Ben Francis - Founder at Krellian

Ben Francis

Founder at Krellian

Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom

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Summary

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Rockstar

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Top School

Ben Francis is a founder and full‑stack software engineer with 16 years of commercial experience building web applications and Internet of Things platforms. He spun out commercial smart‑building solutions from Mozilla’s WebThings project and now leads Krellian, developing a Web of Things gateway and cloud digital‑twin services backed by accelerator support and Innovate UK funding. At Mozilla he combined product ownership, UX design and hands‑on front‑end and back‑end engineering on projects including Firefox OS and the WebThings Gateway, contributing to W3C Web of Things standardisation. Technically fluent across HTML/CSS/JavaScript, Node.js, Java, Python and embedded C/Assembly, he bridges embedded systems and cloud architectures while maintaining strong UX and testing discipline. His open‑source contributions include front‑end work on Gaia (Firefox OS) and the WebThings Gateway, reflecting a focus on practical, user‑centered IoT interfaces. Colleagues describe him as driven and communicative—someone who translates standards work and user research into deployable, commercial products.

16 years of coding experience

10 years of employment as a software developer

MEng, Computer Interactive Systems, 1st class honours, MEng, Computer Interactive Systems, 1st class honours at The University of Birmingham

Stackoverflow

Stats

1reputation

0reached

1answer

0questions

Github Skills (12)

html10

css10

uid10

javascript10

front-end-development10

ui-design10

expressjs9

websocket9

nodejs9

user-interface8

interface-design8

virtual-keyboard6

Programming languages (18)

JavaC++BikeshedCSSCRustGoHTML

Github contributions (5)

mozilla-b2g/gaia

Nov 2011 - Aug 2016

DEPRECATED - Gaia is a HTML5-based Phone UI for the Boot 2 Gecko Project. NOTE: For details of what branches are used for what releases, see

Role in this project:

Front-end Developer

Contributions:542 commits, 42 PRs, 19 pushes in 4 years 9 months

Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to front-end development, focusing on the user interface for the Boot 2 Gecko (B2G) project's Gaia phone UI. The commits reveal modifications to the app installation success message, along with UI changes in various components like the homescreen and the browser. They also implemented improvements in the bookmark user interface. Code changes demonstrate expertise in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

abandoned

WebThingsIO/gateway

Mar 2017 - Jan 2023

WebThings Gateway - a self-hosted web application for monitoring and controlling a building over the web

Role in this project:

Full-stack Developer

Contributions:2 releases, 74 reviews, 144 commits in 5 years 10 months

Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the front-end development of the WebThings Gateway, focusing on creating the initial static user interface. Their commits include setting up the HTML structure, CSS styling, and JavaScript for a basic index page, and implementing a menu system. They also added features for web app manifest and icons, and integrating support for displaying web things, also including back-end functionality such as an Express.js server to serve a static page.

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