Phillip Gourley
I build platform foundations that scale. 15+ years spanning edge architecture, Core Web Vitals, SSR infrastructure, and developer ecosystems — while leading the teams that ship them. From re-architecting platforms for IPO readiness to driving 6.5× faster global performance, I work at the intersection of deep technical craft and organisational leadership.
Leading platform teams
Founded and led an edge-first commerce platform and developer ecosystem supporting £1B+ ARR — the company's largest digital transformation in 20 years. Set technical direction across the frontend org: edge delivery, SSR architecture, Core Web Vitals, and shared tooling. Led recruitment from 2024, personally hiring and raising the bar for senior engineers.
Consulted across multiple companies on frontend architecture and performance. Re-architected a major ecommerce platform ahead of pre-IPO technical due diligence, supporting £150M+ investment. Drove a 6.5× improvement in global load times — optimising DNS, TCP, TLS, and CDN delivery across latency-sensitive markets including China. Delivered SSR infrastructure, zero-downtime deployments, and distributed frontend architecture on AWS.
Architected web and mobile experiences for a social network serving 50M+ monthly users in emerging markets. Led performance-focused redesign for constrained bandwidth and devices. Built next-gen ecommerce foundations with React and Redux.
Scaled a remote product studio from 2 to 20 people — owning hiring, client relationships, roadmaps, and studio operations. Led multidisciplinary teams shipping for startups and high-profile technology founders.
Re-architected JavaScript frontend for large-scale ecommerce. Drove platform-wide performance improvements. Delivered integrations for ASDA, Argos, O2, Lookfantastic, MyProtein. 'Unsung Hero' award.
Led engineering execution through a critical platform transition, aligning teams around delivery, technical quality, and commercial outcomes. Balanced roadmap delivery with architecture governance and operational reliability.
Designed enterprise commerce solutions spanning frontend architecture, cloud delivery, integrations, and performance strategy. Translated commercial requirements into scalable technical roadmaps for engineering teams.
Founded and operated a handmade kitchenware and homeware retailer — owning ecommerce, brand, operations, and commercial execution end to end.
Built and launched a bootstrapped cloud VPS platform, exploring lower-cost approaches to deploying and managing scaled infrastructure.
What I build
Synthetic performance monitoring for modern teams. Automated Lighthouse and Playwright-based testing to track LCP, INP, and CLS at scale — built for teams that treat page speed as a revenue lever.
Merges sales and conversion data with user behaviour and web performance signals — surfacing the trends and impact that matter. Purpose-built for operators who want to understand what's actually moving the needle.