front end for a major Australian airline, from design to first release.
Technical Lead (part-time), Amador
Apr 2025 to present · Sydney and remote
Sole lead engineer on a live two-sided marketplace. Took an inherited prototype to production in about four months.
Senior Software Developer, Department for Education
Oct 2024 to Feb 2025 · London
Rebuilt the Register Early Career Teachers service with Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL.
Senior Software Engineer, Mastercard
Sep 2023 to Jan 2024 · London
Helped build and release a new fraud detection UI. Built deployment pipelines and added security scans.
Senior Engineer, Abcam (through Crosstide)
Jan 2022 to Oct 2024 · Cambridge, UK
Rebuilt the global e-commerce platform. Led the order tracking system. Launched in the US, Europe, China and Japan.
Senior Software Developer, Department for Education
Oct 2019 to Dec 2021 · London
Built Find Postgraduate Teacher Training, Publish Postgraduate Teacher Training and Apply for Teacher Training.
Senior Engineer, Trussle (through Crosstide)
May 2019 to Oct 2019 · London
Rebuilt the online mortgage application with TypeScript, React and Node.js.
Senior Software Developer, Ministry of Justice
Feb 2018 to May 2019 · London
Developed the Prison Visits Booking Service and Offender Management in Custody.
Software Developer, Government Digital Service
Jul 2017 to Feb 2018 · London
Helped rebuild data.gov.uk.
Software Developer (Consultant), Codurance
Sep 2014 to Aug 2017 · London
Helped clients build quality software and adopt Extreme Programming practices.
Before 2014 I worked in marketing, communications and digital product. Read more about my background.