Executive Profile
Senior technology leader with 30+ years of experience spanning hands-on software engineering, enterprise and solution architecture, and Director-level leadership. Proven track record designing and delivering secure, cloud-native platforms at national scale while building and leading high-performing engineering organisations. Known for combining deep technical credibility with pragmatic leadership, product innovation and commercial delivery, operating comfortably from code and architecture reviews through to executive governance and board-level discussion. Experienced in building and scaling engineering organisations, establishing governance frameworks, technology standards, learning pathways and engineering operating models that improve delivery capability, consistency and long-term organisational maturity.
Leadership & Technical Capabilities
- Technology & Engineering Strategy: defining vision, roadmaps, AI and data roadmaps, and operating models aligned to business outcomes
- Engineering Governance & Standards: architecture governance, technology radars, technical standards, design authorities, DevOps operating models and engineering assurance frameworks.
- Architecture Leadership: enterprise, solution, and platform architecture across Azure and AWS estates
- Product & Innovation Leadership: AI product strategy, SaaS platform design, commercial product development, technology-led business transformation, market validation and roadmap ownership
- Hands-on Technical Depth: microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, data integration, and distributed systems
- Security & Risk: IAM, PIM, WAF, OWASP, threat modelling, and secure-by-design delivery
- Cloud Platforms: Azure & AWS, Cloudflare PaaS/IaaS, networking, identity, resilience, and observability
- DevOps & Delivery: CI/CD, infrastructure as code, reliability engineering, and developer enablement
- Engineering Leadership & Capability Development: organisation design, hiring, mentoring, succession planning, competency frameworks, learning pathways, communities of practice and engineering career development
- Governance & Assurance: design authorities, architecture reviews, GDS-aligned assurance, and audit support
- Commercial & Stakeholder Engagement: executive communication, supplier management, and bid support
Selected Programmes & Transformations
- Department for Education (DfE): Principal Architect and Head of Engineering across multiple Azure-hosted national services; responsible for target architectures, security posture, delivery assurance, and operational resilience.
- Comparethemarket – Pricing Platform: Lead Architect for a multi-year programme decomposing a high-traffic on-premises monolith into AWS-hosted microservices — serving a platform used by over 7 million customers and generating in excess of £700m annual revenue for BGL Group. Enabled daily deployments, materially improved platform resilience, and reduced operational cost by ~25%.
- Real-time Quotability & Partner Risk Monitoring: Designed event-driven services and observability tooling to protect revenue integrity across a platform handling millions of insurance quote requests per year — reducing incident detection and recovery from days to minutes.
- Bid Intelligence Platform (2025/26): Conceived, designed and launched an AI-powered bid intelligence SaaS platform leveraging Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, Document Intelligence and RAG architectures to automate tender authoring, compliance assessment, knowledge retrieval and bid scoring workflows. Defined product vision, platform architecture and rollout strategy for adoption across the wider Swipejobs group.
Selected Achievements
- Secured approximately £40m of contracted revenue through technical proposition development, solution leadership and public sector bid support.
- Built and led multidisciplinary engineering organisations spanning engineering, architecture, DevOps and QA.
- Architected cloud-native platforms supporting millions of users and revenues exceeding £700m annually.
- Conceived and launched an AI-powered bid intelligence SaaS platform now being adopted across the wider Swipejobs group.
- Led practical adoption of Generative AI technologies including Azure OpenAI, RAG architectures, vector search and intelligent document processing.
- Established engineering governance frameworks covering architecture, DevOps, software delivery and technical assurance across multiple public-sector programmes.
- Created engineering capability and learning frameworks to support onboarding, professional development and leadership growth.
- Developed technology radar and architectural decision-making processes to guide strategic technology adoption and platform standardisation.
Technical Skills & Tooling
Detailed, resource-level experience across cloud platforms, data stores, integration patterns, delivery pipelines, security controls and operational tooling.
| Languages & Frameworks | C#, .NET (Core / Framework); Java; JavaScript / TypeScript; Node.js; Python (automation, scripting) |
|---|---|
| Data Stores | SQL Server (design, optimisation, HA/DR); PostgreSQL; MongoDB; Cosmos DB; Redis |
| Cloud Platforms | Azure: App Services, Functions, AKS, Storage, Service Bus, Event Grid, Azure SQL, Key Vault AWS: EC2, ECS, Lambda, RDS, DynamoDB, S3, CloudWatch, API Gateway |
| AI & Cognitive | Azure OpenAI (GPT-4/4o), Azure AI Search with vector search and hybrid retrieval, RAG pipelines, chunking/embedding strategies, prompt orchestration; document intelligence and ingestion using Azure AI Document Intelligence/Form Recognizer, Event Grid/Service Bus triggers, Functions/Logic Apps, secure storage patterns with Key Vault and RBAC. |
| Architecture & Integration | REST & OpenAPI-driven APIs; Event-driven architecture (CQRS, Service Bus, SNS/SQS, EventBridge, RabbitMQ, TibCo); Microservices & modular monolith decomposition; DDD; Consumer-driven contract testing |
| DevOps & Delivery | CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, TeamCity; IaC: ARM, Bicep, Terraform; Containerisation: Docker, Kubernetes; Feature flags & progressive delivery |
| Security & Compliance | IAM, RBAC, PIM, secrets management; OWASP Top 10; WAF configuration; Threat modelling; Public sector audit & compliance |
| Observability & Operations | Application Insights; Azure Monitor / Log Analytics; CloudWatch; Centralised logging & alerting; Incident management & PIRs |
Professional Experience
Technical Director / Head of Engineering — Talent Consulting (2021–Present)
Technology and delivery consultancy (part of Swipejobs group), operating primarily in UK public sector. Principal client: Department for Education — £58bn+ annual budget, 337,000+ apprenticeship starts per year across 76,000+ employer organisations.
- Built and scaled a permanent multidisciplinary engineering organisation spanning engineering, architecture, DevOps and QA; established career pathways, communities of practice, engineering standards and succession planning to support long-term capability growth.
- Established architecture governance, technical assurance processes and engineering operating models covering software development, DevOps, security and platform engineering.
- Introduced technology evaluation and adoption frameworks, including technology radar practices and architectural decision governance, improving consistency and reducing technology sprawl.
- Principal Architect across DfE programmes — hands-on architecture leadership and assurance from discovery through to live, presenting strategy and risk at Deputy Director-level governance forums.
- Contributed to securing approximately £40m of contracted revenue through technical proposition development and public sector bid responses; redesigned the bid lifecycle to increase throughput without additional headcount.
- Conceived, designed and delivered an AI-powered bid intelligence platform (Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, RAG pipelines, Document Intelligence, Functions, Service Bus) automating tender authoring, compliance assessment, knowledge retrieval and scoring workflows. Responsible for product vision, architecture, delivery and rollout across the wider Swipejobs group.
- Automated engineering, delivery and bid-management workflows through AI and platform tooling, increasing organisational productivity while reducing manual effort.
Principal Architect — CPD & Family Hubs, DfE (2021–2023)
CPD services reach teachers and school leaders across thousands of English institutions; Family Hubs supports vulnerable families across dozens of local authority areas.
- Architectural owner for both programmes — defined target architectures covering identity, API-led integration, data flows, and operational tooling aligned to GDS standards and DfE enterprise patterns.
- Coordinated architectural decisions across an 18-team agile delivery model, including service boundaries, data ownership, and supplier integration patterns.
- Embedded security-by-design (IAM, network segmentation, secrets management, audit readiness) across services subject to government security classification and public data obligations.
- Guided services through discovery, alpha, beta, and live phases via design reviews, ADRs, and delivery assurance; communicated trade-offs and risk to senior DfE stakeholders.
Applications Architect — Comparethemarket (2017–2021)
UK’s most recognised price comparison platform (87% brand awareness); 7+ million customers; BGL Group revenues exceeding £700m per annum. Customer base grew 12%+ year-on-year during tenure.
- Architectural owner for the core Pricing Platform and partner risk services — led multi-year decomposition of a high-traffic on-premises monolith into AWS microservices using API-led and event-driven patterns.
- Introduced resilience engineering (circuit breakers, bulkhead isolation, automated failover), observability (distributed tracing, structured logging), and consumer-driven contract testing — reducing incident detection from days to minutes.
- Drove deployment frequency from monthly to daily; introduced automated security scanning; raised security baseline across an FCA-relevant platform.
- Mentored senior engineers and tech leads; chaired cross-team technical forums across multiple delivery squads.
Consultant Developer — EasyJet, Seat Selection (2016–2017)
EasyJet carried ~74 million passengers annually at the time — Europe’s second-largest budget airline. The digital booking flow is one of its highest-traffic customer touchpoints.
- Built customer-facing seat selection on Azure (MVC + KnockoutJS) as part of the booking journey used by tens of millions of travellers per year.
- Engineered an Azure Service Bus integration for real-time Pluscard validation via REST API during booking; implemented a PHP client for third-party compatibility.
Consultant Developer — Tesco Entertainment (2015–2016)
Tesco holds ~27% UK grocery market share with 20 million+ Clubcard households. Tesco Entertainment was one of the UK’s leading digital entertainment retailers by consumer market share.
- Delivered the “was/now/save” price cross-out feature across ~400,000 products to live release; maintained the Endeca search service powering entertainment discovery.
- Developed a conceptual Android MP3 purchase and download app (Java) within time and budget, alongside ongoing .NET platform delivery.
Director — TouchScreenData Ltd (2004–2015)
Independently founded technology consultancy — eleven years delivering bespoke digital platforms across retail, charity, and consumer sectors.
- Designed and built a greenfield online marketplace for the UK antiques sector (estimated £1bn+ annual market value) using .NET; delivered LAMP projects for clients including Coca-Cola and Children’s Trust.
- Operated as both technical lead and business owner across the full project lifecycle, from client engagement through to delivery.
Education
BEng (Hons) Electrical & Electronic Engineering — Loughborough University (First Class)