Hi, I’m
Dave Barnwell

What I do

I build exceptional websites, web applications, and mobile apps for clients and web designers. My focus is on exceeding expectations through seamless collaboration and clear communication. I thrive in team environments where diverse skills are valued and organizational structures are agile, fostering innovation and efficient delivery.

I leverage cloud services like AWS, particularly serverless architectures, for optimal performance. However, I also possess extensive experience in managing and deploying *nix servers, offering flexibility to meet your project's specific needs.

My expertise spans a wide range of technologies, including (but not limited to) Laravel, Vue, React, Node.js, Go, and TypeScript. I'm proficient in using modern frameworks, APIs, and tools to bring your vision to life. (If you want to see a more complete technical skills list, drop me an email).

Why choose me?

As a full-stack developer, I'm committed to staying at the forefront of technological advancements, design principles, and business strategies. My understanding of how these elements intersect is key to delivering high-quality, impactful products.

While I primarily work as a freelance/contract developer within teams, I've also successfully built and managed engineering teams from the ground up, offering a valuable resource for projects needing that level of leadership.

See some recent work

• ActionStorm is a petition and community engagement platform empowering activists and campaigners to build thriving movements, not just collect signatures. It enables rapid petition creation, active signer engagement, fundraising, AI powered campaigns, and efficient campaign data management with integrations with Mailchimp, NationBuilder and Action Network. I worked with the founder to spec and the build out of this platform from scratch, onboarding over three hundred thousand users in the first two years.
  Tech stack: Laravel Alpine.js
• Pass Functional Skills is an AI-powered EdTech platform revolutionizing Maths and English education in the UK. I led both the technical direction of the team and recruitment of new developers. Personally I integrated AI marking, built out the public APIs and webhook products for seamless third-party integrations.
  Tech stack: Laravel Vue.js Typescript Go
• Crowdfunder I significantly enhanced and scaled Crowdfunder, the UK's leading rewards and donation based crowdfunding platform, to handle substantial traffic surges from viral campaigns. This included creating a public API for custom integrations, substantial speed optimisations of software and hardware architecture and deep payment integrations with multiple 3rd party providers; Exposing data for "Big Data" analysis and hence data driven decision making. Finally expanding the development team from a solo operation to a six-person team within two years.
  Tech stack: CodeIgniter Javascript
• SurfHog is a UK-focused surf tracking and forecasting website providing real-time and historical surf conditions, wave buoy data, tide tables, pressure maps, and webcam feeds, primarily covering Cornwall but with UK wide wave bout data. This long running personal project (20 years+) on it's third iteration leverages serverless technologies, housing in excess of 30 million historical data points and counting.
  Tech Stack: Astro Typescript SolidJS

Contact me (see footer) if you'd like to know more about my backend work which has been extensive, auditing, building or supporting critical high-volume environments, such as auditing major UK Universities' backend application suites used by Staff and Students, Or working at Headforwards on Best Energy's global IoT platform ingesting billions of data points a month, to name two notable examples.

Life outside tech?

I'm an avid music lover, record collector, audiophile, relapsed trombone and piano player, devourer of books, lover of the outdoors.

Blog