About
Eight years in, still building things for people I know
Senior full-stack engineer. React and TypeScript on the front, Python and FastAPI on the back — and the design decisions too.
What I enjoy
Building for actual people
A judo club, two weddings, a hen do. Real users, real money, real deadlines — and they tell you straight when it is wrong.
Owning the design
I make the design and UX calls as well as writing the code. It usually starts with working out what we are actually trying to solve.
Aeroplanes
I am working towards my PPL so I can fly small aircraft. Planes are a full-blown obsession — which is how a hen do site ended up as an airline.
Keeping AI in line
Eight years in means I know what good looks like. It is a power drill, not a carpenter.
Both ends of the scale
At Shieldpay I built a brand new escrow product from nothing. At Virgin Money it was the opposite — multi-million pound programmes across 80 repos, a top security environment and the bank’s own standards to meet. I am comfortable in both, and I would not want a role that was only one of them.
Working with AI
I am very much in favour of it, though. AI is not going anywhere, and a developer refusing to use it is like a joiner turning up to a job without power tools. It is a developer’s power drill. It makes you quicker at the parts you already understand. It does not do the thinking for you, and it does not know when the joints are wrong.
- Cleaning up generated code — untangling what was produced fast, getting it under test, and making it consistent with the rest of the codebase.
- Keeping the tool in line — I maintain the CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md conventions in the repos I work in, so it has the context it needs and stays inside the lines.
- Reviewing it like any other code — the tests still have to pass and the patterns still have to hold, whoever or whatever wrote it.
ScotLAN & TLP Events
I am the co-founder and a director of Scotland’s largest LAN gaming event, which has expanded to include an additional event in the North of England. This started as a hobby I ventured into with friends, and it is a non-profit.
What I am looking for
I am open to new roles. What I would like next is a team where I can keep doing all of it — the front end, the design decisions and the product thinking — and where there are people to learn from. I am happy in a startup or somewhere larger, because I have done both: I have built products from nothing, and I have delivered inside a bank where every change had process around it.
Outside work
Flying · PC gaming · Formula 1 · Hill climbing · Music · Interior design · Football