Principal Engineer with 12+ years building scalable products - from fintech processing millions of payments to investor platforms and mobile apps. One stack, many shapes.
Focused on the experience, driven by the engineering. Twelve years of shipping products that pay, that page, that prove themselves under load.
$ ian role --at icehouse --period "Jun 2023 - Present" --load full
NZ's most active early-stage VC. Build secure internal systems, investor portals, and mobile apps that move capital and information between founders and LPs.
TypeScript, Laravel, React Native, Next.js. Twelve years of writing systems that pay, page, and prove themselves. Boring on the inside so the product on top is free to be loud.
SEE STACK →I sketch flows in Figma in the morning and ship them in TypeScript in the afternoon. The handoff lives in my head - no spec drift, no telephone game.
READ PRINCIPLES →A creative technologist who crafts intuitive digital experiences using a diverse set of tools and languages. Three surfaces, one toolkit.
TypeScript, Next.js (App Router 16), React, Vue, Laravel. Type-safe end-to-end. Tailwind for design parity with Figma.
Expo Router, EAS workflows, native modules when the platform demands it. Shipped the Icehouse investor app to founders and LPs.
Laravel + MySQL, queues, observability. Forty million payments a year leaves no room for clever - only correct, instrumented, and dull.
Not a manifesto. Just the patterns that have survived twelve years of shipping under deadlines I didn't set.
Twelve years of shipping have taught me that scope ends where customer value ends, not where the Jira card closes.
I prototype in days, instrument in weeks, and harden in months. The fastest way to learn is to put something real in front of someone real.
Money moves through systems I build. They are typed, tested, observable, and dull on purpose. The product on top is allowed to be loud.
I sketch flows in Figma in the morning and ship them in TypeScript in the afternoon. The handoff lives in my head.
Web, mobile, API, native - I pick whatever serves the user, not whatever serves my résumé.
Short notes on engineering, design, and the seam between them. Written between PRs, mostly on Friday afternoons.
When the engineer and the designer are the same person, the design spec is a sketch and a shared head. Here's what changes when the feedback loop is zero hops long.
Happily Principal Engineer at Icehouse Ventures - not taking on full-time roles, contracts, or freelance. But I'll happily trade a coffee for advice on engineering, design, or shipping - especially for early-stage NZ founders and product teams figuring out their first hire.