I'm Ollie, Technical Lead at Rough Trade and a full-stack engineer.
I own products end to end in React, TypeScript and Python on Google Cloud, from the storefront to the systems behind it. I work AI-first, with tests, review and my own sign-off on everything that ships.
About me
I'm Oliver Taylor Al-Khalili, though everyone calls me Ollie. I'm based in Southsea, Portsmouth, and work remotely. I've been building for the web for 8 years: I started at an agency in 2018, ran my own studio, Virtual Jungle, for three years, and joined Rough Trade in 2022, becoming Technical Lead in 2025.
My passion for coding ignited in 2017 when I stumbled upon the inspector tool in Chrome and first saw the code that makes websites. Before becoming a developer, I worked at two large international animal welfare NGOs for 4 years, and I still care about animal welfare and environmental sustainability.
My tech stack
I started on the front end and now work across the whole stack. Day to day that means React, Next.js and TypeScript in the browser; Node.js and Python (FastAPI) services behind it; PostgreSQL and Redis for data; and Google Cloud (Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks) for running it all.
I build event-driven systems that keep working when something fails: 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. I designed my own multi-agent workflows to speed up delivery and raise quality and security, and 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
A selection of work I'm particularly proud of.
Rough Trade storefront and Record Store Day
Lead engineer for roughtrade.com, which carries about 90% of Rough Trade's online store orders. Led the Record Store Day launch in consecutive years; in 2026 it ran at 25× normal traffic.
- 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.
- Remix
- TypeScript
- Prisma
- Google Cloud
Order sync
An event-driven sync between the online 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.
- 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 to help visualise the difference between $1m and $1b. A live feed of the world's 25 wealthiest people, with the ability to visualise and compare their wealth. Visually see how much billionaires could buy - from F1 cars to diamonds to nurse salaries.
- Next.js
- Sanity.io
- Vercel
- REST API
- Figma
Trivia quiz
A free-to-use trivia quiz generator built using the trivia API. Users can personalise the quiz with their name, avatar and a selection of up to 10 categories. With plans to add user accounts and game history, there's a lot planned for Triviaquiz.io
- Next.js
- Framer
- Typescript
- Vercel
- Zustand
Where I've worked
An overview of my 8 years as a developer: an agency, my own studio, and Rough Trade since 2022.
Technical Lead
@Rough Trade · August 2025 – present
I own technical direction across the storefront, internal apps, backend services and integrations. I design and build the systems, set engineering standards and lead how we use AI.
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.