A rare combination of strategic and hands-on tactical technical and management abilities across a wide range of software, infrastructure & IT areas.

Inventor of 14 patents in Operating Systems, Software Repositories, Virtualization Management and Cybersecurity.

• Technical Skills :
  • Languages: Python, C++, bash, Go(basic), R(basic), Javascript(basic)
  • Frameworks: Django, DRF,
  • Cloud/Infrastructure: AWS, ansible, terraform, Pulumi, Nomad
  • IT: Linux, vCenter, docker, Windows Server, Hyper-V, DNS
• Team Leadership : Founder, 0-20 team growth, mentoring and management
• Product Leadership: IP Strategy, release management, Cyber Resilience Act (EU)

Badon Hill Technologies Ltd. : CTO (personal consulting company) : Jan 2018 - current : Oxford, UK

Provide a mix of strategic and tactical technical and management services across software product development, infrastructure and IT including:

• Software team leadership and advanced OS-level triage
• Prime interface between client and their customer's IT/Networking/Security teams during pre- and post- sales
• Built and deployed a proprietary lightweight HW/SW network verification product to avoid client's wasted travel while comissioning laboratory equipment.
• Developed tools and engineering processes to meet client's EU Cyber Resilience Act reporting requirements.

Mergent Ltd. : VP of Engineering : Jan 2024 - Oct 2025 : Reading, UK

• Owned development of a Green-field technical skills data platform using Django REST, converting a non-technical vision into a production-ready product.
• Engineered complete CI/CD process and infrastructure to support development, staging and production.
• Created RAG-based prototype AI chatBot using proprietary company data, demonstrating viability of a chat-based extension to a classic data-based web-UI.
• Wrote and filed the company's first patent application
• Led a cross-functional engineering team of 3 to deliver an end-to-end technical skills platform
• Offered co-founder status by CEO
• Skills: Django REST framework, Docker, Pulimi/opentofu, DevOps, gitlab/gitlab-ci

Arrival plc. : Head of Software Engineering : Jul 2022 - Sep 2022 : London, UK

• Managed 4 development and infrastructure (devops) teams in the Rapid Engineering Design group.
• Re-invigorated approach to IP, identifying 26 potential patents that had not been filed.
• It soon became apparent that it was not a good cultural fit for me; mentored my internal replacement.

LabMinds Ltd. : Head of Software Engineering : Sep 2021 - Jul 2022 : Oxford, UK

• Restructured and merged two siloed engineering departments, improving flexibility and increasing retention through structured mentoring.
• Drove the use of shared interactive notebooks to standardize analysis and presentations
• Brought commercial IT experience into the leadership team
• Supported development of new company-wide Quality Management System
• Updated backup infrastructure to follow 3-2-1 best practices, cutting RTO from 24+hours to <30min
• Architected and built SecOps function utilizing SIEM for real time monitoring and reporting.
• Presented regular updates to Board of Directors
• Skills: AWS, Pandas, SecOps, IP Strategy, DevOps

LabMinds Ltd. : Senior Software Engineer : Jan 2020 - Sep 2021 : Oxford, UK

• Migrated team from mercurial to git, including complete history and training classes for engineers.
• Led the migration of the product to Python 3, modernizing 250k+ LOC.
• Integrated automated SAST/DAST security scanning into the Git pipeline.
• Maintained the embedded Ubuntu 14 system, back-porting updated software as needed.
• Extended platform to add additional hardware in Django, NUC and Arduino layers.
• Introduced lunchtime "brown bags" to develop communication skills within the team.
• Skills: Python, Django, Arduino (C++), Ansible, DevOps

HotLink Corp. : Co-founder, VP of Engineering & CTO : Jan 2010 - Nov 2019 : Santa Clara, California

• Inventor, system architect and prime developer of HotLink's heterogeneous virtualization management, disaster-recovery and cyber-security products.
• Responsible for all strategic and tactical technical activities in the company.
• Secured $10M Series A funding from tier-1 VCs by presenting technical vision and IP strategy
• Designed and implemented IT/infrastructure for the entire company.
• Launched product at VMworld 2011.
  • Best of VMworld 2012 - Best In Show
  • Best of VMworld 2012 - Winner - Virtualization Management
  • Best of VMworld 2013 - Winner - Cloud Application
  • Best of VMworld 2013 - Finalist - Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
  • Best of VMworld 2014 - Winner - Public and Hybrid Cloud Computing Technologies
• On (non-founding) CTO's departure in 2016, assumed his duties (external sales support and management of the support function).
• Board Director
• Skills: C++, Python, SQLAlchemy, Docker, VMware, Azure, libvirt, AWS EC2 APIs, PostgreSQL, Terraform, IP Strategy, Engineering management.

Relocated back to UK in 2013 and continued to manage the California-based engineering team from the UK.

See https://web.archive.org/details/www.hotlink.com from 2019

FastScale Technology : Co-founder, VP of Engineering and CTO : Mar 2006 - Jan 2010 : Santa Clara, California

• Chief architect and lead developer for FastScale's unique approach to managing server software stacks. FastScale's technology used automated JeOS approaches to provide much higher virtual machine densities (99 VMs on a 4GB host) and improved the performance and security of those runtime environments.
• Participated in multiple rounds (A, B) of VC funding and press & analyst briefings.
• FastScale was acquired by EMC in August 2009, all employees were transferred to EMC (Ionix)
• VMware (largest customer) subsequently acquired the technology as part of their purchase of Ionix from EMC and the FastScale technology was included in VMware Studio. VMware have continued to file patents based on the original FastScale IP.
• Designed and implemented IT/infrastructure for the entire company.
• Board Director
• Skills: C++, DB2, PHP, Python, VMware, IP Strategy, Engineering management.

See https://web.archive.org/details/www.fastscale.com from 2009

Scyld Software : Engineering Manager : Jan 2003 - Mar 2006 : San Francisco, California

• Technical Lead and Engineering Manager for Scyld's Linux clustering product.
• Re-architected technology for Linux 2.6 to use the Linux Security Module hooks dramatically reducing the kernel patches needed.
• Brought (scalable) software engineering best practices to the company.
• Managed a team of 8 engineers.

Silicon Graphics (SGI) : Technical Lead : Dec 1996 - Mar 2003 : Mountain View, California

• Hired and relocated to California to lead the SGI Motif team.
• Represented SGI at industry consortium (X.org) for 3 years.
• Transitioned to "Trusted Irix" group; responsible for producing B1/LSPP edition of SGI's standard Unix operating system. Developed the standard toolset used for export compliance filings.
• Led SGI's involvement with the Linux Security Module project to provide a framework for advanced security policies (\url{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Security_Modules}). Presented a birds-of-a-feather session at the 10th USENIX Security Symposium.
• Significant contributor to productizing the system software for SGI's Altix IA64 supercomputer.
• Only person ever to be on all four engineering teams -- and at the same time: the Irix Architecture, Irix Release, Linux Architecture and Linux Release teams. Between them, the teams were responsible for the technical approach, engineering best practices and release management for all operating system technologies and releases. Demonstrated ability to think and execute at both the abstract system design and tactical product release levels.
• Contributed multiple open source applications to the Irix Freeware project.

IXI : Technical Lead : Jan 1995 - Oct 1996 : Cambridge, UK

University of Oxford : System Manager : Mar 1993 - Dec 1994 : Oxford, UK

Rolls-Royce plc : Senior Aerodynamicist : Sep 1988 - Mar 1993 : Bristol, UK

• 7,971,047 Operating system environment and installation.
• 7,971,182 Application environment specifications for provisioning application specific runtime environment.
• 8,001,083 Repository including version management.
• 8,171,141 Provisioning system including stack manager
• 8,171,482 Application environment specifications for provisioning application specific runtime environments using subsets of resources required for execution
• 8,219,987 Optimized virtual machine specification for provisioning application specific runtime environment
• 8,347,263 Repository including installation metadata for executable applications
• 8,539,484 Multi-platform computer system management for virtualized environments
• 8,577,937 Repository including exclusion list
• 8,667,459 Application specific runtime environments
• 9,015,180 Repository including file identification
• 11,061,657 Systems and Methods for Managing Distributed Applications
• 11,262,996 Repository including exclusion list
• 11,275,834 System for Analyzing Backups for Threats and Irregularities
• 17/684,385 Repository including exclusion list (pending)
• 63/657,793 Currently Unpublished (pending)

https://scholar.google.com

1984 - 1988 BEng(Hons), Mechanical Engineering; Polytechnic of Wales

-- Version : 46DD774. US English