Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my corner of the internet. I'm Jamie Street, a senior full stack engineer based in the UK. I've been online since around 2002, and the internet shaped who I am in ways that are hard to overstate. I started building websites at 11, and I've shipped production software professionally for over 14 years.

These days I specialise in Angular, NestJS, TypeScript and PostgreSQL. At FICO, I build Angular micro-frontends and the NestJS Backend-for-Frontend services behind them, as part of the company's new platform. I designed an internal framework that helps other teams build those services in a consistent, reliable way.

Outside work, I'm a husband, a dad, and a photographer whenever I get the chance. And I'm always dreaming up new ideas.

How I Work

I care a lot about how software gets made, and right now that means agentic coding.

I started building with LLMs in 2023, when I launched two AI products, RambleFix and TalkText. Most of TalkText's code was written by AI, with me steering. Since then, AI coding agents have become a real part of my day.

The trick is guardrails. I built a GitLab-based workflow where each agent works like a member of the team: it creates a branch, pushes its work and opens a merge request. My CI/CD pipeline then runs a full set of automated tests before anything merges and deploys. That lets me run several pieces of work in parallel without taking on extra risk.

At FICO, my team has used AI-assisted development heavily for over a year, and I'm usually the one introducing colleagues to new tools such as Claude Code, Codex and T3 Chat.

Things I've Built

If there's a thread running through the things I've built, it's probably just that I found a problem and wanted to solve it.

The Backstory

Growing Up Online

Two things defined my early internet years: Habbo Hotel and RuneScape. Habbo was where I discovered you could make your own websites. By the age of 11 I was building fan sites for it, teaching myself HTML and CSS along the way. That spark never went away, and before long I knew this was what I wanted to do.

RuneScape gave me a different kind of inspiration: the skills, the sense of progression, the community. Between the two, I picked up a dream that has never quite left me (more on that below).

UNILAD & The LAD Bible

In 2011, I came across a Facebook page called UNILAD. It had around 3,000 fans and a basic website made with a drag-and-drop editor. I offered to take over the technical side and help it grow, and I came on board as co-founder.

At the time I was studying Web Application Development at the University of Plymouth, so the timing was perfect: I was building a real platform while learning how to build real platforms. I built several versions of the site, starting with WordPress and moving to a fully custom platform when the traffic outgrew anything off-the-shelf.

As UNILAD grew, we launched a second page called The LAD Bible: a list of commandments that lads should live by. The hook was simple: you couldn't see the list unless you liked the page. Back then, every Facebook like was broadcast to all of your friends' timelines, so the conditions were perfect for it to go viral, and it did. We'd refresh the page and watch it climb by hundreds of likes every second. Tens of thousands overnight. It was genuinely surreal.

I left the company in 2013. The brands went on to become some of the biggest social publishers in the world: UNILAD reached over 40 million followers, and LADbible Group later floated on the London Stock Exchange.

Looking back, the whole thing was a lesson in timing. We were building on Facebook at a moment when the value of a page like wasn't fully understood, and most people still dismissed social media as a novelty. It shaped how I think about the internet: sometimes the window matters as much as the idea.

Logica & The Galileo Programme

During university, I spent 16 months as a developer at Logica (now CGI), working on web-based control systems for the European Space Agency's Galileo satellite navigation programme. I designed and built the frontend against a long list of client requirements, which taught me how to work carefully on systems where the details really matter.

Campus Society

In 2014, straight out of university (with a First), I joined Campus Society as one of its first hires: a London startup building a real-time social platform for university students. For several years I was the sole frontend developer, and I built the Node.js chat service behind the live messaging. The platform grew to around 500,000 users, and I later led a team of five frontend developers.

It was a brilliant five years, and working out of a Soho office didn't hurt.

Togetheo

In 2019 I left to build my own idea: Togetheo, an app to help people find others nearby who want to do the same things, and then actually go and do them together.

I spent six months building the entire thing from scratch, full stack, and learned Swift specifically to ship the iOS app. It was one of those deeply satisfying periods where you build something end-to-end, wear every hat, and watch it come together.

Unfortunately, the timing couldn't have been worse. I finished the version I'd quit my job to build just as COVID arrived and lockdowns began. An app for meeting up in person wasn't going anywhere while the world was told to stay home.

Happy Planet, then FICO

After Togetheo, I spent two years running Happy Planet Giftshop full-time. In 2023 I joined FICO as a senior software engineer, where I've worked on Angular libraries, an LLM-powered advisor, and now the company's new platform.

Dreams

The MMO That Never Was (Yet)

Since I was a kid, I've wanted to build an online game with the social, hangout feel of Habbo Hotel and the skill progression of RuneScape. At 11 it was impossible. Today I can code and the technology exists. The only thing missing is that I really cannot do artwork. One day.

A Better Internet

I miss the internet that felt like a frontier, when a bedroom idea could become something millions of people use. I'd love to help build things that feel like that again: smaller, more personal, and genuinely social.

Outside Work

I take photos and share them for free on Unsplash, where they've been viewed over 1 billion times and downloaded over 7 million times. One ended up on a 15ft banner at Crufts, and TUI once sent me to Gran Canaria to photograph the island. I still get a kick out of spotting my photos in the wild.

Get In Touch

Email: me@jamie.st
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jamiestreet
X (formerly Twitter): @ItsJamieSt