David Pears

I am a hands-on engineering leader based in Stockholm. I have spent seven years building production software with React Native, React and TypeScript, and I still write the code I am responsible for.

Since 2020 I have been co-founder and CTO at NaviSavi, a travel video platform. I lead its technical development across four products built on one library of more than 250,000 user generated videos: a consumer discovery app, a licensing platform for business, a B2C booking OTA, and a commercial API. That covers front-end architecture, geospatial search, payments and licensing, iOS and Android in React Native, and leading a distributed engineering team.

Alongside that I consult as a senior React Native engineer. My current project is a social music app built from the ground up with React Native, Expo, TypeScript and Supabase.

Before NaviSavi I worked as a mobile developer across sport, fintech and music: streaming features at SolidSport, consumer fintech at LOQBOX, a music fintech startup in Tangy Market, and a rebuild of a React web platform into a mobile app at Beatchain.

Before the code

I retrained as a software engineer in 2018, at CodeClan in Edinburgh. Before that I spent about twenty years on the other side of the screen, in television, digital media and the music business.

At Endemol I worked on some of the earliest experiments in mobile-first entertainment. I was part of the team behind Get Close To... The Sugababes, an interactive reality format shot specifically for phones in 2006, and part of the creative team on Cell, a twenty part thriller commissioned by O2 and built around two minute mobile episodes. Both ran on handsets before the iPhone existed. Short-form video, made for a phone, with the audience contributing footage. Two decades later I lead engineering on a platform built from 250,000 of exactly that.

In between I founded and ran Wing Management, spending twelve years developing and managing recording artists across labels, publishers, touring, rights and audience growth. Clients included Kill It Kid, who signed an EMI publishing deal and were later signed by Seymour Stein to Sire, part of Warner. I also worked in digital media at Guardian Media Group, and earlier still as an adjudicator in pensions and investments at the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Rights, licensing, creators and audiences are what NaviSavi is made of, and I spent a career in them before I wrote a line of production code. It is also why I am comfortable in the room with both the engineers and the people paying for the work.

What I work with

React Native, Expo, React, Next.js, TypeScript and JavaScript on the front end. Node.js, GraphQL and REST APIs, PostgreSQL, Supabase, Stripe, Firebase and AWS behind them. Jest and React Testing Library, Git and CI/CD throughout.

What I am open to

Senior front-end and mobile leadership: CTO and fractional CTO work, technical advisory, and hands-on React Native and React engineering. I am based in Stockholm, where I can work onsite, hybrid or remotely, and I work remotely across Europe and the UK.

See the work