I'm currently available for consulting work in the following areas. Contact me at work at jw.pe if you're interested in working together.
🌅 Engineering team management, leadership, and coaching
Having led two successive technology teams over the last five years, engineering leadership is where I believe I can offer the most value, and where I get the most enjoyment from my work. I can help your organisation to build and retain an effective engineering team, improve your engineering processes, and coach or mentor developing engineering leaders. My approach focusses on:
- Leadership centred on empathy and consensus-building.
- Creating systems and processess to empower the team to drive its own development and growth.
- Building team structures that are appropriate for the level of maturity of the organisation, while laying the groundwork for future expansion.
- Establishing a working environment where team members understand their responsibilities and the value of their work, without unnecessary stress or pressure.
- Making sure that communication between key stakeholders and the engineering team is transparent and effective, with clear shared goals and metrics.
- Agreeing shared values, behaviours and standards to clarify expectations for all team members.
My experience is primarily working with engineering teams from early-stage start-ups to Series B scale-ups, with an engineering / product headcount between 1-20 people. I am happy to advise on processes for larger teams, but my experience will be less relevant.
✅ Preparing for investment
I've been through several investment rounds in previous roles, and have helped to prepare organisations to successfully secure these investments.
I've worked extensively on pitch decks, providing a trustworthy technical voice to investors. I would be happy to review investor materials and provide unbiased feedback, or work with you to craft the best story for the technology team in your organisation.
As deals move forward, I've prepared due diligence reports that have provided investors with confidence in the technical strength of the organisation. There's no substitute for having an empowered and well-run engineering team, but communicating these strengths effectively is very important. Given the current challenging investment environment for technology businesses, being adequately prepared for due diligence is crucial. I can help your organisation to get ready for the due diligence process by evaluating your technical infrastructure, team, and processes, then producing an assessment report with actionable recommendations. Alternatively, I can assist your team with an ongoing due diligence process by providing technical insight and hands-on support.
⚙️ Hands-on software engineering
I've spent the majority of the last 10 years working hands-on with code. My areas of expertise are back-end web development and infrastructure.
Rather than presenting an exhaustive list of technologies, two examples of web stacks I've worked with extensively are:
Stack 1:
- Front-end: React, Redux, TypeScript
- Back-end: NodeJS, Express, TypeScript
- Data stores: PostgreSQL, S3
- Infrastructure: AWS, CircleCI, Terraform, Docker
Stack 2:
- Front-end: Angular, JavaScript
- Back-end: Python, Django, Celery
- Data stores: PostgreSQL, S3, Redis, Kafka
- Infrastructure: AWS, CircleCI, Docker
Many of my skills are cross-functional and I'm always happy to learn new technologies, although this may depend on the duration of our work together.
I've worked to scale systems from pre-launch to heavy production usage, and will always try to choose an implementation to fit the level of maturity of your product, balancing the need for extensibility with avoiding overengineering.
I pride myself on communicating effectively with both technical and non-technical team members, as well as producing high-quality, robust and well-documented code.