Frontend development in London
London's public services and its fintech onboarding flows share a problem: a form that fails a keyboard user or a screen reader is a form that loses people. Suppliers building for councils, NHS bodies and arm's-length agencies need frontends that work for every resident, and a fintech needs a sign-up flow a customer finishes on the first attempt.
We build React and Next.js frontends that treat keyboard access, focus order, error messages and contrast as part of the component, not as a pass at the end. Where the GOV.UK Design System fits, we use it instead of reinventing its patterns. We test with assistive technology as we go, and the handover includes notes on each pattern and the reasoning behind it, so your team can extend it with confidence.
Financial services drive more of London's software demand than any other sector. Payments companies, challenger banks, wealth platforms and brokers need ledgers that reconcile, APIs that stay correct when a partner retries, and apps customers trust with their money. Most of them reached the market fast, which was the right call at the time, and now run systems built for launch rather than for the size they have become. The work is making those systems dependable without stopping the business that runs on them.
Insurance is its own case. The specialty insurers, managing agents and brokers around Lloyd's still run much of their work on ageing policy administration platforms and spreadsheets that travel between firms by email. Lloyd's has moved away from Blueprint Two, the market-wide programme that was meant to digitise placement and claims, so each firm is modernising its own systems one integration at a time. The City's law firms and consultancies sit alongside them, holding decades of documents and few ways to search them by meaning.
Media, retail and the public sector bring different problems. Publishers run subscriptions, paywalls and content systems that have to hold up on a busy news day. Direct-to-consumer brands outgrow their first shop as they start selling into Europe and the US. Suppliers to councils and NHS bodies build services that have to work for every resident, including people using a keyboard or a screen reader. Hiring is the common constraint. ITJobsWatch puts the median advertised salary for a software engineer in London at £98,750 over the six months to September 2026, and banks, fintechs and the large technology firms compete for the same people.
Working with us from London is straightforward. Four hours of every working day overlap with yours, set across your morning, so stand-up, code review and the decisions that follow happen live. You talk to the engineer who writes the code, in your own Slack, GitHub and Linear. The rest of the day moves forward in pull requests you can read at your desk, with runbooks and architecture notes written as the work goes.
We are the right fit when you have a defined piece of work and need senior engineers on it this month rather than next quarter. Start with a fixed-price two-week piece and judge us on what ships. We add capacity while a London hire is still in progress, and we work white-label under your name for agencies.
Four ways this arrives.
We measure on real devices and real traffic first, not a lab score on a fast laptop. The fix is usually less JavaScript: a smaller bundle, images sized for the screen, and third-party scripts that stop blocking the first render.
A procurement checklist, a customer complaint, or a letter from a lawyer. We fix the causes rather than the line items: real buttons, labelled forms, focus that lands somewhere sensible, and automated checks in CI so it stays fixed.
Global state that everything reads, no types, and three versions of the same modal. We add TypeScript file by file, put tests on the flows that make money, and move shared pieces into one component library as screens are touched.
Usually for search visibility or first-load speed. We move it route by route behind the same URLs, so the old app keeps serving while the new one takes over, and nobody has to sign off a risky weekend cut-over.
A Next.js web app with five operational dashboards and Tableau reports rendered in place, without a second login.
Read the write-up →Asked by London teams.
How do you work with teams in London?+
Four hours of every working day overlap with yours, set across your London morning, so stand-up and code review happen live. We join your calls and work in your tools: Slack, GitHub and Linear. You talk directly to the engineer who writes the code. Outside the overlap, the work carries on in pull requests you can read at your desk, and runbooks and architecture notes are written as we go.
Do you build for London fintechs and insurers?+
Yes. For payments companies, challenger banks and wealth platforms we build ledgers that reconcile, webhook handling that stays correct when a provider retries, and React Native apps with biometric sign-in and step-up checks for risky payments. For insurers, managing agents and brokers around Lloyd's we replace spreadsheet workflows with internal tools: bordereaux intake, referral queues and approvals, connected to the policy systems you already run.
How does your rate compare to hiring in London?+
ITJobsWatch puts the median advertised salary for a software engineer in London at roughly £99,000. Our published rate is $35/hour, with a $5,000 minimum engagement. There is no recruiting time and no employment overhead, and we can start within days of the first call. Most clients begin with a fixed-price two-week piece at $2,800, so you judge us on working code before committing to more.
Can you work white-label for a London agency?+
Yes. London agencies bring us in when a client project needs more senior backend, mobile or infrastructure work than the team has free. We work under your name, in your repositories and your client's tools, and you stay the face of the project. The NDA comes before specifics, the code belongs to the client from the first commit, and runbooks and architecture notes are written as we go.
Do we need to move to Next.js?+
Not always. If the app sits behind a login and nobody finds it through search, a well-built React single-page app on Vite is simpler to host and easier to reason about. Next.js earns its keep when first load and search visibility matter, or when you want rendering close to the data. We will tell you which case you are before anyone rewrites a route.
Can you work from our Figma files?+
Yes, and we will ask questions about them. Designs rarely show the loading state, the empty state, the error, or what happens when a name is twice as long as the mock-up assumed. We raise those early and propose something, rather than inventing it quietly in code and leaving your designer to find out in review.
Will you build us a design system?+
We will build the one your product needs, which is usually smaller than people expect: design tokens, the components you actually use, and Storybook to show them. We extract it from the screens you already have rather than designing it in isolation, because a component library nobody migrates to is just a second way of doing things.
How do you handle accessibility?+
We build to WCAG 2.2 AA by default, test with a keyboard and a screen reader, and run automated checks in CI so regressions are caught before they ship. Automated tools find only part of the problem, so we also test the key journeys by hand: sign-up, checkout, and anything a user does every day.
Do you only do the front end, or the API as well?+
Either. A lot of front-end pain is really an API shaped for a different screen, and when that is the case we can fix both sides. If your backend team owns the API, we write down what the front end needs from it and agree the contract with them, rather than working around it in the browser.