Why I Volunteer as a Blood Biker
What riding through the night for the NHS taught me about reliability, service, and the systems that matter most.
Director of Engineering · Zopa Bank
Building teams
that deliver at
pace
Engineering executive with 25+ years across regulated fintech, e-commerce, retail, and media. I empower engineering teams to succeed through servant leadership, coaching, and a relentless focus on delivery.
01
About
With over 25 years in the technology industry, I've built and led high-performing teams across a wide range of sectors. Having worked in multiple countries, I bring direct experience of the benefits of diverse teams and how they can effectively tackle any business challenge.
My approach centres on servant leadership, coaching, and mentoring. I foster environments that empower technology teams to deliver at a rapid pace while balancing technical quality with the need to ship features and drive growth for stakeholders and customers.
At Zopa Bank, I lead the Agent & Customer Excellence tribe — the engineering function behind the contact centre, agent tooling, and AI-led customer servicing for Collections, Customer Operations, and digital self-service. In the last year my team delivered an AI chatbot that lifted digital self-resolution from 17% to 65%, materially reducing contact volumes to agents and lowering cost-to-serve. It's the intersection of complex technology, strict regulation, and real human impact, and it's some of the most interesting engineering I've done.
Previously, I spent over four years at Moonpig where I relocated to Manchester to build their engineering hub from scratch, oversaw a complete technology re-platforming, supported a £368m-revenue IPO, and led the migration of Greetz onto the new platform.
🏍 Volunteer Blood Biker — Greater Manchester Blood Bikes
25+
Years in Technology
6
Sectors Covered
IPO
Experience
2x
Re-platformings Led
02
Latest Writing
Why Re-platforming Is a Leadership Problem, Not a Technical One
After leading two major re-platforming initiatives, I've learned that the hardest challenges aren't in the code. They're in the conversations.
TIL: Amazon Connect CTR Segments Can Double-Count
A subtle gotcha with Contact Trace Records that caused our volume metrics to diverge from reality.
03
Expertise
Customer Operations Engineering
Building the technology that powers how a bank serves its customers, from contact centre platforms and agent tooling to AI-led self-service across Collections and Customer Operations.
AI in Regulated Environments
Designing and deploying AI-led customer servicing within FCA constraints. Balancing automation with compliance and explainability, and using it to reduce cost-to-serve at scale.
Platform & Cloud Strategy
Defining and selling in long-term platform direction. Led two major re-platformings at Moonpig Group and Sainsbury's, and currently driving Zopa's Agent Platform strategy and AWS migration of critical workloads.
Scaling Engineering Teams
Building and growing engineering organisations across multiple cities and countries. Org design, hiring at pace without dropping the bar, and leadership development for both IC and management tracks.
Turnaround & Transformation
Restructuring underperforming engineering organisations: resetting culture, replacing leadership layers, and rebuilding stakeholder trust. Restoring delivery confidence in tribes and functions that have lost it.
E-commerce & Personalisation
Large-scale retail platforms at Sainsbury's (£1.3bn+ revenue), data-driven personalisation at Moonpig and Greetz, and SaaS e-commerce product development.
04
Experience
OCT 2023 — PRESENT
Director of Engineering
Zopa Bank · London
Lead the Agent & Customer Excellence tribe within Zopa's 200+ engineering function, owning the technology behind the contact centre, agent tooling, and AI-led customer servicing for Collections, Customer Operations, and digital self-service. Grew the tribe from 2 to 5 teams as the business invested in our impact. Delivered an AI chatbot from kick-off to production in three weeks that lifted digital self-resolution from 17% to 65% within a year, materially reducing contact volumes and cost-to-serve. Restructured the tribe and reset culture from risk-averse to delivery-focused, restoring consistent OKR performance and rebuilding stakeholder trust.
MAY 2023 — SEP 2023
VP of Engineering
Passion.io · Remote
Led technical strategy and engineering recruitment for a fully remote company. Revised the infrastructure roadmap to deliver CI/CD capabilities, aligned teams around cross-functional working with data-driven planning, and built a technology strategy aligned with the board and executive leadership.
OCT 2018 — MAY 2023
Head of Engineering → Director of Engineering
Moonpig & Greetz · London, Manchester & Amsterdam
Relocated to Manchester to build the engineering hub from scratch, growing the team from 0 to 20 engineers in six months. Delivered a unified technology platform across Moonpig Group, supported the successful £368m-revenue IPO in February 2021, and transformed engineering capability at Greetz during COVID. Developed and rolled out a growth and progression framework for both IC and management tracks. Built a platform enablement capability including SREs that improved developer experience across the entire engineering organisation.
AUG 2017 — SEP 2018
Head of Engineering
Nested · London
Hired to bring engineering leadership to a growing proptech startup. Coached a team of functional specialists into T-shaped roles, breaking down knowledge silos and improving team output. Introduced agile practices, launched an internal business process tool to scale the product proposition, supported a successful Series C funding round, and migrated the platform to Google Cloud.
MAR 2015 — AUG 2017
Engineering Manager → Senior Engineering Manager (equivalent to Head of Engineering)
Sainsbury's · London
Accountable for a £1.3bn revenue e-commerce platform, leading 100+ engineers across Groceries Online, Tu Clothing, Christmas Food, and Sainsbury's Entertainment within a 200+ engineer organisation. Drove the shift from waterfall to agile across the wider organisation, brought Tu Clothing in-house onto AWS with zero-downtime deployments, and launched native mobile apps for Groceries and Tu Clothing generating over £3m in additional sales.
MAY 2014 — MAR 2015
CTO
Motilo · London
Led technology strategy, team management, and infrastructure for a fashion-tech startup. Rebuilt AWS infrastructure for environment consistency, improved user retention by 20%, and rolled out performance monitoring that drove significant platform improvements.
MAR 2009 — MAY 2014
Senior Developer → Team Lead → Development Manager
IPC Media (Time Inc) · London
Progressive career spanning over five years, from hands-on development through to managing multiple teams. Drove development process improvements, prototyped emerging technologies, and re-architected major e-commerce offerings for one of the UK's largest media publishers.
FEB 2004 — MAR 2009
Technical Team Lead
Actinic Software · Surrey
Led development of the SaaS e-commerce solution "Actinic Express" through a two-year build and three-year production cycle. Built subscription billing systems, multi-server deployment platforms, and lead-tracking tools.
DEC 2002 — FEB 2004
Support Manager → Head of IT → Technical Manager
Telnetspain (Spain) · Sniff Media (Spain) · Freecomforall (Netherlands)
International roles across Spain and the Netherlands spanning customer support systems, IT infrastructure, VoIP platform development, and network deployment. The experience of working across cultures and languages fundamentally shaped how I think about building diverse teams.
SEP 1996 — SEP 2002
Multiple Roles
Autologic Data Systems · Brockenhurst
First technology role, progressing through multiple positions over six years. Built data management systems, managed Y2K infrastructure upgrades, and worked alongside Siemens and the DVLA to design and deploy automotive MOT data to 25,000 stations across the UK. Part of the team that achieved ISO 9000 compliance.
05
Speaking & Writing
Enterprise Agility Conference
Navigating the Re-platforming Journey
Overcoming legacy code challenges for scale-ups, drawing on lessons from leading two major re-platforming initiatives.
Tact Talks Podcast
Leadership, Remote Culture & Decision Fatigue
Discussing the challenges of remote working culture, joining new teams as a leader, and the importance of time blocking.
Oliver Bernard CTO Roundtable
Technology Leadership Discussion
Leading roundtable discussions on engineering leadership and technology strategy with senior technology leaders.
Publication
PHP 5 and MySQL E-commerce: From Novice to Professional
Published technical book on building e-commerce applications with PHP and MySQL.
PHP Architect Magazine
Open != Free
Article discussing open source ethics and sustainable development practices.
Open Source
osCommerce Development Manager
Development Manager for osCommerce (formerly The Exchange Project), a widely-used open source e-commerce platform released under the GPL/BSD licence.
06
Education & Skills
Education
BSc (Hons) Computing & IT and Business
The Open University
2011 — 2018
Certificate in Business Studies
The Open University
2011 — 2013
Certificate in Computing & IT
The Open University
2011
Core Skills
Architecture
Microservices · Cloud Infrastructure · AI Platforms
Methodology
Agile Methodologies · TDD · Pair Programming
Leadership
Servant Leadership · Coaching · Team Scaling
Exploring
Elixir · Phoenix · Go · Erlang
07
Contact
Let's connect
Whether you're looking to discuss engineering leadership, AI platform strategy, re-platforming challenges, or potential collaboration, I'd welcome the conversation.