About

I've been writing code since I was young. Not because someone told me to but I've always had a deep fascination of how things work — and how to build them. Websites, phone apps, scripts, anything I could think of. That impulse hasn't changed. What's changed is the scale of what I get to build and the teams I get to build it with.

The path here

That early obsession with making things naturally pulled me deeper into how things actually work. Not just the code, but the infrastructure underneath it — how applications run, how systems are put together, how software and hardware meet. I fell into IT properly through that curiosity, moving from web development and a lead developer role in Hull (where I helped plan and ship a mobile app for Hull City of Culture 2017) into enterprise infrastructure at Arco, where I got hands-on with cloud migration, Azure, AWS, Terraform, and identity management at scale. Then DevOps found me — or I found it. Automating tasks, building tools, solving problems with code and pipelines. It became the thing I couldn't stop doing. The satisfaction of turning a manual, error-prone process into something that just works is hard to beat. I leaned hard into Infrastructure as Code, container orchestration, and the intersection of development and operations that makes modern delivery possible. That led me to Phoenix Software, where I established the company's first DevOps business unit. I grew a team from 4 to 15, delivered cloud-managed services across public and private sector, built a proprietary cloud management platform, and started pushing into AI — using GPT, vision models, and machine learning to improve everything from SOC efficiency to data analysis. Along the way I picked up a stack of Azure certifications (AZ-104, AZ-305, AZ-400, AI-102), a CKA, and clearances including SC & NPPv3, which opened the door to some of the most interesting work in UK public sector technology.

What I'm doing now

Today I lead the Engineering & Innovation team at Phoenix Software. We're a small, focused team building tools and solutions for the modern workplace — all on Azure, all with UK data sovereignty front of mind. The work sits across three areas that I find genuinely fascinating. First, building AI agents across the full Microsoft ecosystem — from no-code Copilot Studio builds through to pro-code development with Microsoft Foundry and the Azure AI stack. Second, engineering leadership in the AI era — figuring out how teams should work when LLMs and agentic systems are part of the development process, from sprint planning to peer review to delivery metrics. Third, sovereign AI on Azure — navigating the real-world complexities of data residency, UK GDPR compliance and more for UK organisations that need AI capabilities without compromising on where their data not only lives but is processed too. I'm deep into the generative AI world now, and I'm fascinated by what becomes possible when you put LLMs and machine learning at the centre of how you build. We're creating agentic AI systems and deeply complex tooling at Phoenix — treating ourselves as customer zero to prove concepts before taking them to market. I'm working across an array of languages (PowerShell, Terraform, Python, React, .NET, and most recently a growing love for Rust), and the breadth of what you can build today still genuinely excites me.

Why this blog exists

When I moved into leadership, one of the tensions of that move was the pull away from the technical. This blog is my commitment to staying hands-on — a forcing function to keep building, keep learning, and keep sharpening the craft alongside the management work. It's also a space to think out loud about leadership in a world that's changing fast. How do you run a team when half your toolchain is AI-assisted? How do you measure engineering delivery when agents are doing meaningful work alongside your developers? How do you help a team grow across the no-code to pro-code spectrum? I don't have all the answers, but I'm working through them every day, and writing about it helps me think more clearly.