Ken Hawkins: Web Platform Lead

πŸ“§  [email protected]  πŸ¦  @khawkins98  πŸŒŽ  AllAboutKen.com  πŸ“‡  Online problem solver

Ken
Hawkins.

Ken Hawkins.

Web front-end lead.

Web Platform Lead with 20+ years’ experience delivering high-impact, scalable web platforms for global science, media, and UN organisations.

I scale component systems, improve UX, and lead distributed teams β€” bridging technical depth with strategic communication to make the web faster, more accessible, and more impactful.

Web front-end lead

In 2022, I brought my skills to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, where I'm elevating the standard of a range of websites which help decision makers across the globe better understand and change their attitude to risk.

My skills are broad and include traditional communications, UX, information visulisation – and plenty of coding expertise.

I seek out challenges of efficiency and communication.

Professional experience

Web expertise

  • HTML and CSS fundamentals
  • CSS (Dart Sass), JavaScript (typically vanilla modules for portability), a component system (Fractal+Gulp+JS modules), distributing (npm+lerna+yarn) and cross-wiring into a system (Eleventy+Nunjucks)
  • Component and design system expertise
  • Various CMS and static site generators: Drupal, WordPress, 11ty and other ancient flavours
  • Managing geographically distributed projects with GitLab, GitHub, Kanban, Slack and the similar
  • Strong content experience: Drupal configuration and development, Eleventy, WordPress, metrics and so on

Structure

  • Maximising content for discoverability and context-aware content
  • Storytelling through visualisations
  • Utilising social media as a tool for content creation, collaboration
  • Tooling abstraction for content editors

Leadership

  • Governance through triangulating content, actions and goals
  • Developer outreach and mentorship
  • Stakeholder consultation and expectation management through roadmaps
  • Feature prioritisation and sprint-based project planning
  • Training and fostering web content creation from the general public to experienced developers

Professional work history

Web Platform Lead

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)

January 2022 – present
Bonn, Germany

  • Led performance overhaul of flagship Drupal 10 platform, halving load times and improving editorial workflow speed.
  • Architected component-based theming to unify brand, reduce maintenance overhead, and accelerate feature delivery.
  • Introduced RDF/SKOS metadata standards for hazard information, enabling structured discovery across platforms.
  • Coordinated multi-office teams across Geneva, Bangkok, and Bonn for content strategy, UX, and technical delivery.
  • Architect abstracted web content platform, navigation
  • Facilitate collaboration between UX, developers and content teams
  • Foster design system growth, adoption by coordinating with development leads

Major technical tooling and processes: HTML/JS/CSS, Sass, GitHub, GitLab CI, Visual Studio Code, Google Analytics, Gulp, npm, Eleventy, Fractal, Drupal, Continuous integration, Kanban

Web Front End Lead

European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)

June 2018 – December 2021
Heidelberg, Germany

EMBL is Europe’s flagship laboratory for the life sciences and employs hundreds of developers to deliver online scientific services. We've created reusable front-end tooling to speed development, reduce cost and improve UX. It's been especially interesting for the breadth of technology and wide range of user needs and developer backgrounds.

I lead the creation of this tooling, the Visual Framework, and serve as its lead advocate to help developers and product designers to utilise and implement. I also ensure the Visual Framework adapts to those needs. This is an expansion of my role for the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI).

  • Grow, evolve legacy projects into pan-EMBL solutions
  • Sass, Nunjucks, Lerna, Fractal, npm, yarn, eleventy, component systems and many more
  • Information architecture and component tooling for EMBL web content, design systems
  • Architect abstracted web content platform, navigation
  • Facilitate collaboration between UX, developers and content teams
  • Foster design system growth, adoption by coordinating with development leads

Major technical tooling and processes: HTML/JS/CSS, Sass, GitHub, GitLab CI, Visual Studio Code, Google Analytics, Gulp, npm, Eleventy, Fractal, Drupal, Continuous integration, Kanban

Web design architect

European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)

July 2015 – June 2018
Cambridge, UK

  • Lead information architecture and design tooling for EMBL-EBI web content, design systems
  • Facilitate collaboration between UX, developers and content teams
  • Foster design system growth, adoption by coordinating with development leads
  • Drive for reusable patterns in web interfaces
  • Close gap between web analytics and content effectiveness
  • Improve intranet information architecture to focus on user activities

Major technical tooling and processes: Content modelling and architecture, HTML/JS/CSS, Sass, Adobe Creative Suite, Atom, MapBox, Google Analytics, GitHub, Gulp, npm, Jekyll, Foundation Framework, Drupal, Travis, Continuous integration, Kanban

Web developer and information designer

DRS Technical Solutions

February 2011 – June 2015
Stuttgart, Germany

  • Manage user-focused efforts (UX, research, metrics) for company web projects
  • Website project lead for a Drupal platform to support more than 150,000 user accounts, provide e-commerce tools
  • Information architecture and infographics for business proposals, strategic planning
  • Numerous intranet-style websites to manage contacts, resumes, documents by consuming JSON and XML feeds for custom dashboards and processing
  • Create and implement software projects with multi-company team members in the U.S., Europe and Middle East

Major technical tooling: Drupal, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bitbucket, Agile, Amazon EC2, Route 53, Google Analytics

Technical and editorial lead

TheDigitel

May 2008 – February 2011
South Carolina, USA

I co-founded TheDigitel.com way back in 2009 to help advance newspaper methodology in the age of websites. This broke down barriers in collaborating with the public and created a more efficient and highly-networked data model of hyperlocal news.

  • Lead team of eight staff and an array of freelancers and volunteers to report, market and implement web features
  • Lead community editor outreach with physical, online, podcast events
  • Help our students grow through our intern partnership with the local college
  • Pioneer use of Twitter hashtags for local media community reporting
  • Dynamic Advertising: a new advertising model powered by social media
  • Speak at events for the creative community about code, reporting, startups
  • Refine Drupal UX, content editing experience for community collaboration with staff editors
  • Raise funding, manage investors, expand TheDigitel to three cities

Major technical tooling: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Drupal, LAMP hosting optimisation, daily briefing newsletter automations, reverse proxy caching, Adobe Creative Suite, Google Analytics, Google G Suite admin, A/B testing, Google AdSense and AdWords, podcasting

Graphics reporter

The Post and Courier

March 2006 - May 2008
South Carolina, USA

  • Newspaper infographic design and reporting
  • Produce daily deadline-driven information graphics based on news reports
  • Create interactive HTML and Flash information graphics for the Web
  • Process geographic data to create maps (GIS)
  • Design and produce newspaper pages
  • Photo management and copy editing

Major technical tooling: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat, QuarkXPress, Flash, ArcGIS, Modo 3D modelling, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Mac OS

Graphics reporter

The Beaufort Gazette

May 2003 - March 2006
South Carolina, USA

  • Newspaper infographic and page design
  • Produce daily deadline-driven information graphics based on news reports
  • Help lead the visual design of newspaper pages
  • Work to educate staff on photo cropping, type kerning, general principles of visual structure and directing the reader's focus

Major technical tooling: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat, QuarkXPress, Mac OS

Production manager

The Daily Journal

May 2000 - April 2003
South Carolina, USA

  • Newspaper pre-press production, advertising
  • Pre-flight and technical management of daily newspaper pre-press production
  • Lead production of in-house creatives for advertising clients
  • Manage pre-press team of 4 individuals

Major technical tooling: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, QuarkXPress, Mac OS

Education, speaking

πŸ“§  [email protected]  πŸ¦  @khawkins98  πŸŒŽ  AllAboutKen.com  πŸ“‡  Online problem solver