Over 25 years of expertise shaping business & technology strategies, leading engineering and building technology platforms.
Proven across the full development lifecycle, from early-stage discovery to delivery and scaling, keeping technology and product development aligned to commercial goals. Adept at cutting through complex challenges, balancing trade-offs and making the decisions necessary to deliver successful outcomes.
Co-founded vzaar and developed the business from initial concept through to acquisition (by DaCast Inc). Raised mid seven figures and grew from zero staff and pre-revenue to profitability. Planned, led and executed the exit strategy, including board and shareholder management.
Technology Director at Smart Pension, managing technology transformation, large-scale migration and delivery. Strong focus on client value and revenue growth while improving system reliability and security and reducing platform costs.
Head of Future Technology at Barnett Waddingham (Howden), modernising processes and technology while developing new capabilities. Introducing fresh approaches and tooling, supporting growth, strengthening resilience and creating value in a traditionally conservative industry.
Experience
Barnett Waddingham / Howden
Barnett Waddingham provides independent pensions risk, insurance and investment consultancy, supported by in-house technology platforms across the business. Barnett Waddingham was acquired by Howden Insurance Health & Employee Benefits in April 2025.
Head of Future Technology May 2024 to Present
As Head of Future Technology, I support the strategic direction of technology and software development across the business. I work closely with senior partners, product teams and client stakeholders to shape our technology roadmap, strengthen operational resilience and drive innovation in a traditionally conservative industry, while ensuring technology investment is commercially viable and value-led.
I have brought in an outside perspective to help the firm make more balanced build, buy and outsource decisions, challenging the historic bias toward building in-house. I have evolved our platform engineering function and been integral to the plan to integrate our platforms into the Howden Group.
Significant Achievements
- Introduced SRE at Barnett Waddingham and evolved it into a broader Platform Engineering capability, transitioning from external contractors to a permanent internal team, retaining critical staff while modernising observability and incident management.
- Established strategic roadmaps across IT functions, improving delivery visibility, alignment & planning.
- Strengthened operational resilience through observability, incident management and change governance improvements; recruited new leadership for Disaster Recovery and ITSM.
- Key contributor to the Howden integration programme, covering branding, systems and the merger of two portal platforms.
- IT representative on the SIPP Management Committee: supported a key client resilience review and led efforts to embed observability and major incident improvements.
- Led an AI proof of concept for SARS requests, identifying a potential 3–5x revenue uplift opportunity.
- Enabled the Board Management Services team to modernise their risk offering from spreadsheets into an award-winning cloud platform (BW Core®️), opening new market opportunities.
- Modernised the SSAS team’s client interactions, replacing unsuitable legacy tooling with a customer-centric service platform that improved efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction.
- Advisor on AI direction and adoption, shaping realistic, value-led use cases aligned with the firm’s maturity and infrastructure.
Smart Pensions Limited
Smart Pension is a workplace software pension platform that leverages a modern technology stack to deliver a cost-competitive, multi-client, international PaaS offering. Smart streamlines enrolment and pension management for employers & advisers with a modern pension portal for employees.
Director: Technology, Infrastructure and Data May 2021 to Jan 2024
Reporting to the Chief Revenue and Platform Officer, the role included strategic planning, technical and product discovery, managing 15 engineering squads, setting objectives to align with business and growth goals.
- Presented the domain’s quarterly plan for approval by the Chief Revenue and Chief Delivery Officers.
- Managed all product and engineering activity in the domain to ensure delivery against the roadmap.
- Managed stakeholders across the business, including risk, legal, security and procurement teams.
- Worked with client directors to ensure Smart delivered to client and market needs.
- Presented to senior client stakeholders to secure agreement for complex technical changes.
Significant Achievements
- Migrated the platform from Heroku to Kubernetes on AWS across three client platforms: developed the migration plan, aligned clients on the roadmap and secured executive sign-off, improving resilience and security while reducing cost.
- Transitioned front-end client applications across all clients to a new technology framework (React) and design library, supporting over 1.5m members, employers and advisers.
- Reversed the decision to implement a CMS, pivoting to a TMS to reduce development time and meet multilingual client requirements; delivered Arabic portals in the UAE.
- Built a new system to fill the gaps left by the absence of a CMS, meeting market and client requirements at materially lower cost while creating a framework for future customisation.
- Evaluated data offering that had failed to gain traction. Architected and delivered a new analytics product framework, including a full data warehouse migration reducing development time. New capability materially improved client satisfaction unlocking further demand and revenue.
- Identified a product/market gap in our ability to launch new platforms; architected and delivered a new approach that made platform launches 12x faster.
- Resolved a major GDPR compliance issue by proposing and securing sign-off for a new solution under tight timeframes, unblocking contractual commitments.
Platform Architect Jul 2020 to May 2021
Provided programme and technical guidance across the platform, offering strategic and tactical input.
- Ran technical discovery with current and prospective clients.
- Evaluated platform architecture, security and technology decisions.
- Changed payroll solution for retirement platform, reduced vendor and build costs.
- Introduced TechOps approach within IT to increase engineering and business efficiency.
vzaar Limited / DaCast Limited
Founded and scaled a modern SaaS/PaaS video platform, taking the business from concept to profitability. Led the 0→1 phase: securing funding, assembling the team, and delivering the initial product. Pivoted the business from a B2C to a B2B model based on market direction, setting a clear path to growth. Designed the platform architecture for scale and resilience, enabling the hosting of millions of videos and delivery to billions of viewers, at a time when cloud infrastructure choices were limited and inventive solutions were needed to deliver performance, scalability and uptime.
Chief Executive Officer, vzaar Limited 2017 to 2019
- Directed all activities for a $2.5m P&L, 30 employees, and 3 countries including forecasting, budgeting, finances, legal, human resources, recruitment and facilities.
- Established operations in Beijing, China, enhancing the platform and product offering, resulting in increased revenue as well as playing a key part in acquisition by DaCast.
- Planned and delivered the search for exit opportunity, engaged broker, prepared all pitch & sale assets.
- Met with potential buyers, sold deal to board and shareholders, negotiated final outcome.
- Executed sale process and acquisition by DaCast, including financial, legal & technical due diligence.
- Led the operation integration of DaCast with vzaar and initiated future strategic and business plans.
Chief Technology & Product Officer, vzaar Limited 2007 to 2017
- Responsible for technical and architectural design, building the team and SaaS/PaaS platform.
- Execution of the entire development plan & product roadmap as well as the long-term strategic vision.
- Recruited, hired and managed all technology, design, product and operations staff.
- Managed day-to-day operations across the business and all vendor relationships.
- Maintained controlled low infrastructure costs whilst increasing usage by 10x multiples.
- Drove fundraising activities with the board and led investor pitches, raising over £5m.