FED Day 2025 brought together our frontend engineers for a full day of talks, workshops, and collaboration. Here are the highlights.
Lighthouse Reporter, an automated performance testing and monitoring tool – talk by Angel Meraz, Rightmove
Angel introduced Lighthouse Reporter – an internal tool that automates performance testing and tracks results over time.
It allows running Google Lighthouse tests locally during development and in GitLab pipelines, storing results in dashboards. The tool compares current and previous runs, tracks performance trends and highlights performance regressions before they reach users.
Setup is simple thanks to templates and docs. Angel encouraged teams to adopt it, share feedback, and help improve it.
The goal: make performance part of the workflow, not a reactive fix.
State of the market “aka Joe talks about performance” – talk by Joe Bartanus, Rightmove
Joe Bartanus shared a high-level look at mobile performance across the property market.
His talk focused on real user experience – how long it takes to move through key steps on a typical UK 4G connection.
He showed timing tests for cached and uncached flows, offering benchmarks to guide performance improvements.
Joe proposed a UX engineering group to drive cross-team efforts focused on performance and user experience. His message: we have the data, the opportunities, and a clear path to elevate the user journey.
Writing Literary Code – talk by Angel Wells, Rightmove
Angel Wells reminded us that code isn’t just for computers – it’s for people. Whether it’s a teammate, a reviewer, or your future self, good code should communicate intent – through clear namings, sensible ordering, and thoughtful defaults.
She showed examples and encouraged developers to use novel writing techniques when coding.
With AI tools now part of the mix, clarity matters more than ever.
Her advice: write code to be read. The real audience is human.
FED day was brilliant! A great chance to hear from internal and external speakers on lots of interesting topics. We also had the chance to chat to fellow FEDs about shared challenges and ways of working. Events like this really help build a stronger sense of community at Rightmove.
– Ben Daniel-Greep, Software Engineer
Beyond Vibe Coding: How the Gemini CLI helps with AI-assisted development – talk by Esther Lloyd, Google
Esther Lloyd from Google demoed Gemini CLI – a tool that brings AI into front-end workflows. Using natural-language prompts, developers can generate code, plan and prototype.
In a live demo, Esther added a logo without writing a line of code – Gemini handled it all.
Most features are free with a Google account, and the tool supports building custom agents for tasks like testing or code review.
Her message: AI-assisted development is here – and it’s for everyone.
An Uncomfortable Place – talk about the design system by Hannah Clarke, Intapp
Hannah Clarke from Intapp shared a preview of her ffconf talk about how a small team built a cross-framework component library.
Their challenge: support dozens of teams using different frameworks.
Their solution: generate components once, then adapt them for React, Angular, and more using Stencil and custom scripts.
This approach scales, avoids duplication, and delivers consistent UX.
Teams now adopt new components within a week.
Between Prompts and Production – talk by Dan Donald, Gymshark
Dan Donald from Gymshark gave a candid talk on working with Al.
He covered the excitement, fear, and confusion that come with these tools – and the need for responsibility.
Al can generate code instantly, but you’re still accountable for what ships.
Dan’s advice: use Al wisely, understand the risks, and let it elevate your work – not replace your judgment.
I had a fantastic time at the FED Day last week, and I think we’re so lucky to have such an engaged frontend community at Rightmove. The highlights for me were the talks from both internal and external speakers. There were two AI-themed talks on the day with very different takes on the subject. On the one hand, we saw a demo of the Gemini CLI tool, which showed how powerful AI tooling can be for rapid development and prototyping. On the other hand, there was also a more philosophical discussion around when it is appropriate to use these tools and how they may affect the software development craft today and in the years to come. Both left me with food for thought, and I think the key (as always) is finding the balance between getting those productivity gains without removing oneself too much from the development process. Some of the other talks also touched on themes around cross-team collaboration, as did the developer/designer workshop in the afternoon. Whether the aim is to create a design system that can serve teams using different web frameworks, or to boost performance on a user journey that spans multiple teams, it’s clear that, as an organisation that is looking to rapidly expand its engineering division, we will now need to find better ways to enable cross-team collaboration and some cross-team ownership of our core flows.
– Apurva Deshpande, Senior Software Engineer II
Design and engineer handover workshop
We ran a collaborative workshop to improve the handover process between designers and engineers.
Mixed groups mapped their current workflows, identified pain points, and shared best practices.
The goal wasn’t to solve everything – just to surface insights.
We’ll use the feedback to reduce friction, improve clarity, and continue the conversation in future sessions.
It was nice to get FEDs and designers from different teams together, to listen, learn and discuss better ways of working.
– Jerry Heng, Senior Product Designer
Streamlining design and development with Dev Mode – talk by Bobby Harris, Figma
Bobby Harris (with the support of Fran Bradshaw and Riccardo Erra) from Figma talked about building better collaboration through design systems.
He introduced constructive design – moving from free-form to structured systems.
Start small, find champions, and build proof-of-concepts. The key: make it easy for anyone to contribute.
Design systems work best when built together.
Community makes it happen
FED Day wouldn’t have happened without our amazing Rightmove community.
Huge thanks to Aleksandar Kisimov, Angel Wells, Catia Gomes, Edward Hann, Francesco Fiori, Jo Mairlot, Patrick Kirwan, Si Jobling, Sophie George, Stephanie Shaw, Tay Bencardino, and Yulyana Ramanenka.
