I'm Ollie, Technical Lead at Rough Trade and a full-stack engineer.
I build the online shop and the systems behind it, from the pages customers see to the services that keep orders and stock in step. Mostly React, TypeScript and Python on Google Cloud. What matters most to me is that it works, and that people can rely on it.
About me
I'm Oliver Taylor Al-Khalili. I live in Southsea, Portsmouth, and work remotely.
Before I wrote any code, I spent 4 years at two large international animal welfare NGOs, working on rehoming and international vaccination programmes. In 2017 I found the inspector tool in Chrome and saw the code behind a website for the first time. A year later I started my first developer job, at an agency. I went on to run my own studio, Virtual Jungle, then joined Rough Trade in 2022 and became Technical Lead in 2025.
I like to know why something is needed before deciding how to build it. On Record Store Day, for example, we queue customers not because the site can't cope, but to keep it fair: first come, first served.
I still care about animal welfare and the environment. Both of my cats are rescues: I collected them myself while out with an RSPCA inspector.
My tech stack
I started on the front end and now work across the whole stack. Day to day that's React, Next.js and TypeScript in the browser, with Node.js and Python (FastAPI) services behind them. Data lives in PostgreSQL and Redis, and it all runs on Google Cloud (Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks).
Most of what I build has to keep working when something else fails, so I plan for it: idempotent processing, retries, alerts and staged rollouts. I write decisions down as architecture decision records and back changes with automated tests.
I work AI-first, with multi-agent workflows I designed myself to speed up delivery and raise quality and security. Nothing agent-written ships without tests, review and my sign-off. I still design too, usually in Figma.
- React
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Node.js
- Python
- FastAPI
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
- Google Cloud
- Figma
Showcase
Some of the work I'm proudest of.
Rough Trade storefront and Record Store Day
Lead engineer for roughtrade.com, which carries about 90% of Rough Trade's online store orders. I've led the Record Store Day launch in consecutive years; in 2026 Record Store Day ran at 25× normal traffic. I also halved layout shift (CLS 0.10 to 0.05) and cut interaction latency by 30% (INP p75 250 ms to 175 ms), measured on real users. When we moved the shop to Next.js and Shopify in February 2025, only 0.25% of pages returned an error after go-live.
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- GraphQL
Rough Trade Club
A subscription platform I built from scratch, front end and back end: three tiers, multi-currency billing and automated renewals, now with 1,000+ members. Unlike most subscriptions, members get a different record every month, so the order generation and product limits are custom. 97% of billing attempts are paid first time.
- Remix
- TypeScript
- Prisma
- Google Cloud
Order sync
An event-driven sync between our Shopify stores and the ERP for UK, EU and US. In its first month live it wrote 99.5% of orders and produced no duplicates across 260k webhook deliveries. I agreed targets with management before launch and reported against them. A week after launch, median time to sync was 3m 32s (target under 5 minutes) and first-time success 98.2% (target over 98%).
- Python
- FastAPI
- TypeScript
- Pub/Sub
- PostgreSQL
Search pipeline
An indexing pipeline that processes about 9m product events a month into a 161k-record search index.
- Python
- FastAPI
- Pub/Sub
- PostgreSQL
Tax the Rich
A web app that shows the difference between $1m and $1b. A live feed tracks the world's 25 wealthiest people, and you can compare their wealth with what it could buy, from F1 cars to diamonds to nurses' salaries.
- Next.js
- Sanity.io
- Vercel
- REST API
- Figma
Trivia quiz
A free trivia quiz generator built on the Trivia API. Players choose a name, an avatar and up to 10 categories.
- Next.js
- Framer
- Typescript
- Vercel
- Zustand
Where I've worked
8 years as a developer: an agency, my own studio, and Rough Trade since 2022.
Technical Lead
@Rough Trade · August 2025 – present
I'm responsible for technical direction across the storefront, our internal apps, backend services and integrations. I design and build the systems, set engineering standards and lead how we use AI. I work closely with our Managing Director, who also develops, and plan the bigger pieces of work, such as infrastructure changes and security reviews, with our digital product manager. In 2026 I launched four production systems as the sole engineer.
Get in touch
Want to talk about something I've built, or something you're building? Use the form below or drop me an email.