Curriculum Vitae - Andrew Paterson
Professional summary
Senior software engineer with eleven years of experience building web applications, APIs, and the teams that maintain them. Over that time I grew from building my first UIs to leading frontend teams, designing APIs, and shaping platform architecture across a complex, cloud-hosted SaaS product built to high standards of reliability and quality at Hyrax Biosciences. A long-standing interest in art and design has shaped how I approach the frontend in particular. I care about how things work and how they look. That chapter taught me a great deal, and I’m now ready to bring that experience to a new challenge.
Work experience
Staff engineer
Led the design and implementation of a unified cloud platform consolidating all of Hyrax’s customer-facing products into a single API and account system. Responsible for the full platform UI, database and API design, deployment strategy, and a platform-wide automated testing strategy. Designed and built the internal API and UI to serve the billing and business analytics needs of the wider team.
Frontend and API lead
Led the merger of the Exatype NGS HIV and Exatype SARS-CoV-2 products into a single platform with a unified product store. Redesigned the UI and collaborated on a full redesign of the API and database structure to accommodate the merge. Built and maintained a MirageJS mock server documenting all API routes and responses, and implemented all design and code changes at the UI level.
Frontend team lead
Led the hiring, onboarding, and management of a new frontend team member, including creating the technical assignment, conducting interviews, and establishing code review and documentation processes. Continued development and maintenance of the internal Admin API and existing Ember.js user interfaces.
Full stack developer
Designed and built an internal API using Elixir and Phoenix, including surveying team needs, designing the PostgreSQL database structure, and implementing routes for usage tracking, billing, and credits. Built the corresponding Ember.js UI. Continued development of the Exatype NGS HIV and Sanger HIV user interfaces, and built the new UI for the Exatype SARS-CoV-2 product.
Frontend developer
Joined Hyrax as the first employee. Built the first iterations of the Exatype NGS HIV and Sanger HIV user interfaces in Ember.js. Created the company brand identity including logos, style guide, and marketing materials. Established a centralised Ember.js code structure to enable code sharing and consistency across multiple applications. Built the company homepage using Hugo.
Web designer and developer
Designed and built websites for a range of small businesses, helping them establish an online presence and drive sales.
Staff engineer
Led the design and implementation of a unified cloud platform consolidating all of Hyrax’s customer-facing products into a single API and account system. Responsible for the full platform UI, database and API design, deployment strategy, and a platform-wide automated testing strategy. Designed and built the internal API and UI to serve the billing and business analytics needs of the wider team.
Frontend and API lead
Led the merger of the Exatype NGS HIV and Exatype SARS-CoV-2 products into a single platform with a unified product store. Redesigned the UI and collaborated on a full redesign of the API and database structure to accommodate the merge. Built and maintained a MirageJS mock server documenting all API routes and responses, and implemented all design and code changes at the UI level.
Frontend team lead
Led the hiring, onboarding, and management of a new frontend team member, including creating the technical assignment, conducting interviews, and establishing code review and documentation processes. Continued development and maintenance of the internal Admin API and existing Ember.js user interfaces.
Full stack developer
Designed and built an internal API using Elixir and Phoenix, including surveying team needs, designing the PostgreSQL database structure, and implementing routes for usage tracking, billing, and credits. Built the corresponding Ember.js UI. Continued development of the Exatype NGS HIV and Sanger HIV user interfaces, and built the new UI for the Exatype SARS-CoV-2 product.
Frontend developer
Joined Hyrax as the first employee. Built the first iterations of the Exatype NGS HIV and Sanger HIV user interfaces in Ember.js. Created the company brand identity including logos, style guide, and marketing materials. Established a centralised Ember.js code structure to enable code sharing and consistency across multiple applications. Built the company homepage using Hugo.
Web designer and developer
Designed and built websites for a range of small businesses, helping them establish an online presence and drive sales.
Development work
Exatype platform
Design and implementation of a unified platform consolidating all of Hyrax’s customer-facing products into a single API and account system. I was exclusively responsible for the UI and co-designed the database structure and API alongside it. Annotated demos of the platform are available at
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyuXERhvCeykyEeUzNaM6n3v7b1xizqww.
React Changeset Webforms
A published open source SDK and embeddable component that fully abstracts the rendering layer of complex, dynamic webforms in React. Consuming applications pass a form described as a data structure to a single component for rendering, which handles validation, field visibility, repeatable fields, and callback events. Accepts application-level configuration via React Context, making it a properly integrated part of the host application’s architecture rather than a standalone component. Built on a TypeScript core library (validated-changeset-webforms) that I also authored, which handles the underlying data and validation model. Includes a full test suite. Live documentation and demos at https://react-changeset-webforms-test-app-n.vercel.app.
Ember Changeset Webforms
The Ember.js equivalent of React Changeset Webforms, built on the same vanilla TypeScript core. Full documentation and live demos at https://ember-changeset-webforms.com.
React Mirage MSW
Mirage JS is well-established for mocking APIs in React, but its default request interceptor (Pretender) has long-standing limitations with non-text responses — binary data, array buffers, and streams are either mangled or unsupported entirely.
react-mirage-msw solves this by swapping in Mock Service Worker as the interceptor. Standard JSON routes continue through Mirage’s serializer layer as normal, while a rawRoutes escape hatch allows raw MSW handlers for binary or streaming responses. A setupMirage Vitest helper uses MSW’s Node interceptor under the hood, so the same config works in both the browser and tests with no duplication.
Finance tracking application
A web application that presents personal bank statement data with sorting, filtering, pagination, and tagging. Features include smart tags that apply automatically based on user-defined criteria, monthly spend breakdowns as animated canvas-based charts that users configure dynamically through the UI, and running account balances. Authenticates via Google OAuth and reads data from Google Drive. Demo at https://finance-tracker-demo.ajp-sandbox.co.za, with the monthly breakdowns visualisation specifically at https://finance-tracker-demo.ajp-sandbox.co.za/monthly-breakdowns.