Andrew Mason

I'm a senior front-end developer who builds interactive web experiences, data visualisations, and game UI. I've built game UI at Rare (Xbox Game Studio) for Sea of Thieves and Everwild, created interactive stories and an open-source Figma plugin at The Telegraph, and led VR projects and live data dashboards at The Guardian.

Skills

Experience

UI Engineer (contract) | Rare (Xbox Game Studio)

Nov 2024 – May 2026

Built game UI for Sea of Thieves and Everwild in TypeScript, SolidJS, CSS, and Sass, running on Coherent Gameface inside Unreal Engine.

• Built Custom Seas UI for Sea of Thieves Season 20: Free Camera, Quick Commands radial, and Command Menu spawn screens.
• Built Sea of Thieves' Enhanced Headphone Mode UI: a state-machine-driven flow for Embody's spatial audio, mapping plugin, setup, and menu states into the game.
• Designed and implemented a bespoke spatial navigation system for Everwild's inventory HUD with gamepad, keyboard, and mouse support across non-grid layouts.
• Built a real-time debug visualiser for inspecting focus state and navigation behaviour.
• Defined TypeScript data contracts with the Unreal Engine team, covered by Jasmine unit tests.

UI Engineer (contract) | Rare (Xbox Game Studio)

Aug 2022 – March 2024

Built Sea of Thieves UI features and prototyped UI for Everwild in TypeScript, Sass, and Coherent Gameface.

• Shipped Guilds UI for Sea of Thieves Season Ten: built screens and components in TypeScript, defining data contracts between the UI, Unreal Engine, and remote services.
• Developed interactive Everwild prototypes, working directly with designers and engine programmers.
• Authored unit tests, data contracts, and TypeScript definitions for Unreal event models.
• Optimised in-game UI performance using DevTools and Xbox PIX captures, testing across PC and Xbox development consoles.

Senior Prototyper | The Telegraph

Jul 2018 – Apr 2022

Worked within the Product team, collaborating with designers and journalists to create prototypes, interactive web experiences, and visual stories.

• Created Milton, an award-winning open-source Figma plugin using TypeScript and React that allows designers to convert Figma designs into responsive HTML with just a few clicks.
• Developed “A Year in Lockdown” an interactive scrolling story built with a custom in-browser editor, achieving over 100K views and a 15-minute average dwell time, and an SND award.
• Built a video-wall interactive for the newsroom and lobby, animating real-time captures of the Telegraph’s homepage and print paper. The frontend was powered by TypeScript, React, and Pixi.js, while the server used Node.js, Puppeteer, Google Cloud Functions, and Firebase.
• Developed a React app, enabling video editors to create embeddable animations using Lottie JSON, complete with a GUI for customisation and a self-contained HTML output.

UI Engineer | Simpplr

Feb 2018 – May 2018

Built UI for an intranet application in React, Redux, and Immutable.js, backed by a Salesforce API.

• Built an interactive graph-based employee hierarchy component for navigating the organisation.
• Collaborated with the Salesforce backend team to define API schemas and testing.

Creative Technologist | The Guardian

Nov 2011 – Oct 2017

Part of the Interactive team, I developed bespoke data visualisations and interactive experiences.

• Led the technical delivery of several interactive virtual reality episodes.
• Oversaw external development of the Guardian VR platform on Google Cardboard/Daydream, and Gear VR.
• Created the WebGL 6x9 promotional site using three.js, shaders, and custom animation tools.
• Created live election data-dashboards using D3 and powered by Node.js and S3.

Front-End Developer | BBC

Apr 2010 – Nov 2011

• Developed UI components for the BBC homepage redesign, producing WCAG AAA compliant code supporting a broad range of browsers.
• Collaborated with UX designers to prototype and validate UI interactions.

Senior Developer | Digitas (AKQA)

Mar 2008 – Apr 2010

• Led front-end development of a multilingual property ticketing system for Palm Jumeirah, Dubai, working alongside the project manager and Oracle CRM teams to evaluate and integrate competing ticketing backends.
• Built the promotional site for the Levi's flagship London store launch using Wordpress.

Education

BA (Hons) Creative Multimedia | Teesside University

2001 – 2005

• Final-year dissertation: a solo point-and-click adventure game with an audio-only interface for visually impaired players, exploring accessible interaction design.
• Studied Human-Computer Interaction and multimedia creation, which continue to inform my interest in how people interact with visual storytelling and immersive media.

Personal

I closely follow web standards and browser engine development, and I've been experimenting with LLMs and AI tooling. I'm interested in graphics and rendering technology across games and the web, particularly how techniques from one medium can benefit the other. Outside of work I tinker with personal projects and enjoy creative coding.