I am a software engineer and technical leader who has spent more than twenty years making things for the web.
My strongest work sits where engineering, design and people meet: building useful products, improving how teams work and making complicated things easier to understand. I am happiest with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, whether that means working in React, Vue or Svelte, or deciding that the sensible choice is no framework at all.
I am also an AWS Certified Developer, although I remain suspicious of any architecture diagram that needs more than three shades of blue.
Every role has added something different: agency pace, public-sector purpose, startup pragmatism and the useful variety of consultancy work.
2024–present
I joined Hedgehog Lab for the chance to have a wider technical impact. It has given me interesting product problems, strong teams and plenty of opportunities to work across React, Vue and everything around them. The excellent logo did not hurt.
2023–2024
BJSS was my introduction to large-scale technology consultancy. I worked with talented people, learned how to get useful work moving in complex organisations and confirmed that understanding the real problem is usually more valuable than reaching for the cleverest solution.
2019–2023
I joined an 18-month-old startup and left a business approaching 50 people. Along the way I rebuilt the customer portal, learned Angular and AWS properly, and helped grow the development team. Startup life was an effective lesson in making good decisions before perfect information arrives.
2015–2019
At York I helped a quick-moving digital team improve a very large, very public website, then went on to lead that team. We built a responsive framework that made the experience better for students, staff and alumni, while proving that higher education technology can move quickly when given the chance.
2011–2015
I arrived as the only developer in a team of two and left as a senior developer in a team of more than twenty. Four years of agency work for major brands taught me how to deliver at pace, raise the quality bar and help a growing development team keep what made it good.
2010–2011
Sense brought me into the Leeds agency scene and introduced me to people I still know today. The company closed less than a year after I joined, which was a difficult ending but also a reminder that careers rarely follow the tidy route shown on a CV.
Earlier
Running my own business clarified two things: I enjoyed building for the web, and I was not a natural salesperson. It pushed me towards front-end specialism at the point when web development was becoming too broad for one person to sensibly do everything. I learned a great deal, including when to change direction.
