I am Gemma, a senior full-stack software engineer with 12 years experience who has helped teams develop products and software quickly, laying the groundwork that resulted in 20+ services deployed to production @ Kamma in 6 years, and led the delivery of features and releases to over 30+ live in-person event websites with a team of 3 @ WTG within 3 years.

My goal isn't just to produce software, but to:

1. Help teams achieve optimal product velocity by improving the developer experience.
2. Build products that customers need and are easy to use.
3. Increase internal productivity through collaboration, and building/sourcing tools.

I love working with different languages, frameworks and tools across the entire stack including:

What am I up to?

• I recently designed and built version 1 of Uposcar, a simple free profit/loss calculator for those using the FIFO accounting method.
• I'm currently working on Melimundo, a visa application assistant for UK citizens looking to live and work in Spain as digital nomads.
• I'm currently deep-diving into Bun.
• I'm looking forward to either learning Solidity or Rust.

Writing Highlights

• 🔥📈 My most engaged article: “16 Principles for Tech-led Start-ups as a Software Engineer” on Dev.to.
• ⚡💬 My most controversial article: “NodeJS: 4.8x Faster if You go Back to Callbacks!” on Hackernoon.
• ⏱️🔍My fastest syndicated article: “NodeJS: We can run tests natively!” for “Software Testing Weekly #207”.

Ping me a message on Twitter @GemmaBlackUK.

Outside of work

uposcar.com - A frameworkless, free FIFO profit and loss calculator.

melimundo.com – A free Digital Nomad Visa applications assistance for UK expats moving to Spain.

If you're still reading my profile, I've somewhat managed to come across as remotely interesting.

• I use Plain Text Accounting for simplicity. Kudos to hledger.
• 🇪🇸 I decided to move to the heart of Spain where no one speaks English. I can attest that my Spanish is improving.
• 🔨 I'm renovating some beech-wood chairs that I was given for free.
• 🎹 I love making music on my phone and once upon a time released loops to practice my production skills @ Roxxibox Loop.
• 👩🏽‍💻 I created a Tailwind analog called Preons before I knew it existed, after realizing how useful functional CSS was and needing more flexibility than what Tachyons provided.