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Mike Barker

Front-end Developer

I have over 20 years commercial experience building performant, polished and accessible digital products with clean, sensible code and I love to work with good people on projects that make people smile.

Nice things people have said about me

Let’s face it, I could drivel on about how good I am, but what really counts is the words from people I’ve worked with.

About

Location

I'm based in sunny, rainy, hot, cold, misty, windy,
spider filled – Melbourne, Australia

Skills/experience

I've been building and designing digital platforms & products for a long time. I care about practical, maintainable front-end work: accessible interfaces, thoughtful UX, sensible architecture and the tiny details that make a product feel good to use.

Coding agents let me move fast and cover more ground these days, but I review every line - nothing ships that I don't understand and own. Speed without the slop.

Stuff I'm really good at:

  • React
  • JavaScript/TypeScript
  • CSS/Tailwind CSS
  • Next.js
  • Front-end architecture
  • AI/LLM integration
  • Craft CMS
  • Interaction design
  • Accessibility
  • UX principles
  • Attention to detail

Soft skills:

  • Always learning
  • Motivated
  • Organised
  • Jolly nice chap

And of course I'm used to using all the tools of any modern setup: Git, Linear, Figma etc, with plenty of experience in PR-based workflows, code review, CI/CD, Agile, Waterfall and whatever other shape the work needs to take.

AI workflows and custom software

I also help businesses find the repetitive jobs that quietly eat hours, then build a practical way to take them off the team’s plate.

Sometimes that’s a small workflow. Sometimes the job needs an agent or a piece of custom software.

See how I do this at Offcut

Work

Here is a tiny sample of recent-ish front-end work. Some of the more interesting product and platform work sits behind logins, so I’ve added a little context where a public link does not tell the whole story. I’m happy to discuss that side of things in detail over a coffee and/or a pastry.

  • Fluent Cargo

    Senior member of the team responsible for the front-end of a cargo routing and logistics platform. Involved in planning, UX, UI design and building of features, including:

    • An AI assistant interface and tool-call layer connecting existing ports, global disruptions, emissions calculations and other data to conversational workflows (askfluent.ai)
    • A complex multi-leg emissions calculator with per-segment CO2e breakdowns
    • Interactive port visualisation and mapping interfaces
  • Ferguson Plarre Bakehouse
    with Northmost
  • Bell Shakespeare
    with Northmost
  • Bonds
    with Wongdoody
  • RACV
    with Wongdoody

Design, front-end and back-end:

Get in touch

If you think I might be able to help you then feel free to hit me up. I'm always keen to explore new working relationships.

Find me on LinkedIn