About

Background

An empathetic Engineering Manager with a decade of experience and a passion for leading teams to deliver impactful results. Combining technical expertise with a people-first leadership approach, fostering a collaborative environment where team members thrive. Through coaching and guiding, I prioritise empowering engineers to make confident decisions and deliver value to both the business and its users. I keep my skills fresh with hands-on technical engagement on code reviews, technical design, contribution to PoC and consulting.

I started out as a stage actor, notable performances include adaptations of 'Grease' (as Danny) and 'Wicked' (as Fiyero). I also played Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, among many other school and college productions.

I decided to take my creative skills and confidence and apply them to another passion I had, which was IT. From an early age, I built websites, first with Microsoft FrontPage, then Adobe Dreamweaver before moving on to using HTML and CSS with Notepad++. I built websites that contained online radio stations too, at one point amassing over 100 listeners at the age of about 14.

I applied to Edge Hill University to start the BSc (hons) Computing (Application Development) degree and was offered an unconditional spot to study. Following graduation I've worked as an Graduate Trainer, DevOps Engineer and eventually moved onto leadership.

Aaron Pitty posing for a professional photo

Education and Certification

The Linux Foundation
Certified Kubernetes Administrator - 2020, renewed 2024

Edge Hill University, Ormskirk
BSc (Hons) Computing (Application Development) – First Class with Honours

The Oldham College, Oldham
BTEC National Diploma in Performing Arts: Acting – Triple Distinction

Skills

Leadership

Empathetic Leadership & Team Development
As an empathetic Engineering Manager, my passion lies in leading teams to deliver impactful results by fostering a collaborative, people-first environment. I prioritize empowering engineers to make confident decisions, ensuring they thrive and deliver value to both the business and its users through coaching and guiding. I have a proven track record of growing and leading teams through significant organizational changes, including scaling a team to 8 FTE distributed across multiple timezones and overseeing a critical transition from technical operations to an Agile product engineering team, expanding it from 5 to 7 FTE.

Strategic Impact & Process Optimization
I excel at driving strategic impact and optimizing complex organizational processes. This includes creating an environment of autonomy that empowers engineers to make solid strategic decisions. I've successfully led and optimized the promotion process for a large Engineering organization, expanding its scope and working closely with senior leadership for seamless execution. Furthermore, I've demonstrated strong project leadership by taking over failing but critical migration projects, creating comprehensive plans, reframing deliverables into SMART objectives, and making decisive strategic choices to refocus efforts and ensure successful delivery.

Technical Acumen & Driving Change
My leadership is underpinned by strong technical expertise, which I maintain through hands-on engagement in code reviews, technical design, and consulting. This allows me to provide informed technical guidance and drive significant organizational change. I've successfully influenced wider engineering organizations to embrace platform and infrastructure ownership through DevOps culture and practices. Additionally, my experience as an Academy Trainer highlights my ability to in supporting the growth of technical talent.

Technologies
I possess strong technical proficiency across a comprehensive suite of modern technologies. My expertise spans cloud platforms including AWS, GCP, and Azure, enabling me to design and manage robust, scalable infrastructure. I am highly competent with containerization and orchestration tools such as Docker and Kubernetes, having implemented Kubernetes for efficient management of containerized workloads and migrating platforms to managed Kubernetes solutions in Google Cloud. My database skills include MySQL and Postgres. For CI/CD and DevOps practices, I am proficient with GitHub, GitLab, and Jenkins, and have built end-to-end release flows using automation and CI/CD best practices. Furthermore, I leverage the ELK stack, Grafana, and Prometheus for comprehensive monitoring and log aggregation, and have experience with Redis.