About

Background

An empathetic Head of Software Engineering 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, and contribution to proof-of-concepts 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 a Graduate Trainer, DevOps Engineer, and eventually moved onto leadership.

Skills

Leadership

Empathetic leadership & team development

As an empathetic Head of Software Engineering, my passion lies in leading teams to deliver impactful results by fostering a collaborative, people-first environment. I prioritise 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 organisational 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 optimisation

I excel at driving strategic impact and optimising complex organisational processes, including creating an environment of autonomy that empowers engineers to make solid strategic decisions. I've successfully led and optimised the promotion process for a large engineering organisation, expanding its scope and working closely with senior leadership for seamless execution. I've also taken 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 organisational change. I've successfully influenced wider engineering organisations to embrace platform and infrastructure ownership through DevOps culture and practices, and my experience as an Academy Trainer has supported the growth of technical talent.

Technologies

• AWS
• GCP
• Azure
• Docker
• Kubernetes
• MySQL
• Postgres
• GitHub
• GitLab
• Jenkins
• ELK
• Grafana
• Prometheus
• Redis
• Terraform
• Ansible
• Helm
• Vault
• Consul
• ArgoCD
• Traefik
• Karpenter
• GitHub Actions
• Loki
• Mimir
• Elasticsearch
• Python
• TypeScript
• JavaScript
• Bash
• Rust
• Go