<aside> 🪴 Results, retention and culture A battle-tested, people-focused technology leader with a track record of helping companies achieve business results through compelling product and engineering strategies. I led the digital transformation of The Times newspaper, scaled up ClearBank (the UK's newest clearing bank), and helped Contentful expand into new products and markets. I have built and scaled teams to produce outstanding work at scale.

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Key skills

• Scaling and leading engineering teams, coaching and culture building
• Senior management and stakeholder engagement to achieve business results
• Effective communication, presenting and speaking at conferences and events
• Product development, delivery and support

Career record

Dec 2021 - Present

Contentful

Senior Director, Engineering (Core Platform and Product Led Growth)

I am part of the Senior Management Team at the company, transforming the Product Development function into one that thinks big, builds small, and learns fast. I am involved in the company's product and technology strategy.

• Engineering leader responsible for the core API-first platform (data/asset storage, management/delivery APIs, and core website) and product-led growth teams.
• Strong relationships with Product, Marketing and other core functions.
• Responsible for achieving business-driven OKRs:
  • Servicing 85 billion API calls per month.
  • Increased self-serve ACV by 35%
  • Generated an additional $20m ACV from the core product.
  • On target for an additional $20m ACV from building new products and expanding into new markets
  • Driving a significant shift in customers from developers to non-technical users through product innovation.
  • Increased active monthly users by 26%
• Built and released the first AI integrations amongst other product innovations.
• Scaled and reshaped the engineering function by 50%.
• Designed and embedded a new engineering careers framework (levels, definitions, and compensation).
• Responsible for achieving business-driven OKRs by building new products and expanding into new markets. Saw a significant shift in customers from developers to non-technical users.

Mar 2021 - Nov 2021

ClearBank

Head of Engineering, Operational Excellence

Reporting to the CTO, I ran a technology change programme that brought operational excellence to the UK’s newest scale-up clearing bank, supporting Partner Care, Financial Crime, Finance & Treasury and other core functions.

• Brought data to the heart of decision-making.
• Drove the strategy for an API-first operations platform and low-code solutions to decentralise operational functions.
• Lead the talent development strategy across the technology department.

Feb 2018 - Mar 2021

News UK

1: Head of Engineering, The Times & The Sunday Times

2: Head of Software Engineering, News UK

I held two leadership roles at News UK, a collection of media companies including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and Virgin Radio. I was instrumental in moving from a brand vertical approach to a centralised technology platform that powers all their brands. I focused on organisational design and excellence, married to engineering best practices, with a passion for culture and engineering DNA. I was responsible for 70+ growth in our engineering capabilities in London and started our hugely successful Sofia centre from scratch, scaling to more than 50 engineers in eighteen months.

• Hired 70+ engineers in London, improved retention and diversity.
• Seeded a new office in Sofia with 50+ engineers. Awarded Bulgarian Development Team of the Year.
• Built an apprenticeship scheme and engaged with AWS re/Start for retrained cloud engineers.
• Devised and executed the engineering strategy, Tech Reset and Engineering Careers Framework.

Head of Software Engineering

Apr 2019 – Mar 2021

Head of Software Engineering running a team of twelve Heads of Engineering and Principal Engineers and ~180 engineers across all our titles and brands in London and Sofia. I focused on operational excellence by evangelising high standards, consistency and constant growth and development. I reported to the Senior Leadership Team and interacted with stakeholders and significant initiatives. I was responsible for extending their capabilities and best practices across their global partners in News Corp.

Head of Engineering, The Times & The Sunday Times

Feb 2018 – Mar 2019

I accelerated the digital transformation of The Times and The Sunday Times. Built a headless CMS with a highly typed database overlain with a design library. Migrated 200+ years of content. Ran a team of 45 cross-functional engineers, which I reorganised into customer value-driven cross-functional teams.

Jan 2017 – Feb 2018

Eaton Gate Gaming (kwiff)

Head of Development

Kwiff is a revolutionary mobile gambling platform disrupting the UK sports betting market. Reporting to the CTO and CEO as part of the senior management team, I was responsible for the complete product delivery chain, managing a development and QA team of 25. Under my direction, the team, product and quality matured to facilitate a full launch backed by advertising on BT Sport, supporting The Premier League and European Champions League.

• Oversaw a growth in revenues from low thousands to low millions (£).
• Continuously improved the development, test and release processes to ensure product and service quality met expected criteria.
• Managed relationships across the business with Compliance, Finance, Marketing, Operations and Customer Support teams.
• Evolved the product to deliver user value and meet business goals.
• Identified great candidates for the streamlined hiring process (hired fifteen people).
• Rescued a late-running project to deliver the Android app (the first version was released within five weeks).

Jan 2016 – Jul 2016

Sportlobster

Head of Engineering

Responsible for all aspects of technology leadership and was instrumental in business growth plans, effectively fulfilling the CTO role.

The company laid off a third of the workforce in July 2016 and has since closed.

• Leadership, management and motivation of twenty developers, including team coaching and mentoring.
• Introduced regular 1:1s, knowledge sharing and hacker days.
• Increased and improved the use of BDD, TDD, CI/CD and infrastructure as code.
• Championed the adoption of Agile and ITIL best practice methods, leading to improved delivery speed and quality.
• Oversaw remote DevOps engineers distributed across London, Portugal, San Francisco and Norway.
• Reduced IT running costs and overheads by 20%.

Oct 2008 – Jan 2017

Class Outfit

Owner/Consultant

Class Outfit was my vehicle providing consultancy on designing, developing and delivering web apps, mainly using PHP, JavaScript, Node JS, MySQL, HTML and SASS/LESS.

Projects delivered:

• BuzzPaid: Designed and built a multi-currency mobile payments platform for the unbanked population of Africa. The Bank of Ghana used the platform as the template for their new legislation of all digital money systems.
• DoxDirect: Built an innovative e-commerce site for file uploads direct to straight-through digital print with document manipulation and complex price estimation, resulting in a considerable upturn in business.
• BAFTA Research: Oversaw and led a late-running project's successful development and innovation to deliver an online digital rights management platform to the MVP stage.
• Together.do (now called joinblink.com): Developed a Node-based instant messaging platform to MVP stage.
• The Biggest Loser (US TV Programme): Developed an e-commerce site selling test-based health reports.
• How to Teach: Re-developed and re-launched a multi-tenancy CPD site for the education market.
• The Clinic Finder: Spearheaded the development of a health-related search engine. Responsible for all IT and technology leadership aspects, supporting business launch and growth. Served 25m searches per annum, signing up a portfolio of 5,500 healthcare clinics worldwide. Achieved industry recognition, reaching the semi-finals of Cisco’s The BIG Awards competition in 2012.
• eBCM: Built a SaaS platform to manage enterprise-wide Business Continuity risks for a BCM consultancy and some high street banks.