Recruiters & Prospective Employers
If you're a recruiter or business considering me as a candidate, I've put this page together to help you decide if a role you have in mind might be a good fit for me - and whether I would be the right fit for you.
The short version is that I'm a senior software engineer and technical lead with broad experience across web and backend systems, architecture, APIs, data, cloud infrastructure, security, testing, AI and machine learning.
I'm not primarily a PHP developer, a Python developer, a Go developer or any other variety of <insert language here> developer. I'm a software engineer. Languages and frameworks are tools. I've used several and I'm perfectly happy learning another one.
I'm also an enthusiastic adopter of AI-assisted and agentic development. I think these tools have already brought down barriers between tech stacks and frameworks, and changed what good software engineering looks like. I'm interested in working with organisations prepared to embrace that change rather than watch it happen from the sidelines.
Currently available · Bristol or remote within the UK · Senior/Staff/Lead · Base salary from £80k
Download my CV (password required) · LinkedIn · GitHub · Email me · Geblang · Break 5
Current status
I was recently made redundant and am actively looking for a new role.
What kind of role is right for me?
Are you looking for a senior or staff engineer to join your team? A lead engineer for a squad, product or department? A technical lead to help shape the architecture of your systems? Someone to improve developer experience, refine your tooling, shake up a few tired processes or bring development back into line with your strategic goals?
Those are all conversations I'd be interested in having.
I'm at my best in roles where senior engineers are expected to contribute beyond the ticket in front of them. I want to understand your business, your product, your users and the reason we're building something, not just be handed a specification and told to pipe down and churn through the backlog.
That doesn't mean I'm above hands-on coding or the ordinary work that keeps a business running. I'm quite happy designing and delivering a new system, debugging an obscure production problem, fixing a slow database query, supporting a client or dealing with the odd unglamorous bug in an old CMS. It all needs doing.
But I will ask questions. I'll speak up if I think something could be done better, and I'll care about whether the work produces real value. Often the greatest challenges in software organisations aren't technological at all; they're organisational. I'm interested in both.
I'm primarily considering senior engineer, staff engineer, lead engineer and technical lead roles. I'm also open to engineering leadership or management positions where a strong hands-on technical background is useful.
What I bring
Over the years I've been involved in every part of the software-development lifecycle: discovery, requirements, scoping, estimation, architecture, implementation, automated testing, deployment, production support and strategic planning with leadership.
I've owned key systems, managed communications with clients, provided technical support, delivered workshops and training, mentored engineers and written plenty of documentation. I'm comfortable talking to another developer, a C-level executive or your best (or worst) client, and adjusting the detail and tone accordingly. That's a valuable skill in someone who also writes code.
I have strong knowledge of web technology, backend systems, architecture and application security, but the main thing I bring is the ability to understand problems, make sound technical decisions and get useful things delivered.
I can also provide mentoring and training in web development, web application security and automated testing.
I've previously worked in financial services and am familiar with relevant regulation and compliance concerns, including GDPR, anti-money-laundering requirements and client protection.
Languages, tools and technology
For recruiters who quite reasonably need some keywords, technologies and methodologies I've worked with include:
Languages and application development
- Go-including my own programming language written in Go, Geblang
- Python, including Django and FastAPI
- PHP, including Symfony and API Platform
- Java, including Spring Boot
- JavaScript/TypeScript, Node.js, HTML5 and CSS
Architecture and engineering
- Web applications, backend services, REST APIs and system integrations
- System design, application security and performance
- Automated testing and test-driven development
- Technical discovery, scoping, estimation and documentation
Data
- PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle and SQLite
- MongoDB, DynamoDB and Elasticsearch
- Data modelling, query performance and data-intensive systems
Cloud and delivery
- AWS, including EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, Bedrock, ECS/ECR, EventBridge and CloudWatch
- Docker, containerisation and CI/CD pipelines
- Production support, monitoring and troubleshooting
AI and machine learning
- AI-assisted and agentic software-development workflows
- LLM integration, including AWS Bedrock
- Hugging Face, Transformers, spaCy and Pandas
- NLP, embeddings, semantic search and classification systems
Teams and delivery
- Technical leadership and mentoring
- Client, stakeholder and cross-team communication
- Workshops and training
- Agile, Scrum and Kanban
Some of these I know in considerable depth; others I've used to varying degrees over a long career. I'm not going to pretend that mentioning a tool in a bullet point makes anyone an expert in it. The list is here to show the territory I've covered, not to define the boundaries of what I can do, nor indeed to proclaim that I have in-depth expertise in all of these technologies at all times, off the top of my head and without referencing anything.
Do you have experience in [insert tool or framework here]?
Maybe you need React, Next, Angular, Vue, Laravel, Symfony, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, Azure, Craft CMS, Magento, Go, C#, Kafka, Jenkins, Splunk, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, or something that was only released last Thursday.
Specific experience does matter. Some platforms have deep ecosystems, sharp operational edges or domain conventions that take time to learn. But part of what's broken in technology hiring is the pretence that matching every noun in a job specification matters more than whether someone can actually engineer software.
What I have is long experience of choosing, using, adapting and learning tools in the course of solving real problems. My deeper expertise is in software engineering, the web as a business domain, architecture, APIs, data, security, testing and technical problem-solving. Those things transfer.
So if I haven't used one item in your current stack, I won't claim that I magically know everything about it already. I will ask sensible questions, read the documentation, study the existing system and learn it, as I've done repeatedly throughout my career.
I believe in being technology-agnostic at the level where it matters: choose the right tool for the job, understand its trade-offs and don't turn a framework into an identity. I'm happy to pick up a new language or stack, although I reserve the right to make jokes if it's COBOL or Perl.
AI-assisted and agentic development
I've used Claude and Codex extensively over the last couple of years, both personally and professionally. My view today is straightforward: if you're not exploring agentic development as a serious part of your engineering workflow, you should be.
This isn't just autocomplete with better marketing, certainly not anymore. Agents used properly lower the cost of exploring an idea and make it practical to attempt work that might otherwise remain permanently stuck behind more urgent priorities.
I've used these tools for implementation, debugging, code review, testing, research, documentation and architecture work. I'm interested in the whole agentic workflow: giving an agent sufficient context, defining useful constraints, letting it work through a problem, and then applying the human judgement needed to decide whether the result is actually any good.
And there are caveats. Agents can be confidently wrong, make unjustified assumptions, miss wider consequences and produce code that looks plausible without being secure, correct or maintainable. There are systems and circumstances in which their use is inappropriate.
That's why I don't see AI as a replacement for engineering knowledge. The better these tools become at producing code, the more the engineer's value shifts towards understanding specifications, architecture, security, compliance, system design and the real-world problem. You still need someone capable of directing the work and recognising when the machine has done something clever, something mediocre or something dangerously stupid.
Remembering syntax or the APIs of a thousand frameworks was never the most interesting part of software development. AI lets us spend more time on the part that matters: solving problems and delivering working systems with real value.
I also have hands-on experience building AI and machine-learning systems using Python, Hugging Face, Transformers, NLP models, embeddings, semantic search, classification and LLM integrations including AWS Bedrock. So my interest here goes beyond asking a chatbot to write a function and declaring the future has arrived.
I don't think AI will replace developers, but it is already changing what it means to do the job. I want to work somewhere that recognises the opportunity, understands the responsibility and intends to make use of both.
Location
I'm based in Bristol, UK, so I can consider fully remote roles, on-site or hybrid roles in Bristol and the South West, or a primarily remote role with occasional travel further afield, for example, monthly or quarterly.
The course of life
I'm no Latin buff, but according to Wikipedia that's what curriculum vitae means.
My CV is password-protected rather than publicly downloadable. If I've given you a download password, please use the link below to access it.
Download passwords are valid for one use only, so please don't share yours with anyone else.
If we haven't been introduced and you would like access to my CV, my preference is that you contact me from your professional profile through my LinkedIn page.
You can also look through my GitHub account and the technical tutorials and commentary elsewhere on this website.
Salary and reward
I'm primarily considering roles with a base salary from £80,000, depending on the responsibilities, scope and overall package.
The ideal overall package would include a reasonable holiday allowance, private health insurance and benefits that go beyond the statutory minimum. I bring a great deal of value and commitment to any role I take on and I'm always looking for ways to help the organisation grow and improve, not merely to complete my assigned tickets.
Interviews and technical tests
I appreciate focused hiring processes that respect everyone's time. I'm happy to take part in technical interviews, discuss architecture or code, work through realistic problems collaboratively, and talk in depth about my previous work.
For most roles, I prefer a process limited to two or three stages. I'm less likely to pursue a role involving a long sequence of interviews or an unpaid take-home exercise requiring more than around two or three hours, unless the seniority or nature of the position genuinely warrants it.
That isn't because I object to having my abilities assessed. It's because candidates may be pursuing several roles while working and dealing with the rest of life, and a miniature API built over an evening often says less about real engineering ability than a good technical conversation. I'm similarly unenthusiastic about LeetCode-style tests where they bear little resemblance to the work involved.
Between this website, my CV, GitHub and LinkedIn, there should be plenty of material from which to decide whether a conversation is worthwhile. After that, I'd rather we have a focused and sincere discussion in which we can both decide whether there's a good fit.
I want to know about you too. I want to work somewhere I'll enjoy working, with people I'll enjoy working with, on problems that are challenging or interesting. Or ideally, both.
Still think we might be a good fit?
Feel free to get in touch. You can email me or message me on LinkedIn with the job specification, salary range, package details and a little about the team and the problems you're trying to solve.
Thank you.