HalebopLead Front-End Developer
When joining Halebop, the fighting brand of Sweden's largest telecom operator, Telia, I stepped into an environment that felt dynamic and agile, supported by the stability of a large company.
The decision-making processes were swift, and our progress was fast-paced. Halebop has been recognized for having Sweden's most satisfied customers 13 times in the last 15 years, and yet our development team consisted of only 5 people when I started.
My Role as a Frontend Developer
Upon starting at Halebop, I encountered a significant challenge: the codebase was outdated, lacking front-end tests, and there was a pressing need for modernization.
My journey began with the responsibility of migrating the entire application from AngularJS to Vue.js. The migration was executed meticulously, component by component, allowing both frameworks to coexist while ensuring seamless communication and data sharing through a common Vuex instance for state management.
When Halebop expanded its offerings to include broadband via the fiber network, I took charge of building the front-end portion of the new purchase flow.
Additionally, I revamped the outdated, local development environment into a proxy-based solution, enabling developers to work directly on their machines towards the internal test environment.
This transformation facilitated hot reloading and smooth mocking of selected API responses, effectively halving our front-end team's development time and allowing us to deliver more value during each sprint.
Transitioning to Frontend Tech Lead
As I settled into my role, I worked hard to introduce front-end testing practices in our team. I held workshops for my front-end peers and over time, we established robust testing protocols using Jest (and later Vitest) for all new features and for all migrated code from the legacy codebase.
Me taking more responsibility and being increasingly involved in the decision-making process eventually led to my promotion to Lead Front-End Developer. In this role, I continued my work as a developer while also coaching and supporting my colleagues and did my best to foster a collaborative environment.
I worked closely with Halebop's Backend Lead, collaborating on new projects by determining technical architecture, API design, and addressing critical bugs.
Moving to a headless CMS
One of my significant initiatives was leading the migration from a hopelessly outdated, traditional CMS to a cloud-based, headless solution. I focused on content modeling and built a solid foundation that seamlessly integrated the new CMS into our existing application and mobile apps.
The new CMS opened up the possibility to develop a campaign service that became integral to all products and services offered by Halebop, both in our web application and mobile apps. This service, developed in collaboration with the lead backend developer, integrates with the CMS and enables the business side to create, manage, and update campaigns effortlessly without needing to involve the development team.
My time at Halebop
Working at Halebop was a rewarding experience. I had the opportunity to collaborate with talented individuals and engage in interesting projects. It was also my first time in a tech lead role, which provided valuable learning experiences and helped me grow both personally and professionally.
