I'm Simon — a senior software engineer, hands-on technical leader, and independent product builder. I connect architecture, delivery and the people who use what we build.
Technical Lead · Principal Engineer · CTO opportunities
Breakdown communications needed to handle changing demand and support customers through different messaging channels.
My responsibility
I owned the system's planning, architecture and implementation, provided technical leadership, and collaborated with the Patrol and Beyond team, including Sailesh and Nick.
Key decisions
The system uses WhatsApp with SMS fallback. Microservices handle variable incoming load, with thousands of messages processed per minute.
Outcome
The system now supports the majority of digital breakdown communications, processing thousands of messages per minute.
I personally owned the calculations used to understand patrol busyness across UK regions, then collaborated with Sailesh on adopting them into a map-based visualisation.
Business impact
The entire leadership team uses the visualisation to understand regional busyness and enact operational changes supporting the business.
Connecting data and decisions
The work translated underlying operational calculations into a format that made regional differences easier for leadership to understand.
RAC · Senior Software Engineer February 2023–present
Enabling the engineering team
Alongside engineering, I have stepped up to help organise and plan our work within the AI and In-Day Optimisation team.
AzureTerraformDevOpsRustPostgreSQLAPI security
Planning and coordination
Where product support has been limited, I have taken on planning and coordination responsibilities to help keep the team's work organised.
Infrastructure and tooling
I have contributed to Terraform infrastructure, DevOps workflows and internal CLI tooling supporting Rust and PostgreSQL.
Controlled external access
I contributed to routing inbound third-party requests through Azure API Management, using IP controls, token-based caller identification, and scope- and role-based permissions to govern external access.
Purplebricks · Software Engineer → Technical Lead June 2021–February 2023 · Technical Lead from September 2022
Leading a complex commerce replatform
Within the finance team, I led our product API replatform to BigCommerce, working alongside three senior engineers on implementation.
Team leadershipBigCommerceIntegrationPaymentsDevOps
The challenge
Purplebricks-specific business processes did not map neatly onto the platform, requiring substantial custom integration.
Leadership and delivery
As team lead, I led implementation alongside three senior engineers and helped translate the business requirements into the replatformed product APIs.
Payment integration
Our existing payment provider was not supported natively. We created a custom integration for the payment flow, with secure handling of card details as a central requirement.
Production ownership
I became a trusted point of escalation for production issues, most often involving DevOps. I regularly investigated and resolved problems affecting the platform.
In my early software engineering work, I joined a team managing property boundary polygons across the UK. I implemented a solution for unreliable data and built tools supporting manual intervention.
PAS Hub
I also worked with my team to build PAS Hub. The product is a retrofit collaboration and workflow platform, now described by Cotality as supporting PAS 2035 project workflows.
Quality engineering foundations
My experience at CoreLogic also included reusable UI and API testing frameworks, regression automation and load testing.
Independent project · Sole creator · architecture and implementation Personal project
Psytrade
I designed and built a research and Trading 212 Practice workspace, combining rules-based experiments with AI-assisted research and explicit operational controls.
I independently planned, architected and built the project, including its interface, research workflows and broker integrations.
Controlled experimentation
Matched rules-only and AI-assisted Practice experiments allow research comparisons. AI advice is bound to a defined protocol, while cash, ownership and execution controls remain explicit.
Reliability and auditability
The design includes reconciliation, bounded requests, cost controls, persistent audit records and recovery paths that avoid blindly repeating an uncertain order submission.
Current boundary
This is a research and Practice project. Real-money trading is not implemented, and the portfolio makes no claim of investment performance. This exhibit uses static descriptions and illustrative graphics, with no live broker connection.
Independent project · Sole creator · product, architecture and implementation Personal project
VolleyPsy
I play volleyball and found coaching software expensive. I independently designed and built VolleyPsy to offer useful team tools for £5 per team per month.
Product ownership.NETBlazorAzureTeam workflows
A problem I experienced
Playing volleyball gave me a direct connection to the need for accessible coaching software. I built the app myself, from the product idea through architecture and implementation.
Coaching features
VolleyPsy brings together play design, live scoring, player statistics, playbooks, training plans and coaching workflows.
Architecture
The project uses .NET, Blazor, Aspire, Azure Cosmos DB and team-scoped API access. Its documented design includes live-match collaboration, observability and offline recovery.
Accessible pricing
The price is £5 per team per month, keeping the product accessible to teams looking for practical coaching tools.
I play volleyball, build software around problems I encounter, and enjoy bringing technical ideas to life. My background includes games and digital media, postgraduate gamification research with Wesleyan, and teaching English in South Korea. This world brings those interests together.
Master's degree, Business Computing — Birmingham City University, 2017–2018
Bachelor of Games and Digital Media — University of Wolverhampton, 2012–2014
Let's build something.
Looking for someone who can connect technical direction with delivery? Let's talk.
Technical Lead · Principal Engineer · CTO opportunities Bromsgrove, United Kingdom