Nineteen years in tech. A decade leading the people who lead the teams.

I’m Dan. I’ve been in tech for 19 years. I started as an Intranet developer writing VBScript at Vodafone, then moved through .NET MVC and Java into architecture, and about ten years ago stepped fully into IT management. Most recently I was Senior Director of Product Engineering at Luno, accountable for Engineering Directors, Engineering Managers, and engineers; a Delivery organisation of managers and Agile Delivery Leads; and for a period a 15-person Data team. Earlier, a London agency put me through a whole load of other companies. Plenty of hiring, plenty of shipping, and enough mistakes that I’ve stopped being surprised by them.

The through-line for me is pretty simple: most engineering problems are clarity problems. Teams rarely struggle because people aren’t trying. They struggle because nobody said what “done” looks like, who owns what, or what “good” means this quarter. Say those things out loud and a lot else gets easier. Same goes for psychological safety: it isn’t a soft add-on, it’s how people tell you the truth while there’s still time to act. And uptime is a product feature, whether or not it made the roadmap.

Clarity is kindness.

These days I take a small number of engagements with software and leadership teams: fractional CTO cover, advisory retainers, mentoring, and AI workflow design. For what I’m building day-to-day, see /now.