About

I've been writing PHP since version 4, when instead of frameworks we had folder structure. We didn't have tests beyond clicking on things and tail on the logs. Version control via Mercurial was rampant, and deploying involved either SFTP or an rsync job scheduled via cron. This was a time of experimentation, quick learning and hacking around...those fundamentals still shape how I work, though with less hopeful hacking and more careful planning.

Most of my career has been one product, a SaaS for managing mentoring partnerships. This platform grew out of the frustrations experienced by those running the schemes: managing data via separate spreadsheets was a timesink and prone to error. I joined a team handling a 2-client, student-built, internal tool then spent 5 years as lead developer refactoring, augmenting, porting, standardising to help it grow to 20+ clients. In 2018 my responsibility morphed from lead developer to CTO, which was synced with the company starting to go through the spinout process. We released a new version completely rewritten in Laravel, taking time to ensure the platform remained stable. Over the time working on SUMAC I experienced the seed, growth, and expansion phases of a small company. I hired a small team, containerised everything that was sensible to containerise, got test coverage above 85% and - near the end - guided the company through acquisition. 11 years, start to finish.

Since then I've worked with various companies. Recently, I rebuilt a healthcare AI platform (MedAscend) from an MVP to a platform that landed the first paying customer and £150k in seed funding. I also built a voice-driven Gaelic tutor on Cloudflare Workers because I wanted to practise spoken Gaelic and there's nobody to (badly) speak to that I want to keep as a friend. I've also shipped an open source Laravel package, and I'm working on another. Not content with having multiple packages to maintain, I'm working on a Statamic plugin I plan to bring to market.

All the above to set the scene: I want to find something I can invest in; a product with a mission worth caring about. Working in a small team, broad ownership, autonomy: I thrive with these. If that sounds like what you're building and how you're working, I'd like to hear about it.

I live in Dundee with my wife and two young kids. I roast my own coffee (probably too much of it), climb badly at the local bouldering wall, and own a mountain bike that deserves more use than it gets.