Curriculum Vitae

I'm a hardworking, passionate and enthusiastic IT professional with experience working across a breadth of roles in businesses ranging from startups through to multi-nationals. I have extensive technical skills in virtualisation, storage, networking, security, and infrastructure services, as well as a background in software development and ever-increasing experience in the rapidly changing field of AI and Automation.

Technical Skills

AI and Automation

Practical experience integrating AI tools into development workflows, including AI agents for code generation, architecture planning, and technical problem-solving. Hands-on with AI-assisted development practices, prompt engineering, and leveraging LLMs for productivity enhancement in both coding and infrastructure tasks. Personal subscriptions for ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot; access to Azure AI Foundry, and local infrastructure with n8n and oLLaMa on Docker for model inference using my own hardware.

Modern Development Stack

Building applications with C# and .NET 9, leveraging MongoDB for document storage, Redis for caching, and RabbitMQ for message queuing. Currently exploring Blazor for interactive web UIs and .NET Aspire for distributed application development.

Enterprise Hardware and Networking

Hands-on experience with Dell server infrastructure, Cisco Nexus and Catalyst switching, and PureStorage FlashArray//X20 high-performance storage.

Data and Integration

Administration and optimisation of SQL Server and MongoDB databases, and integration with PowerBI. Hybrid on-premises/cloud architectures.

Cloud and Infrastructure

Designing and managing enterprise-scale infrastructure with VMware vSphere/vCenter, Docker Swarm and k3s, and hybrid Azure deployments.

Security and Compliance

Implementation and management of enterprise security appliances including ForcePoint NGFW, and Azure Network Security Policies. Experience with compliance requirements, security policy development, and risk assessment procedures. Familarity with ISO27001, GDPR.

Leadership and Collaboration

Experience

Group IT and Infrastructure Manager

Southern Communications Group 2018 – Present

In my current role, I lead a team of six infrastructure engineers to deliver infrastructure solutions to business problems in a rapidly growing group of telecommunications businesses. I work with stakeholders to define requirements, set up project plans, and then coach and mentor my team to deliver exceptional solutions. Projects range from IT integrations as the result of acquisitions, through opening new offices, to maintaining our private cloud infrastructure hosted across two datacentres. The Group IT Infrastructure team has aided the growth of the group from 250 staff in 2019 to 850 staff today.

Achievements
  • Recruited and coached a team of six infrastructure engineers.
  • Supported group growth from 250 to 850 staff.
  • Led IT integrations for acquisitions
  • Managed private cloud infrastructure across two datacentre locations

Service Delivery Lead

Foundation IT 2017 – 2018

I was headhunted to join Foundation IT as Service Delivery Lead to help improve the managed service offering through the development of people, process, and technology. I lead the introduction of an "automation-first" approach to managed services, and developed tools to provide insight into customer infrastructure health, and our own workload.

Achievements
  • Introduced automation-first approach to handling over 1000 tickets per day.
  • Developed infrastructure health insights for customers using automation and API access.
  • Improved managed service delivery by reducing manual work.

IT Manager / Assistant IT Manager

SCL 2013 – 2017

Managing a small IT team supporting internal users at Southern Communications Ltd before it rebranded to SCG.

Software Developer

Cubiks Online 2012 – 2013

Working as a developer of "Cubiks Online", an integrated assessment platform built on top of the Microsoft stack; ASP.NET Webforms, SQL Server with C# middle tiers.

Personal Projects

Stepford County Railway Hub Site

I proposed, designed, and built a "world first" real-time web app for Stepford County Railway, a railway simulation game on Roblox. The system processes nearly 1 million game events daily with sub-2 second latency, tracking over 70 million player tasks across 5.5 million registered users. Built using .NET 8, Blazor WebAssembly, MongoDB, Redis, and RabbitMQ in a containerized Docker Swarm architecture with Cloudflare protection.

The platform features real-time event sourcing, real-time statistics and insight, and scaling to handle up to 250,000 events per hour at peak time. I continue to host and maintain this high-traffic application, demonstrating end-to-end product ownership from initial concept through production deployment and ongoing operations.

The application is used by over 1,000 users per day, and transfers around 10TB of HTTP traffic per month.

.NET 8 & C# Blazor WebAssembly MongoDB & Redis Docker Swarm Real-time Event Processing High-traffic Architecture

Home Automation

Using Home Assistant, and a combination of n8n, Claude, Gemini, and various open-source products, I've built a home automation system which semi-automates the control of our heating, lighting, blinds, and EV charging. The system collects over 1200 metrics of time-series data in InfluxDB, with visualisation using Grafana. Workflows and automations handle common tasks such as regulating the heating, recognising visitors on the doorbell, and charging my EV during cheap supply.

Automation n8n Time-series data Vision models

Outside Work

Personal Life

I live in Southampton with my partner and our four year old Labrador Retriever. We spend time dog walking at the beach, watching sci-fi films, and playing virtual reality games.

I enjoy listening to house, dance, and EDM music, and I was previously a "bedroom DJ", reaching 48th position globally in the Mixcloud house music show chart.

I love driving, head to the gym from time to time, and I'm a contributor to a handful of open-source home automation projects.