Staff-level software engineer with 10+ years' experience across critical national infrastructure, B2B SaaS, startups, and platform-heavy systems. Strongest in platform engineering, AI-augmented development, and complex backend systems — including Kubernetes autoscaling, multi-tenant SaaS, sharded MySQL, observability, CI/CD, and production reliability. Currently a trusted maintainer on a safeguarding platform serving 93% of UK schools.

Experience

CPOMS / RaptorTech Senior Software Engineer Jan 2023 – Present

Trusted maintainer on a safeguarding platform used by 93% of UK schools. Own Kubernetes infrastructure, AI engineering platform consumed by ~180 engineers, and production reliability.

Platform & InfrastructureAI Engineering LeadershipBackend & Technical LeadershipDelivery & Reliability

Critical safeguarding SaaS platform serving 93% of UK schools (~28,000–32,000 schools) plus US education organisations. Trusted maintainer with production access across UK and US environments, responsible for final code review, releases, monitoring, incident response, and cross-team technical direction.

Platform & Infrastructure

  • Own production Kubernetes infrastructure on Azure AKS — Traefik ingress, Kustomize overlays, Helm charts, Azure service integration
  • Designed and implemented autoscaling with KEDA, custom Kubernetes operators for one-off job patterns, and custom OpenTelemetry metrics exporters
  • Led migration of the application platform to Azure Kubernetes Service
  • Drove the requests=limits convention — eliminated random OOM killings, adopted company-wide
  • Built custom OTel exporters exposing Puma and Sidekiq metrics, consumed by KEDA scalers for real backpressure-based autoscaling
Azure AKSKubernetesKEDAKustomizeHelmTraefikOpenTelemetryPrometheus

AI Engineering Leadership

  • Maintain organisation's Claude Code plugin repository consumed by ~180 engineers — adapted into Amazon's AIDLC framework company-wide
  • Architected and led autonomous Python-based AI agent that investigates, implements, tests, and resolves Jira tickets
  • Built GitLab MCP server (112 tools, Python/FastMCP) as infrastructure for AI agent and development workflows
  • Philosophy: AI should improve code quality — more thorough tests, agentic review with org-specific checklists, human sanity-check on logic and intent
ClaudeMCPPythonFastMCPOllamaLiteLLM

Backend & Technical Leadership

  • Core platform developer on the Rails + sharded MySQL safeguarding application serving 93% of UK schools
  • Guided architectural decisions and solution design as a trusted lead — strong opinions, well-utilised
  • Kept tech debt manageable through pragmatic refactors while shipping features at pace
  • Trusted maintainer: final code review, production releases, cross-team technical direction
RubyRailsMySQLSidekiq Pro

Delivery & Reliability

  • Reworked GitLab CI pipelines — reduced build and test feedback cycles by ~10x
  • Led major Rails upgrades and large-scale refactors across the legacy codebase
  • Drove bug fix and reliability initiatives — own issues coming in from Sentry and Bugcrowd bug bounty
  • Added observability across background processing — Sidekiq via OTel, OTLP/gRPC, Prometheus, New Relic, Sentry
  • Migrated file attachments to ActiveStorage backed by Azure Blob Storage across all tenant databases
  • Led shared-domain migration, moving tenancy resolution from subdomains to cookie-based routing
  • Delivered query optimisation work improving performance, maintainability, and operational reliability
RubyRailsMySQLSidekiq ProGitLab CINew RelicSentryBugcrowd
This Is One Senior Developer Apr 2021 – Nov 2022

Built onboarding features for a distribution platform connecting studios with broadcasters. Owned complex product work end-to-end, mentored developers.

BackendFrontendSearch

Distribution platform connecting production studios with broadcasters. Built backend and frontend features, owned complex product work from discovery through deployment, and mentored other developers.

Backend

  • Built Rails services powering the distribution platform connecting studios with broadcasters
  • Owned complex product work from discovery through implementation, testing, deployment, and support
  • Mentored other developers and helped improve delivery quality across the team
RubyRailsAWS Fargate

Frontend

  • Built React and React Native frontend features for onboarding new broadcaster and production clients
  • Delivered responsive web and mobile experiences across the platform
ReactReact Native

Search

  • Built Elasticsearch-backed search enabling production studios to find and connect with broadcasters
  • Tuned relevance scoring and query optimisation to surface the correct results for diverse content catalogues
Elasticsearch
Simpleweb Backend Developer → Lead Developer 2017 – Apr 2021

Led backend across 6 startup products — subscription e-commerce, Stripe Connect marketplace, sustainable shopping app, Elasticsearch search platform, open-source SDK tooling, and AI-assisted message classification.

Different DogSpace For ArtsICAEW Find a Chartered AccountantOpenActiveGikiEnvolve

Startup studio building and investing in early-stage products. Backend lead across a diverse portfolio spanning subscription commerce, marketplaces, search systems, open-source tooling, and AI-assisted applications.

Different Dog

  • Subscription e-commerce platform for fresh dog food — Rails, React, Stripe, Chargebee
  • Led backend end-to-end: prototype through to paying customers
  • Full subscription lifecycle: signup, payment, recurring billing, delivery management
RailsReactStripeChargebee

Space For Arts

  • Marketplace and booking platform for creative spaces
  • Built marketplace functionality with Stripe Connect for split payments between space owners and platform
  • Availability management and booking system
RailsStripe Connect

ICAEW Find a Chartered Accountant

  • Elasticsearch-powered public search platform for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales
  • Search across chartered accountant profiles with filtering and relevance tuning
ElasticsearchNode.js

OpenActive

  • Contributed to the OpenActive ecosystem — open data standards for sports and fitness activities
  • Built SDK generation tooling — automated client library generation from API specs
  • Built open-source conformance testing frameworks — public repos, community contributions
RubyNode.js

Giki

  • Sustainable shopping companion app — Rails backend + React Native mobile app built from MVP to public iOS/Android release
  • Automatic product data classification: parsed and normalised Brandbank API and Tesco Labs data into sustainability, health, and fairness badges
  • Large-scale cron jobs for ongoing product data enrichment and badge scoring
  • Developed both backend and frontend — Rails API, React Native app, product classification pipeline
RailsReact NativeElasticsearch

Envolve

  • AI-assisted message classification product — combined NLP with a user-facing web application
PythonFastTextVue.js
Redwing Interactive Web Developer 2015 – 2017

End-to-end project ownership at a web agency — built CPD and summer school booking platforms, worked directly with client requirements and delivery deadlines.

Client Delivery

Web agency delivering client websites and bespoke booking platforms. Owned projects end-to-end from implementation through deployment and maintenance.

Client Delivery

  • Owned client projects end to end — implementation, deployment, and maintenance
  • Built CPD and summer school booking platforms
  • Worked directly with client requirements, delivery deadlines, and production support
PHPin-house CMS

Side Projects

Homelab Infrastructure

5-node Raspberry Pi k0s + Cilium Kubernetes cluster. Full GitOps with Helmfile, Terraform, and Ansible on Ubiquiti/UniFi hardware.

5-node Raspberry Pi Kubernetes cluster (k0s + Cilium eBPF) serving real workloads on the golden.wales domain. Full GitOps pipeline with Helmfile, Terraform, and Ansible. Originally ran HashiCorp Nomad before migrating to Kubernetes. Entire network runs on Ubiquiti/UniFi hardware. Services include Home Assistant, Grafana, Authentik SSO, Longhorn distributed storage, and a private container registry.

GitLab MCP Server

112 MCP tools across 16 domains. Python + FastMCP + Pydantic. Built to serve autonomous AI agents and accelerate development workflows.

AI-optimised MCP server wrapping the GitLab API — 112 tools across 16 domains. Built in Python with FastMCP and Pydantic v2. Designed to serve the autonomous AI agent's need for structured GitLab access and to accelerate day-to-day development workflows. Response philosophy: slim, enhanced with computed fields, humanized timestamps, flattened structures.

WoWScrape — Computer Vision Buff Detection

Evaluated 6 detection approaches for WoW buff/debuff icon recognition. Built with OpenCV.js (Wasm), Sharp, TypeScript, and Bun.

Computer vision system for detecting and identifying World of Warcraft buff/debuff icons from screenshots and video frames. Evaluated 6 different detection approaches (template matching, color fingerprinting, dominant-color variants, border detection) before converging on the optimal method. Built with OpenCV.js (Wasm), Sharp, TypeScript, and Bun.

Skills & Technologies

Core Engineering

Ruby Rails Python TDD RSpec Minitest JavaScript TypeScript Node.js API design Background jobs Query optimisation Legacy refactoring Technical leadership

AI / LLM Tooling

Claude LiteLLM MCP servers FastMCP RAG Ollama AI-assisted development Autonomous agents Agentic code review AI-augmented PDLC

Infrastructure & Delivery

Kubernetes AKS k0s KEDA Docker Nomad Consul Vault Ansible Terraform GitLab CI Jenkins Kustomize Helm Traefik Custom operators

Observability

OpenTelemetry Prometheus OTLP/gRPC New Relic Sentry Custom metrics exporters Production monitoring

Cloud

Azure AKS Azure Blob Storage Azure Key Vault Azure Front Door AWS EC2 AWS Fargate AWS Elastic Beanstalk Heroku

Databases & Search

MySQL Sharded MySQL PostgreSQL MongoDB Redis Elasticsearch ChromaDB

Education

BSc Software Engineering

University of Wales: Trinity Saint David

2012 – 2015