About
Geek, brewer, maker, and dad.
Technology leader with thirty years of building things that work — in software, in data, and around the house.
Work
My primary skill in the tech world is knowing enough about a lot to fix the toughest problems, with the ability to dive into detail where needed. I will find creative ways to solve business challenges. Perhaps best exemplified in implementing John Lewis's click and collect service: everyone said it couldn't be done in the timescale and without extensive code changes. I found ways to get it working with almost no code change, making use of existing tooling. It ran like that for several years.
My main love on the tech side is building high-performance data-centric applications, or using data to drive transformational growth. Even more than this I am passionate about creating an environment where people in my team can build brilliant systems, be that through direction, mentoring, or simply giving space to thrive.
As technology switches from hands-on software development to spec-driven agentic development, I am well placed. The skills to manage mixed off and onshore teams are remarkably similar to managing a collection of agents: provide detailed requirements, set standards, split work into manageable chunks, instil QA practices, and conduct code reviews. The differences being that AI agent management happens much faster and AI agents don't want to go for a drink at the end of the day.
Home
With a couple of kids there is limited time in my life for other activities, but when not taxiing them around or kicking a ball about, I will be found on a project around the home. Putting up a fence or building a wall, perhaps changing a bathroom or adding a new socket.
When all of the jobs are done I enjoy the great outdoors, woodwork, and brewing beer. Brewing is heavily process-driven and woodwork is more like an agile project: clear goals but short sprints with detailed, refined objectives.
I do a fair amount of hacking about on personal projects, rapidly building almost-production-ready applications in a matter of days. The line between professional and personal has blurred considerably in the agentic era.