About

This is about me, the human. The one inside and outside of nine to five Monday to Friday. It is the version that doesn't fit into LinkedIn.

My professional practice is informed by a solid grounding in engineering, infosec, privacy, teaching. I bind these things together with design.

My guiding principle is to do things the hard way because it makes everything easy. Take the easy path and everything is hard. Framing is everything.

Here's how I arrived at where I'm at.

LEARNING

A senior school teacher, Mr Mitchinson, put me on a journey to be a well rounded human being. So far in my life I've spent time as a drummer, an olympic weightlifter, an arborist, a teacher, a designer, a developer, a lead engineer, a CTO and CIO and most importantly an avid cook / bread baker.

I always come back to designing things and engineering software for the web. It's what I cannot help but do.

There is so much to learn on this planet and so little time to do it.

The most important thing I've learned is that relationships are more important than stuff or knowledge but time and distraction wants you to decide between them.

Time is cruel and distraction is a never ending battle.

DESIGN

I started out in design as a pre-internet graphic designer. I moved to technology in 1998 where I started using html and css.

Design forms the basis for my undergrad and postgrad qualifications. Design is deeper than appearance or shape, it's a process and a mindset that creates novel solutions of value.

Aesthetically speaking, I think there are two kinds of designers in the world.

Understanding design as a process is a super skill.

ENGINEER

As as designer I wrote code. I began teaching myself HTML in the late 1990's using HTML Goodies and by right clicking and using view source. I moved onto CSS, ActionScript & JavaScript. Then I learned some Perl, then PHP. It was magical.

At d.construct 2006 I was introduced to Django and Python. That's when I'd say I moved from a designer to an engineer. Since then I've built things in Clojure, Node and some Go. In 2018~ I was introduced to Elixir and whilst I didn't write much code as CTO / CIO I never let Elixir go. When I started up in business for myself in 2022, it was my default language of choice for projects.

Because of my design foundation I value fashion and function. They're both important but context decides which one claims the balance. 51% function, 49% fashion is a good default starting point.

I'm investing very heavily in Elixir. I'm current on a deep dive into the language, the patterns and the frameworks in the ecosystem. I'm doing that on Exercism and [Code Crafters][e5] and by tackling my own projects. When I'm through the Elixir tracks, I'm tackling the Go tracks.

In todays' AI driven world, two of the main concepts from Accelerate remain more prominent than ever – short delivery lead times and a low change failure rate. These are two of the main competances from an engineer.

DEVOPS

I deployed my first server into my bedroom on a Saturday night in 2003. I took my only PC and installed Mandrake linux on it. There was no other PC with internet access and iPhones hadn't been invented. It took a day or so of reading man pages to be able to use it. I re-installed windows XP on the following Monday. I don't mind experimenting.

I did however build and deploy my own mandrake webserver into my bedroom a few weeks later. I kept a notebook of all the commands I used to set things up. I used it daily from 2003 to 2007. It eventually filled up. Now it's in my archive of notebooks.

I'm happy deploying to K8's, cloud hosting, serverless or bare metal. I'll even use Terraform if you ask very, very nicely and pay me sufficiently.

I keep my devops skills sharp. You're reading this on a Raspberry PI hosted in a cupboard in my house, served through a Cloudflare tunnel. The application is an image built from a CI/CD pipeline on Github that's pushed to ghcr.io. The Pi pulls down the latest tag and updates the swarm on the PI.

All engineers should be able to deploy frequently and correct errors and quickly. Its two of the core ideas in Accelerate. This responsibility may be shared between engineers and pure devops roles, but all engineers should know how to do it.

PRIVACY, INFOSEC & GOVERNANCE.

From 2016 until 2022, I spent a good section of my time as CTO/CIO at SoPost dealing with vendor security and privacy assessments. I was responsible for navigating the company through that part and ensuring the deals closed.

Working closely with legal counsel I set up and maintained the privacy governance and had the company aligned completely with GDPR by May 24th 2018.

Vendor security assessments gave me a solid basis from which to learn the field of information security. I qualified as an ISO27001 lead implementor in late 2018. By 2022 SoPost had been certified ISO/IEC 27001:2013 compliant. It would have been sooner, but COVID meant a ground up redesign of the ISMS based on remote-first.

I've maintained a privacy and infosec practice. I'm a member of the IAPP and I'm working towards the AI Governance Professional - AIGP and Certified Information Privacy Professional/Europe.

I actually enjoy reading ISO standards.

AI

AI is amazing. As a child of seventies who used to have to go to a library to get books to read, the internet blew my head off. To now also have AI is wild. It is one of the best times to be a human on the planet.

AI helps me write better code, get more stuff done and at a much faster speed.

AI has fundamentally altered the world and especially the practice of software engineering. I embrace the new workflow just as any Victorian cabinet maker embraced mechanisation. I don't embrace it reluctantly either; it's willing.

AI is not human, and is no replacement for relationships and isn't accountable for its output. You "the human" are responsible for how you use the tool.

Whilst I may use AI to gather my thoughts and spell check things, I do not use AI to write prose. The right hemisphere is humanity's greatest asset. AI doesn't have a right hemisphere, only a synthetic left one.

It's an excellent cognitive exo-skeleton and a good pair-programmer.

AGI

When AI gets a right hemisphere, ingests real-time sensory data from everything around it in a functionally similar way that humans do, they can power themselves and they can self-train on the fly, then, and only then, we have AGI.

AGI is not reached through the application of sophistry, reductionism, hype or corporate shenanigans onto the current generation of LLM driven Statistical Next-Word Predictors.

I'm not holding my breath for the former. I expect the latter, and soon, because share price.

LEADER

Leadership isn't taken. It's given and earned.

I'm a natural leader and my style is servant leadership. It has taken me three decades to own that sentence. It isn't a flex and if anything, it's a burden that I willingly bear responsibly and for the benefit of all involved.

Leading and being led are sides of the same coin. They both require an active pursuit of deliberate, meaningful communication and emotionally intelligent intentional action.

Leading isn't about dominance or control. These things are facets of a broken personality that hasn't come to terms with the work required to put their own house in order.

At a minimum, leading is about trusting your team and ensure they have what they need to do their jobs. Excellent leadership is ensuring blocks are cleared ahead of time and setting the scene for the success of those around you – on a day to day level and on a longer burning personal growth level.

You have to be careful with the concept of "hierarchy". It's not a power thing, it's an operational utility like a network cable and a switch.

Always assume good faith in leadership. You need to be proven wrong beyond doubt and ideally with evidence before you tackle the situation. Even then, present your case, listen actively and still assume good faith.

Sadly, the tolerated behaviors and lowest performers on a team will become the defined standard. If you're leading, you must tackle that – in good faith.

I draw from my teaching practice to recover performance and pastoral issues. Most situations can be recovered from. If there is an issue in your team, check yourself first because there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

Sometimes, you just have to let people go. It's awful and costs a bit of your soul.

I remember second of every situation in which I had to do that. I took no satisfaction or joy from any of it. But, as a leader, your capital with your team depends on it.

Think before leading, it's more than a title.

TEACHERS

Very early on in my life I was fortunate to have exposure to exceptional teachers.

They've impacted my life deeply and put me on a lifelong journey to be a well rounded human being. If you taught me and your name is not in the below list then understand I hold gratitude to you. I just cannot mention you all.

To each of you thank you.

TEACHING

Thanks to being lucky enough and privileged enough to get tutored by some truly excellent teachers I know the power a good teacher can give to a students life trajectory.

Teaching is like mixing leadership with design and public speaking with the aim of facilitating learning. I've taught online, in classrooms, in woodlands, offices and small rooms doing 1:1's. I've always aimed to ensure I give a positive impact on every person I'm interacting with.

Teachers do what they do because they understand it's an honour to shape minds and grow potential. Skimping on teachers salaries whilst the administrators around them are paid higher is just not classy.

Teaching is a super skill like design.

MEDITATION

I've been formally meditating on and off for a decade. It's insightful on an existential level and very useful in managing distraction and in cultivating attention. I am not consistent in my practice. I don't judge myself for not being consistent.

We spend our lives distracted. Rarely do we experience awareness by chance. It has to be mindfully created. Were you aware of your breathing or your posture before I pointed it out?

Design and teaching are professional super skills. Meditation is the ultimate personal skill. You should try meditation. If you don't have time for meditation, you should spend twice as long on it.

TREES

In 2022 I'd been in tech for nearly quarter of a century and I was approaching my mid-forties. Prime time life-reflection territory. I don't mind if you refer to this also as a mid-life crisis. I don't, but I'm comfortable if you do. I didn't rush out and buy a sports car. I bought an ancient semi-natural woodland instead. I resigned from my role as CIO (responsibly and over a long period). I set up my own company where I did engineering, privacy and tree-work part-time. For the rest of the time I studied Arboriculture and Woodland Management.

I continued to meditate and was open to the idea I could go one of two ways, a new field of professional practice or return to tech. I didn't have a preference. Tech won and at the end of 2025, I returned to tech full time; BUT.

Trees and woodland management is now a significant chunk of my life. I'm very grateful for that break I took in 2022 as this endeavour will serve me to the end of my life. There's no feeling like being up in the canopy of a two hundred year old oak. The tree speaks to you and if it doesn't want you there, it'll tell you.

I didn't get into arboriculture to remove trees, but sadly that's often what it comes down to. Wrong tree, wrong place. It was the humans fault but the tree pays the price. Managing urban tree populations at scale is a truly difficult job. There's a significant overlap between infosec risk assessment and tree risk assessment. Weird when my worlds meet in the most unusual of places.

I'm of the firm belief that we, as humans, are not being the best stewards of the planet as we could be. Some of us are doing what we feel is best for the planet and it's ecology and that's wonderful. My small part is restoring an unmanaged, neglected section of ancient semi-natural woodland in rural Northumberland back to it's full ecological potential as an oak standard with hazel coppice.

Trees, especially in their native context as a woodland ecosystem have a lot to say. You just have to be still enough and open enough to listen.

I have no time for ticks.

PROFESSIONAL ME

To most people, I don't fit into a nice neat box. I've developed my engineering practice over a twenty year period and I'm a very competent engineer over the full stack. I can teach, I can lead and I'm fully up on infosec, privacy and AI governance.

I'm also demonstrably capable in EM / Senior IC roles. I can do strategy and translate board level strategy into actionable tactical work with impactful KPIs & OKRs for in-flight steering.

I'm confident enough in my abilites in the above to lead conversations with customers GC in sales processes to ensure a deal closes on time and smoothly.

I've been working alone for nearly five years now and I do miss the leadership. I am open to roles if they are the right fit. Just like Mr Gommersaul taught me "don't judge a book by its cover". Talk to me.

Don't be surprised if I'm applying for exec roles, EM roles or IC roles. Every organisation is different and I can bring significant value in different ways.

I'm not a fifty year old guy stuck in his ways. Mr Mitchinson taught me that it takes seven years to learn something. My new focus is AI and embracing it fully. MCP servers, sub-agents, agent skills, LLM integration applications. Faster engineering workflows. I'm all in.

I'm an insatiable learner, I can lead, I can build.

Or shape your hedge.

If you ask nice.