The A+ front-end spans around 20 interdependent packages, and for years the day-to-day of working in them was slower than it should have been: long builds, a five-year React version gap, stale tooling, and dead code piling up. None of the work below was assigned to me. I run a recurring front-end learning series where our team digs into the codebases together, and that's where most of these problems surfaced. When I find one, I build consensus around fixing it, then do the work.
Key Contributions
Faster Builds and Feedback
- Root-caused a build-time regression to our dependency resolution and upgraded 16 packages, cutting the median build 65% from 33 minutes to 12. That gives an engineer about 20 minutes back on every change they ship.
- Implemented HMR (hot module replacement) and Fast Refresh, dropping the local change-to-verification loop 66% from about 10 seconds to 3.
- Reworked the shared test runner to be aware of the dependency graph, so locally it only runs the tests affected by a change while CI keeps the full suite as a safety net. This saves the team about 700 hours per year, roughly 33 minutes per engineer per day.
Modernizing the Toolchain
- Upgraded React 16 → 18 across 18 packages in a single atomic change, closing a five-year version gap. I also pinned TypeScript to one exact version so type errors reproduce across machines, removed about 12 dead dependencies, and unblocked partner-team integrations that previously needed compatibility shims.
- Cut the shared Babel config from 276 lines to 40 (86%), removed 25 dev dependencies, and standardized it across all 19 consuming packages. This opens the door to a modern compiler like SWC or ESBuild and 10–20x faster builds.
- Created two Vite plugins for the build toolchain. One is now maintained by a Principal Engineer on another team, and it's generic enough for any team on the same toolchain to adopt.
Cleaning Up
- Ran dead-code campaigns that removed about 7,200 lines across 120+ files while raising test coverage 9%. Each campaign was backed by a design doc and green end-to-end tests.
- Earlier work laid the foundation for all of this: a Webpack 4 → 5 upgrade with duplicate-dependency removal cut the bundle 15%, and deleting a redundant build pipeline saved about 7 days per year.
None of this work is glamorous, but it compounds. Every win gives time back to the whole team on every change they ship, and it keeps the architecture healthy enough to take on projects like Dynamic Content without drowning in friction.