Executive Profile
A record of building things
that deliver at scale.
From standing up greenfield engineering functions to steering global organisations through AI transformation — the through-line is always the same: clarity of direction, quality of team, and accountability for outcomes.
Experience
Leading the transformation of data onboarding and integration for a global regulatory platform operating across fragmented financial ecosystems. The core challenge: broker data varies enormously across US and UK markets in structure, format, and quality. The work has been to impose order on that complexity without imposing friction on the business — and to position data as a product capability, not an engineering cost centre.
- Designed and implemented a canonical data model to standardise highly variable broker data across US and UK markets, replacing a pattern of bespoke, one-off integrations
- Introduced AI-assisted field mapping to reduce manual ETL effort, accelerating client onboarding timelines and improving consistency across integrations
- Built internal tooling that converted data onboarding from ad-hoc engineering work into a scalable, repeatable process
- Scaled the data function to absorb growing volume and complexity of broker integrations without proportional team growth
- Repositioned data as a platform capability — standardised, reliable, and commercially usable — rather than an internal infrastructure cost
Joined as a member of the executive team with a mandate to establish market fit for a technically ambitious deep-tech product. Delivered a restructuring plan within 90 days, brought the flagship platform to sellable state in nine months, and led a strategic pivot into generative AI — launching a brand-new product in twelve weeks that went on to win the Smart City Expo World Congress award for Data & AI (2024).
- Took flagship product from concept to enterprise-ready in 9 months, generating market traction and securing several enterprise sales opportunities each worth over £1M
- Led strategic pivot into generative AI; delivered a production RAG/LLM system in 12 weeks — winning the Smart City Expo World Congress award for Data & AI in 2024
- Drove team engagement score from 55 to 87 by establishing clear goals, agile roadmaps, and a culture of ownership
- Implemented a new information security management system and achieved ISO 27001:2022 certification, unlocking enterprise procurement conversations
- Introduced structured corporate planning processes within the executive team; provided board and investor-level advisory throughout
Established Flexera's Belfast engineering operation from the ground up following the acquisition of BDNA, growing it to 40 people by 2018. Scope then expanded to full engineering leadership across Flexera's High Quality Asset Data division — 130+ engineers, 4 product lines, 7 global locations — contributing approximately 30% of company revenue and powering over 80% of its top revenue-generating products.
- Founded and scaled the Belfast engineering hub to 40 people in 18 months, achieving an industry-leading 60/40 gender balance through deliberate hiring practice
- Brought Flexera IT Visibility to market — a greenfield SaaS analytics product built on microservices and event-driven architecture
- Pioneered an AI-based modernisation programme that automated 60% of previously manual content curation tasks within Flexera's Technopedia division
- Led 130+ engineers across 7 locations post-acquisition, unifying delivery practices and accelerating cross-portfolio time-to-market
- Devised and ran FESS — a 4-day internal engineering conference in Chicago for 120 engineers — to build cross-site culture and knowledge exchange
- Invited onto Flexera's Leadership Circle; led key senior leadership initiatives across the organisation
Earlier career
Established and led a new global team responsible for developing data pipelines into Citi's Core Compliance data lake, serving fraud surveillance portfolios across financial regulators.
Senior data warehouse and business intelligence engineer delivering analytic solutions for Oracle's ATG Commerce and Cloud Commerce SaaS products.
Led the Belfast MIS team and served as Application Owner of Global Data Mining — a data warehouse processing $1Bn+ in daily FX transactions across Citi's global branch network, with teams in Belfast, London, and Bangalore.
Recognition & speaking
Won as part of IOTICS for the production RAG/LLM platform delivered in 12 weeks — judged against global entries in applied AI.
IRM Data Governance, AI Governance & MDM Conference Europe (2025) · InnovateUK BridgeAI (2024) · NI Developer's Conference (2017, 2020, 2022) · DigitalDNA (2019)
The Queen's University of Belfast, 2001–2006. Winner of the InvestNI '25k Award' Undergraduate Prize.
Leadership approach
How I operate
The most important thing a technology leader can do is create the conditions for good decision-making at every level of the organisation. That means investing in clarity — clear strategy, clear priorities, clear ownership — and then building the people, process, and culture to execute with genuine autonomy.
I set high standards, hold accountability seriously, and invest in the professional development of the people I work with. I operate equally in the boardroom and in a design review — and I maintain hands-on technical depth deliberately, so that I can engage with engineers as a credible peer rather than a layer of management above them.
Competencies
| Strategic | Organisational design, OKR implementation, roadmap development, change management, board and investor advisory |
| Delivery | Greenfield platform builds, concept-to-market, secure development lifecycle, programme governance |
| Data & AI | Canonical data modelling, AI-assisted integration, RAG/LLM systems, agentic architectures, data platform design |
| People | Mentorship, career pathway design, performance accountability, cross-organisational collaboration, inclusive hiring |
| Security | ISO 27001:2022 certification, Cyber Essentials, vulnerability management, enterprise procurement readiness |
Availability
Let's talk.
Open to CTO, VP Engineering, Chief Data Officer, and Fractional CTO engagements, as well as public speaking and mentoring. Based in Craigavon, Northern Ireland — happy to travel.