Tags show how I was involved. Led: I owned the outcome. Co-led: I owned it jointly. Contributed: I was a substantial part of a shared result. Supported: I helped others deliver.
- Six Degrees2022-05 to present
Head of Technical Delivery
Case studies: Proactive problem management across a managed customer base, Ransomware recovery for a national distribution business
I lead a function created in 2022 when managed services was split in two, covering second and third line Cloud, Data, Connectivity, Unified Comms and Workplace support. The team spans onshore and offshore locations, with one layer of team leads.
- Led Converged separate technical teams into one blended operating model while holding live SLAs
- Led Designed and embedded a proactive problem management framework, applied across a large managed customer base, with an engineer kept in the loop where automation cannot decide
- Co-led Worked with Professional Services leadership to formalise how customer requests move between support and projects, writing the principles and building an AI-assisted triage workflow with decisions kept with people
- Led Proof of concept, piloted, not rolled out Designed and built a knowledge-base pipeline using Python and AI-assisted coding against Cosmos DB and Azure AI Search
- Led Out-of-hours major incident manager and senior escalation point, and technical lead for zero-day assessments on the vulnerability management committee
- Contributed Championed proactive automation that contributed to a steady run of improvements and a reduction in major outages
- Led Mentored engineers across complex hybrid platforms and built a culture of psychological safety, so people feel able to learn, ask and try things without fear
- Contributed Contributed to bid responses and service design, aligning technical architecture proposals with commercial strategy
- Led Recognised with Above and Beyond awards and company all-hands mentions for leadership in vulnerability management and incident response
- Contributed Helping drive a sustained improvement in customer satisfaction scores
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- Six Degrees2021-05 to 2022-05
Head of Managed Services
I brought legacy technical teams together into one proactive managed services operating model, moving towards ITIL-aligned governance and modern monitoring and cross-skilling engineers for hybrid infrastructure.
- Co-led Provided technical leadership through the consolidation of multiple monitoring tools onto LogicMonitor, driving migration completion and the retirement of legacy platforms
- Led Kept hands-on accountability for tier-three major incident escalations through a team realignment to protect live SLAs
- Contributed Provided technical evidence supporting the company's Microsoft Azure Expert MSP status (2021)
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- Six Degrees2020-01 to 2021-05
Centre of Excellence Manager, Secure and Public Sector
I ran technical escalations and support for secure public sector cloud environments under UK OFFICIAL and NCSC guidance, including secure VDI on VMware Horizon, VMware vCloud and PSN networks, bridging platform build and live service.
- Led Built 24x7 hypercare monitoring for critical national public sector platforms through peak periods
- Led Owned technical remediation for penetration testing, ITHC, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 for central government and secure clients
- Led Hardened Linux and Solaris base images against CIS benchmarks, and designed secure bridging and proxy architecture later signed off through external accreditation
- Co-led Rebuilt load-balancer configuration and helped restore service during a prolonged hosting outage on end-of-life infrastructure
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- Carrenza2017-02 to 2020-01
Service Desk Manager
I ran the consolidated service desk through the acquisition and its integration into Six Degrees, as the main technical escalation point across networking, servers and VMware. That included peak-load support for major ecommerce sites and televised charity events.
- Led Migrated the service desk onto ServiceNow during the integration, carrying across customer contacts, SLAs and the knowledge base
- Led Sustained SLA performance through the acquisition and integration
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- Carrenza2016-03 to 2017-02
Service Desk Team Lead
I was a technical escalation point across customer estates and mentored junior engineers, helping turn the support function into a structured ITIL operation during rapid client onboarding.
- Contributed Part of the technical rollout and customer planning for Jira Service Management, which let the team measure SLAs for the first time
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- Carrenza2013-09 to 2016-03
Systems Engineer
I joined as a graduate systems engineer, working hands-on across customer VMware, Linux and Windows estates.
- Led Managed configuration and orchestration with Chef and Ansible across customer estates
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- University of East Anglia2009 – 2013
Bachelor of Science (BSc), Computer Science
I studied Computer Science before joining Carrenza as a graduate systems engineer in 2013.
Projects
Case study, Personal project
Pantheon: an open-source AI governance kit
Led In active development My own open-source project, published under the MIT licence
Case study, Personal project
This site: a CV that checks its own claims
Led Live A personal project built out of curiosity, designed and maintained by me with AI-assisted coding
Insights and thoughts
Insights and thoughts
AI policy
A policy written in 2023 for basic chatbots has very little to say about an agent that can read a ticket and query a monitoring API. So it says no.
Insights and thoughts
Ticket data
Ticket data is a good record of the work that fits neatly into a ticket. A lot of what keeps a service running doesn't.
Insights and thoughts
The wrong targets
A team can hit every target it's given and still be measuring the wrong things. Goodhart's Law applies to service desks too.
Insights and thoughts
Automation and headcount
Pitch automation as a way to need fewer engineers and you lose the people who know where the real problems are.
Insights and thoughts
Patching when AI finds the bugs first
Bug discovery has been industrialised. A monthly patch cycle behind a slow approval queue was built for a slower world.
Insights and thoughts
Building with what you already have
You probably don't need a new platform to start using AI in service governance. You need the data you already have and someone willing to wire it together.
Insights and thoughts
Breadth
I don't have a wall of vendor certifications. I have a long career following problems from the routing table to the contract to the boardroom.
Insights and thoughts
Recruitment
A hiring freeze that lasts one quarter can leave an operational team short for most of a year. Budget for the recovery, not just the saving.
Insights and thoughts
When the plumbing makes the Ten O'Clock News
After every major outage the instinct is to buy more redundancy. For most mid-market businesses, the commercial case has to be made before the technical one.
Insights and thoughts
What railways got right about change control
A checkbox in a change ticket only proves that someone intended to be careful. An interlock is what stops the outage.
Insights and thoughts
Rewarding the quiet
In managed services, a flat ticket graph can leave a finance director wondering what they're paying for. Service reviews should make prevention visible.
Insights and thoughts
Where managed services is heading
Managed services is splitting in two: low-margin generalists selling reactive tickets, and specialist partners selling operational resilience.