Mike Foskett

Front-End Developer – problem solving technologist

Email: available on request

Tel: available on request

Address: Welwyn Garden City

Website:

Portfolio:

Coding:

Summary

Front-End Web Developer with a focus on helping businesses grow through technology.

Produced award-winning tesco.com, expert at user-centric design, page performance, Standards, Optimisation, Accessibility, Usability, and Inclusion to drive user retention and deliver top line growth. Experience with major corporate brands (10 years at Tesco in various positions), and public sector (7 years with Becta - British Educational Communications and Technology Agency).

Managed a Tesco front-end coding team in a role involving coding as well as delivering training, mentoring and guidance on front-end technologies to support organisational goals. Highly motivated and flexible, brings excellent communication, stakeholder relationship and organisational skills.

Key Skills

  • HTML, CSS, JavaScript (APIs, AJAX, REST, JSON), SVG, XML, ASP, PHP, Assembly.
  • Accessibility (WCAG 2, WAI-ARIA), Performance & optimisation, Usability, Inclusion, Web Standards, Interaction.
  • Geo-location / mapping (Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook).
  • User Experience, User Journey, User Acquisition & Retention.
  • Online video delivery, interactive components, parallax, animations.

Experience

Senior Front-End Developer (contract)

–

Welwyn Garden City

  • Continually improved tesco.com page performances (site structure, navigation, page load time, content handling, accessibility, usability), driving increased customer visits and retention.
  • Developed custom page designs (mobile-first, responsive, animated, parallax) to tight deadlines.
  • Researched peers, benchmarked page performance against best in class sites, prepared presentation for performance and accessibility improvements, secured senior stakeholder buy-in for implementation.
  • Produced Accessible JavaScript widgets. Implemented Omniture Data Layer Analytics.
  • Managed international coding team of 5, conducted regular training and mentoring in new code and apps, hires and trains new developers.
  • Optimised tesco.com to be the fastest performing page in class (283K in 1 second on-load, 1.4Mb total page), used by peers as an example of best practice.
  • Developed Tesco’s Store Locator (Tesco’s first mobile-first development) and inspirational pages.
  • Used lean coding and site navigation skills to design pages that support sales and marketing by delivering cross-sell opportunities without interfering with user journeys to Grocery assets.
  • Used Accessibility and Usability skills to maximise customer lock-in and drive site traffic to 2 M visits per week.

Front-End Web Developer (contract)

–

Welwyn Garden City

  • Hired to improve all Tesco online estates with enhanced performance, accessibility and usability.
  • Developed award winning Tesco homepage and grocery, recognised by RNIB award.
  • Optimised pages improving load-times and increasing efficiency (e.g. compression, post-loading, content re-use).
  • Conducted internal training to drive a culture of accessibility and usability awareness through development teams.

Accessibility & Web Standards Consultant (contract)

–

Warwick Science Park

  • Contract extended to deliver training, guidance and mentoring on Accessibility and Web Standards in the education, special needs and local government sectors.
  • Produced high quality interactive training materials to supplement training seminars and workshops.
  • Maximised presence of Becta’s Schools websites across the UK by re-coding and optimising for search and UX.
  • Improved performance and efficiency and cut maintenance costs for 40+ sites by migrating to XHTML and table-less design, and simplifying the CMS(s).

Web Developer & Inclusion Tester (contract)

–

Warwick Science Park

  • Hired to audit, test and re-build websites with accessibility and usability standards mandated for inclusion into the Governments NGfL (National Grid for Learning).
  • Resolved cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility issues.
  • Redeveloped sites with hand-coded accessible design in (X)HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Web Designer & Developer

–

Wolverhampton

  • Designed and developed web solutions including e-commerce applications running Actinic software.
  • Optimised front-end and campaign landing pages for search engine and placement strategies.
  • Implemented CSS, JavaScript & DHTML methodologies.

Education