Hands‑on engineering leadership for complex digital transformation programmes. I help product and engineering teams turn fragile legacy web estates into robust platforms that are faster and easier to maintain, scale, govern, and improve.
I am an enthusiastic senior software engineer and technical leader with over twenty‑three years of hands‑on experience.
I help teams and clients design, build and improve websites, applications and web platforms, pairing architecture, delivery judgement and hands‑on TypeScript, React, HTML, and CSS.
My portfolio is diverse; I work with global clients, solving real-world problems, including:
Lead engineer on Virgin Atlantic & Holidays' large‑scale replatforming programme, unifying twelve disparate applications within a new headless architecture built with React and Next.js.
Lead UI development for a set of HSBC digital transformation projects, including a React, TypeScript, Node.js, and AEM rebuild of commercial banking applications.
Senior software engineer on the UK and Ireland replatform, migrating Nando’s customer‑facing websites from legacy Drupal to a unified headless platform built with Next.js and Storyblok, with a focus on performance, accessibility, and SEO.
Principal‑level support inside active delivery when architecture, standards, mentoring, documentation, ownership transfer, and implementation decisions need strengthening whilst the team keeps shipping.
Senior technical direction for organisations that need CTO‑style judgement across roadmap, suppliers, architecture, and release risk before a permanent leadership hire makes sense.
Define Next.js platform boundaries when domains, routes, tenants, brands, content ownership, data ownership, deployment models, or team responsibilities are making change unsafe.
Headless architecture advice before CMS, content model, preview, revalidation, metadata, schema, media, localisation, and editorial ownership decisions become expensive to reverse.
Senior platform assessment and technical direction for React and Next.js estates where routing, CMS, deployment, SEO, ownership, and delivery risk have become one problem.
Route‑level performance work for modern front ends where field data, Core Web Vitals, scripts, fonts, images, data loading, or templates are weakening important user journeys.
Underpaying senior engineers can look efficient on payroll, but often costs more through weaker hiring, slower delivery, contractor spend, and retention risk.
AI agents are starting to research, compare and narrow buying choices. Websites need to serve autonomous evaluators before human visitors arrive.
AI slop is a symptom of weak incentives, not just weak tools. This article links generic output to shallow briefs, poor review, and volume‑led metrics.
Platforms can speed delivery, but cutting internal capability too far can turn efficiency into lock‑in, weak negotiating power, and expensive migrations later.
Right to Represent agreements for UK contractors, covering recruiter pressure, duplicate submissions, hybrid working changes, and safer wording before signing.
try, catch, and finallyGo beyond basic try/catch in JavaScript with finally, custom errors, async error handling, testing, user‑facing failures, and defensive‑code traps.
Slow Gatsby builds need a clear choice: optimise plugins, data, and images in place, or move to Next.js when publishing and cache limits justify it.
AI search creates visibility that is not just a ranking, click or citation. Sites need to be retrievable, quotable, attributable, and comparable by machines.
AI programmes are often adopted tactically, without enough governance for supplier risk, data exposure, quality, workforce impact, or board accountability.
Audit third‑party script cost across GTM, consent tools, analytics, experimentation, and personalisation, without breaking measurement or business workflows.
As AI reduces friction in implementation, the value of architecture, review, domain judgement, mentoring, and failure analysis rises rather than falls.