Who Am I?

Developer, writer, and problem solver passionate about building great software

Profile

I'm a platform and applications engineer with a background in production trading and data systems. I build and operate production-style services: web apps, automation pipelines, and real-time systems, with a strong bias toward reliability, observability, and safe deployments.

Professional Summary

  • Platform and applications engineer with deep experience across enterprise trading systems, data platforms, and cloud-native delivery.
  • Strong production support foundations (financial services, energy trading, transport) plus hands-on software engineering.
  • Current hands-on stacks across: Python/Django/FastAPI, TypeScript/Node, Rust, Java (JForex), Go, containers, and cloud infrastructure.

Experience Highlights

  • Self-employed / Director / Entrepreneur / Platform Engineer (Fixedpips Limited / Self-Employed): Jul 2015 - Present
  • Designed/delivered web-based business platforms with hybrid cloud architecture.
  • Full lifecycle: architecture, build, deployment, operations.
  • Prior roles (2006-2015) include Shell, BP, ING, Rabobank, UBS, Trayport, Transport for London (TfL) across trading/risk/app support and data platform operations.
  • Earlier contracting (1999-2006) across financial services/trading and business continuity operations.

Operational Mindset

I don't just build apps, I run them.

  • Long-lived machine with persistent data and always-on services.
  • Real operational practice: upgrades, backups/restore testing, monitoring, change control, runbooks.
  • Typical service mix: self-hosted git forge, internal web apps, SQL/time-series DB services, cache, messaging/queueing, documentation/runbooks.