Lucas
Vilela.
Fullstack TypeScript engineer & team lead. Nine years or so going from React frontends and design systems to Node services, and leading the team that owns them.
Profile
A fullstack TypeScript engineer and team lead. Nine years across an agency, three startups, a consultancy and Australia's largest insurer.
That mix taught me two different jobs: how to ship fast when the company is small and every week counts, and how to keep quality up when the codebase is old, the stakes are high and twenty people have opinions. I lead a team now, and I still spend a good part of my week in the code, because that's where the real state of a project lives.
I lead a team of six at IAG on the quote flows behind NRMA insurance. When they slow down or break, the business notices the same day.
Before that I built design systems used by Westpac, ELMO and Eucalyptus at Thinkmill, rebuilt Bailey Nelson's ecommerce platform to run four countries on one codebase, and built the frontend of a clinical mental health platform at Innowell. Different domains, same job underneath: understand how the business actually works, then build the software that runs it.
At Bailey Nelson I built on top of the Shopify API the business already ran on rather than pushing a replatform, and four countries went live on one codebase. At MadeComfy I moved the marketing site from server rendered to static because the traffic didn't justify the servers, and load times and SEO followed. At IAG I'm bringing coding agents into a codebase that has to clear risk sign off, which means the guardrails and review habits get built before the speed does. If your problem is a real operation with orders, stock and people in the loop, that's the kind of thinking I bring.
Experience
IAG is Australia's largest general insurer. I joined as a senior developer on the NRMA insurance quote flows, one of the main ways customers get insured, and stepped up to lead the team as it grew. These days that's six engineers.
Working at that scale has its own complications: legacy systems that predate everyone on the team, compliance and risk sign off on anything customer facing, several brands sharing one platform, and a lot of stakeholders with a say. A fair part of the job is navigating all that and still shipping regularly.
TechI look after delivery of the quote experience across IAG brands from start to finish and help set technical direction. Alongside mentoring engineers, I stay hands on with architecture and code, and I've been bringing AI into both the development workflow and the product.
Thinkmill is a design and development consultancy focused on frontend design systems and architecture.
TechI worked with clients including Westpac, ELMO and Eucalyptus, building user interfaces and helping put together design systems used across their products.
Bailey Nelson is an international eyewear retailer. I built its ecommerce website serving four countries, on top of the existing Shopify API.
TechThe new site loaded noticeably faster than the old one, which helped sales and bookings along. I went on to ship 3D experiences, audience tracking, image CDNs and store finders.
Innowell is a digital mental health platform created as a joint venture between PwC and the University of Sydney.
TechI worked across the frontend and design teams, shipping well tested features and building a component library that kept design consistent across platforms and devices. I created interactive forms and graphs, and improved accessibility and the mobile experience of the platform.
MadeComfy is an Airbnb property management company overseeing more than 350 properties.
TechI built the owners' platform where property owners manage MadeComfy services, created a component library and design system with Storybook, and migrated the marketing site to a statically generated Gatsby build, improving load times and SEO. I also built a React dashboard for users and added unit and integration tests across the codebase.
Tribal DDB is a global network of interactive agencies delivering digital campaigns for major brands.
TechI worked on the agency website and collaborated with the creative director on a marketing campaign for Ford. I also built a bookmark tool that replaced all advertisements on a webpage, and added new features with unit and integration tests.
Education
- Ruby on Rails and NodeJS
- Customer research and design
- HTML, CSS and JavaScript
- Software engineering, algorithms and data structures, databases and networks
- Systems analysis, object oriented programming and applied research projects
3D printing and AI side projects. I like taking something from an idea on a screen to an object on the desk, and lately that means a lot of tinkering with agents.