danspratling.dev
Hey, I'm Dan.
Frontend architect and leader. I focus on helping others and aim to deliver the best experiences possible though building fast, accessible websites.
View résumé ↗Currently working at
Canada Life
full time (remote)
Working as a
Senior engineer
focusing on UX and A11y
Shipping code since
2015
always learning
About me
Do great work and let the results speak for themselves. It's the position i've taken my entire career, even when I worked for myself. And it's allowed me build loads of things I'm incredibly proud of.
I'm currently a senior frontend engineer at Canada Life, challenging the status quo, integrating AI workflows and working with users, customer services, and teams across the business to ensure the best results possible.
My skillset
What I'm working on
Customer portals
Day-to-day I'm rebuilding and extending legacy customer applications, improving security, reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing UX, performance and accessibility at the same time (of course).
AI orchestrator
Using AI in my everyday workflow has a bunch of deficiencies. I've been working on an orchestrator agent that coordinates a set of AI agents, skills, and scripts to enhance productivity while standardising output.
Design systems
Implementing an internal design system to standardise the new design language across multiple applications, provide a single source of truth for components, simplify maintenance, improve developer efficiency, and prevent regressions with interaction and A11y tests.
RAG portfolio
Building a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) portfolio to explore AI-driven content to provide dynamic answers based on my blog content.
What I'm into
Frontend craft
Building things that feel right — fast, accessible, and well-considered.
Accessibility
Everyone deserves a usable web. Accessibility is a baseline, not a checkbox.
Performance
Fast sites feel better. I care about Core Web Vitals and shipping lean code.
Working with AI
AI as a creative and productivity tool — building this very site with it.
How I got here
-
Apr 2025 – Present
Canada Life
Senior UX Engineer
Leading projects across the digital team. Rewriting multiple legacy apps, building a design system from scratch, implementing analytics, and working with users and customer services to craft better experiences.
-
Jul 2020 – Apr 2025
Skyward Digital
Founder
Built and led a remote-first digital agency. Delivered for 10+ clients across startups and enterprise, managed a team of 8, and owned everything from architecture to delivery for Enterprise, SaaS and Commerce clients.
-
Feb 2020 – Jul 2020
Toumetis
Senior Software Engineer
Improved developer onboarding and simplified the workflow so UK and US teams could collaborate more effectively.
-
Mar 2019 – Feb 2020
True Digital
Front-end Developer
Led the company's standardisation on React, improving developer experience across the team.
-
Sep 2017 – Mar 2019
Rally Agency
Front-end Developer
Took ownership of front-end development and championed the adoption of emerging technologies.
-
Sep 2015 – Sep 2017
Voice Group
Front-end Developer
First professional role — built custom WordPress themes for local businesses, and started developing a deep interest in how the web works.
Tools I reach for
A few words from others
"Dan's core strength is his ability to adapt and apply critical thinking. He doesn't just take a project and do it — he breaks it down, checks all the boxes (including the ones you forgot about), and delivers beyond expectations."
"I always love working with Dan — professional, enthusiastic, and always willing to provide insight on improving accessibility and functionality. Couldn't recommend him highly enough."
"His attention to detail and flexibility to work in our team's style made him a delight. As an American it was awesome to wake up to a fresh package of improvements every day."
"We loved working with Dan and appreciate all his contributions. If anyone is in the market for a great freelance front-end developer, don't hesitate to add Dan to your team."
"Working with Dan has been an amazing experience. He's helped me keep my skills current in a fast moving environment while also encouraging me to learn new tools and frameworks. He makes the projects fun and engaging, is motivated and compassionate — a great work environment all around."
"Dan created a new website for us and it has been really good. We've had an amazing response from everyone we've talked to about it. It's exactly where we wanted to be and I'm very happy with the way it turned out."
"We're very happy with the designs provided by Dan. He visited our offices and watched our staff using our internal application to see our pain points and deeply understand our domain and terminology, so he could deliver what we were aiming to achieve. We were very happy with the outcome Dan (and the team he led) provided us with."
"Dan is one of those rare people who can do it all and at an incredibly high standard. He'll lead a multi-faceted team, bring designs to life, tackle complex UX problems, jump into the design trenches, and coordinate directly with clients, all without breaking a sweat. His ability to interpret and build designs as accurate, performant code is second to none. A fantastic addition to any ambitious, high-achieving team."
Want to chat?
Ask me anything about my work, or just say hello.