Sheet 1 of 4 · Introduction
An Introduction
Hey! I’m Willson, a developer who likes to help people do neat things.
If you need a label to hang me on, start with front-end — that’s where I spent my career. But front-end was never the whole story; it’s just where I could most directly shape how software feels to use. These days I work solo, which means I build full-stack — wherever the experience needs me to be.
Previously, I worked at Shopify for 8 years. My final role: Senior Creative Technologist. In that role I shaped the merchant admin experience, contributed to the Polaris design system, and built prototypes that turned ideas into tangible products. I wore many hats with one through-line: building bridges between people and technology.
Sheet 2 of 4 · Approach
Telling stories with code.
Stories are how we make sense of things — how we teach, how we remember, how we find our way through something new.
The best software works the same way. It tells you a story: it guides you, keeps the promises it makes, and never leaves you behind, confused, or stuck. There’s a difference between software that gets a task done and software that enables you to do more — and that second kind is the kind I want to build.
Sheet 3 of 4 · Practice
Defeating Dragons
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
That’s what good software does, too. It doesn’t pretend the dragon isn’t there — it helps you believe you can beat it.
I learned that at Shopify, building for merchants who face dragons every day: a new idea, a new product, a market that never sits still. I don’t want to slay anyone’s dragons for them — I want to build software that shows people they can slay their own.
Sheet 4 of 4 · Contact
What's your story?
Working on something neat? I’d love to hear about it — whether you’re looking for a hand or you just want to say hi.
Send me an email: