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Name
Paddy Duke
Location
Edinburgh, Scotland
Contact
paddyduke@gmail.com
Right to work
I am a UK citizen with an Irish passport

Summary

I'm a front-end developer and product designer with around 20 years of professional experience working in agencies, established software companies and startups.

Expertise

  • Product and UI design - 20+ years
  • Front-end development - 15 years
  • Accessibility - 10 years
  • Graphic design - 10 years

Proficiencies

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Javascript
  • Ruby (on Rails)
  • Python (Django)
  • Penpot
  • Figma
  • Sketch
  • Adobe Creative Suite
  • React
  • Webflow
  • Netlify

Recent employment

Valla - Lead Designer

4 and a half years leading the design of DIY legal tools for a startup supporting UK workers.

At Valla I worked right across the small product and engineering team, doing research, product design, UI design, front-end and back-end development of application features.

My key responsibilities were the design of our products, and the UI design, front-end development and accessibility of the Django-based web-app. I worked closely with our in-house legal expert, who was the product owner, and several dedicated Python developers.

Highlights I worked on at Valla:

  • Case Assessment, a feature that guided users through how to provide just enough information for our legal coaches to understand their case and help them build the strongest possible claim against their employer.
  • A templating toolkit, built in collaboration with another developer over a couple of weeks, that allowed our domain experts to build and release legal document template wizards using a YAML engine, without writing any other code.

I also contributed a significant amount of Python/Django for features. On top of that I designed the company's initial branding, and then collaborating with an outside agency on a rebrand launched in 2025.

FreeAgent - Senior Product Designer

Almost 8 years designing and building headline features of one of the UK's most popular small business accounting platforms.

At FreeAgent I worked as a product designer embedded in several different product teams over the time I was there. In each, I worked closely with a Product Manager, and a 4-6 person engineering team to research, design, build and improve a wide variety of features to help small businesses manage day-to-day finances.

Highlights I worked on at FreeAgent:

  • Two major improvements to 'bank explanations', making it easier for users to reconcile their bank transactions with income and outgoings tracked elsewhere in FreeAgent.

    Users spend a lot of time in this part of the app, and these upgrades significantly sped up the process.

  • A complete overhaul of the information architecture and UX of the FreeAgent Mobile app, a ReactNative mobile app for iOS and Android.

  • A clearer and easier way for users to correct, or partially refund, invoices, which was a massive pain point for users.

    This was a fascinating project to be involved with because of how differently this process was understood and described by different users.

Throughout those projects I worked on much of the front-end development in the Ruby on Rails application directly, and also built up quite a bit of familiarity with Ruby.

As a member of the wider design team, I contributed to a big overhaul of the FreeAgent web app's visual design, and to a huge accessibility review and improvement campaign. As a senior member of the team, I was involved in the training, development and mentoring of newer designers, which I particularly enjoyed.

In the second half of my time there, I became heavily involved in the development of our design system. For this work I also did a lot more front-end coding, particularly prototyping and building components, alongside several dedicated front-end developers and testers in the design system team.

Outside of work

I'm an avid musician and composer. I write music in a range of genres, from punk to ambient.

I also love playing tabletop roleplaying games with friends.

Combining these hobbies, in 2026 I released a collection of (mostly) instrumental music inspired by the tabletop RPG Blades in the Dark.

You can find it at music.weenotions.com/doskvol.