eVTOL Flight-Test UI Performance Overhaul

The Challenge

Vertical Aerospace's flight-test engineering team needed to modernise a legacy Meteor.js frontend that was limiting development velocity. Application startup took 45 seconds, the UI framework needed migration to a modern component model, and the codebase lacked meaningful test coverage. For a team building aerospace-grade software, improving reliability and developer experience was essential to iterate faster on critical flight-test tools.

Approach

I started with a thorough performance audit of the Meteor.js build pipeline, identifying the root causes of the 45-second startup. After targeted optimisations, I migrated the core flight-test UI from Blaze to React, improving rendering performance and enabling component reuse across the flight-test engineering team. I also established a comprehensive test infrastructure using Jest and React Testing Library, growing coverage to 60% and giving the team confidence to ship changes without fear of regressions.

Tech Stack

React, TypeScript, Meteor.js, Jest, React Testing Library, Performance Optimisation

Role

Full-Stack Developer at Vertical Aerospace (Dec 2022 - Jun 2024)

Impact

• 80% reduction in application startup time (45s down to 9s)
• Core flight-test UI migrated from Blaze to React with component reuse across the flight-test engineering team
• Test coverage grew to 60%, catching regressions before deployment