# Dan Billson

> Dan Billson is a design engineer based in London, UK, currently at Attio (https://attio.com) building the interactive parts of attio.com in Attio's creative studio.

In Dan's words: “Design engineer with eight years building product close to design. I care about the details most people won’t notice but everyone feels: type set properly, interactions that feel fast and intentional, systems that hold up. I’m comfortable taking work from discovery to launch, writing the RFC, and building the prototype that settles the argument.”

Key facts:

- Name: Dan Billson
- Role: Design Engineer at Attio (2025 – Present)
- Location: London, United Kingdom
- Experience: building web product close to design since 2018, at Attio, Paddle, SoPost, Climb Creative, Marmalade, THG
- Focus: Design engineering, Front-end engineering, Interaction design, Web animation, Motion design, Design systems, Typography, Prototyping, Developer experience
- Stack: TypeScript, React, Next.js, Tailwind, CSS, Motion (Framer Motion), CSS and WAAPI animation, design systems, prototyping, typography, Figma, Node.js, Elixir, PostgreSQL, tRPC, GraphQL, Storybook, Turborepo, GitHub Actions, MDX
- Education: BSc Computer Science, 2:1, Edge Hill University
- Contact: X https://x.com/dbillson, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/danbillson/, GitHub https://github.com/danbillson, Email dbillson@outlook.com

## Pages

- [Home](https://dnbls.com): intro, selected work, projects and writing
- [About](https://dnbls.com/about): background, interests, beer and travel
- [Work](https://dnbls.com/work): roles and highlights by company
- [CV](https://dnbls.com/cv): full CV
- [Writing](https://dnbls.com/blog): blog index
- [Full text](https://dnbls.com/llms-full.txt): everything below plus post bodies, one file

## Work

- [Design Engineer, Attio (2025 – Present)](https://dnbls.com/work/attio): Joined on the workflows team building the node-based editor, then moved to marketing to build attio.com.
- [Software Engineer, Paddle (2024 – 2025)](https://dnbls.com/work/paddle): Developer Experience. Docs homepage refresh, design system, open source, the Paddle MCP server.
- [Senior Software Engineer, SoPost (2021 – 2024)](https://dnbls.com/work/sopost): Platform team. Component library, front-end guild, and the rebuild of the core data capture platform.
- [Front-end Developer, Climb Creative (2020 – 2021)](https://dnbls.com/work/climb-creative): Led the WTTB product page and checkout rebuild, plus the Canva integration.
- [Front-end Developer, Marmalade (2019 – 2020)](https://dnbls.com/work/marmalade): Driver Hub blog on Gatsby and headless Drupal. Puppeteer quote-check automation.
- [Graduate Front-end Developer, THG (2018)](https://dnbls.com/work/thg): Site builds for Neutrogena and Gillette, the MyProtein rebrand.

## Projects

- [wardrobe.dnbls.com (Clothes classifier, 2026)](https://wardrobe.dnbls.com): Clothing classified and filtered by occasion with jev.
- [pothooks (Type tool, 2026)](https://pothooks.com): Create and download your own hand-drawn fonts.
- [ink.dnbls.com (Shader experiment, 2026)](https://ink.dnbls.com): Ink-like shaders giving a drawn effect to a 3D model.
- [ui.dnbls.com (Design system, 2025)](https://ui.dnbls.com): Foundations, patterns and components used across projects.
- [Yonder Experiences (Data visualisation, 2024)](https://yonder-experiences.vercel.app/): The value of Yonder points across experiences, in £/1000.
- [next-forge-paddle (Open source, 2024)](https://github.com/danbillson/next-forge-paddle): next-forge with Paddle Billing, plus a migration guide.
- [pouring.at (Web app, 2023)](https://pouring.at): Find craft beer by location, brewery or style.

## Writing

- [Top 10 pubs in London in 2025](https://dnbls.com/blog/top-10-pubs-in-london-2025): A revisited highly opinionated guide to the best pubs in London
- [How to Learn Web Development in 2025](https://dnbls.com/blog/how-to-learn-web-development-in-2025): A comprehensive guide to learning web development in 2025
- [Animating height in React](https://dnbls.com/blog/animating-height-in-react): How to animate height in React using framer motion and useMeasure
- [How much time does this demand?](https://dnbls.com/blog/how-much-time-does-this-demand): A deep dive into understanding how much reliance to put on AI based on the goals of the task for learning and building.
- [Setting up a new M4 MacBook Air](https://dnbls.com/blog/software-engineer-macbook-setup): A comprehensive guide to setting up a fresh MacBook for software development
- [AI vs Advent of Code](https://dnbls.com/blog/ai-vs-advent-of-code): Putting Claude 3.7 against Advent of Code using cursor and Ruby
- [Top 10 bars/pubs in London](https://dnbls.com/blog/top-10-pubs-in-london): A highly opinionated guide to the best bars/pubs in London
- [Top 10 Takeaways from Getting Real](https://dnbls.com/blog/top-10-takeaways-from-getting-real): A look at my favourite quotes from Getting Real by 37signals
- [Creating a blog with Next.js and Markdown](https://dnbls.com/blog/creating-a-blog): A guide on the process for creating a blog using Next.js, Contentlayer and mdx

## Optional

- [X](https://x.com/dbillson)
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danbillson/)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/danbillson)