Engineering Leader · Agile Coach · Software Craftsmanship
Remote (UK/Ireland)
Overview
Engineering leader with 10+ years of experience building and scaling high-performing teams across mobile, web, data, and platform systems. Known for driving engineering excellence, pragmatic Agile adoption, and sustainable delivery. Passionate about clean code, continuous improvement, and growing future leaders.
Recent Accomplishments
- Built Oak National Academy’s first Incident Management process, Engineering Career Ladder, and Sustainable Development agreement
- Managing Oak’s Engineering department capacity, effectiveness and budget
- Scaled multiple teams by hiring and mentoring senior and lead engineers
- Scaling short-term capacity by hiring and managing multiple contractor roles
- Increased automated test coverage from ~2% to 35%+ across platforms while embedding TDD practices
- Delivered 3 large-scale legacy migrations covering 2M+ user records
- Released a flagship product with a 4.8/5 rating and zero critical post-launch defects
- Designed and led org-wide Agile and continuous improvement training
Core Competencies
- Engineering Leadership & Org Design
- Agile Coaching (Kanban, Scrum, SAFe, Hoshin)
- Career Development & Mentoring
- Delivery, Reliability & Incident Management
- Test-Driven Development & Quality Culture
- Cloud-native Architecture & CI/CD
Professional Experience
Oak National Academy — Software Engineering Manager
Feb 2023 – Present · Remote
Strategic leadership role reporting to Head of Engineering. First SEM hire, responsible for scaling Agile practices, improving engineering effectiveness, and supporting hiring and budgeting decisions.
- Built Oak’s first Incident Management process and Engineering Career Ladder
- Built Oak’s Engineering onboarding, probation and offboarding process
- Established a Sustainable Development agreement to support healthy delivery
- Scaled teams and built the first dedicated Data and Platform team
- Delivered engineering health metrics and led a culture transformation
- Championed quality, feedback, and continuous learning across engineering
- Co-managing the departments 6-figure budget.
Tech: GCP, Postgres, GraphQL, Vercel, NextJS, React, TypeScript
Flipdish — Software Engineering Manager II
Feb 2021 – Nov 2022 · Remote
Managed mobile and web end-user experience teams across Android, iOS, Web, Backend, and QA. Accountable for interfaces responsible for 93% of user fee revenue.
- Led redesign of the Web Ordering application
- Rolled out a Dynamic Address API across platforms
- Introduced D&I workshops and spoke at the Flipdish Annual Conference
- Co-created the engineering career ladder and mentored 3 internal promotions
- Improved release cadence via mobile automation and CI improvements
Tech: React, NextJS, Java, Kotlin, Swift, React Native, WebDriverIO
Mastercard — Director of Engineering
Jan 2020 – Feb 2021 · Dublin
Led Consumer Lifecycle & Card Services teams delivering secure, PCI-compliant APIs.
- Delivered 3 major legacy migrations (2M+ user records)
- Embedded a test-first culture across teams
- Improved CI/CD pipelines and release reliability
- Implemented monitoring and instrumentation across internal tools
Tech: Java, Spring Boot, MongoDB, AES Encryption
Verizon Connect — Software Development Manager
Jul 2018 – Jan 2020 · Dublin
Managed mobile and API teams for the Field Service Dispatch product.
- Scaled the team from 6 to 22 engineers across 3 squads in 5 months
- Built highly autonomous teams with >90% automated test coverage
- Delivered product on time with a 4.8/5 rating and zero critical incidents
- Enabled teams to run the full release cycle independently
Tech: Java, Kotlin, Swift, AWS
Earlier Experience
- Android Squad Lead — Verizon Connect (2017–2018)
- Android Technical Lead — Daft Media Ltd. (2014–2017)
- Senior Android Developer — AOL Global Ltd. (2011–2014)
- Android Developer — JTribe Ltd. (2010–2011)
- Software Developer — Anam Technologies Ltd. (2005–2010)
Education & Certifications
- M.Sc. Computer Science (Networks & Distributed Systems) — Trinity College Dublin
- B.A. Mod. Information & Communications Technology — Trinity College Dublin
- ICAgile: Agile Foundations, Team Facilitation, Agile Coaching
- Mindstream: Life Coach Certification
- Diploma in New Product Development Project Management — Fitzwilliam Institute
Writing & Media
- Rules for Software Development — Author (Amazon, 2024)
- The Rules of Software Development podcast - Host