Dan Farr
Hey, I'm Dan, a software engineer and technical lead from Brighton, UK. For the past decade I've shipped products that help people get legal help, catch health issues early, and do their best work. I take ideas from whiteboard to production, and I build the teams that keep them growing.
I started coding at 11, teaching myself JavaScript from library books. It stayed a hobby until I moved to Amsterdam in 2011 to study fine art at The Gerrit Rietveld Academie, where I learned to develop my own idiosyncratic language.
My first gig came in 2014 as a fullstack engineer at A Bigger Circle, an Amsterdam startup building apps for Heinz, Mercedes-Benz, and Spotify. It was intense: small team, global brands, apps in the hands of real users within weeks. I fell in love with how directly good software can change what people are able to do.
In 2018 I moved back to the UK to become technical lead at LegalBeagles. We built JustBeagle, a platform that opened up legal help to people who couldn't otherwise afford it, and partnered with IBM Watson on the Global Access to Justice via AI project. Working on something where the outcome genuinely mattered to people's lives set the bar for everything I've built since.
By now I knew where I do my best work: building products from the ground up, piecing things together, always learning something new.
Wanting to see ideas reach users faster, I joined Venture Harbour, a bootstrapped venture studio launching a new product every year. It was hardcore. I came away with a lasting obsession with automation and scaling, and a proven playbook for taking products from zero to launch, fast.
Together we shipped five products: Serene, Marketing Automation Insider, Brokernotes, Leadformly, and TrueNorth.
Those rapid iterations sharpened my systems and architectural thinking, but the bigger lesson was empathy: challenging my own assumptions and getting to grips with the problems users actually face. A product only counts if it changes something for the person using it.
Since 2023 I've been Technical Lead at Bluecrest Wellness, where the product helps people catch health issues before they become serious. I grow the team, mentor engineers, and build tooling that boosts velocity while maintaining ISMS certification. Keeping accessibility, security and privacy front and center means the people who need these health checks most can actually trust and use them. That's the part I'm proudest of.
Outside work I think a lot about cybernetics, emergent systems, and how elegantly nature solves complexity.
Things I'm Working On
Here's a list of projects I'm currently working on. Some are in early stages, some are more mature, but all are things I care about and have fun building. If you want to get involved, reach out!
Wobblies are always-on, self-initiated, and proactive. They watch your tools and then they take action, so you can focus on the work that makes you feel most human.
Collaborating is awesome but keeping track of files in Google Drive, Confluence can be tricky in understanding what the latest info is. Chikamichi offers a shortcut for non-technical members of your team to keep your business context up to date in your codebase.
A mobile app where you receive one remarkable piece of contemporary art every day. A small daily exercise in taste.
My engineering notebook.
Feedback is super useful for understanding what to do next. I created a product that allows users to get the truth without the friction but with the option to make it a bit fluffier if they want.
I'm often working with non-technical stakeholders who don't write code. I help them think like an engineer and ship products they're proud of.
Keeping open source repositories healthy so maintainers can focus on the work that matters.
A lightweight product management tool for small teams who want to move fast without the overhead, add roadmaps, get feedback, and ship products that delight their users.
Other things I do occassionally from behind the screen are interactive essays and make small games.
If you want to get in touch, you can reach me on LinkedIn or my personal favorite; email