From writing apps to running the platform underneath them

Notes from a Head of DevOps

I studied engineering and started out as a developer, writing Visual Basic .NET and later mobile apps with Xamarin. I liked building things people actually used. What I liked even more, it turned out, was the part nobody sees: how code gets from a laptop into production, and what keeps it running once it’s there.

So I drifted toward the plumbing. First scripts in bash and Python, then pipelines, then whole delivery platforms. DevOps was simply the sensible way to stop the same problems coming back every release.

Somewhere along the way the work became less about my own scripts and more about people. Hiring, mentoring, deciding what to build and what to buy, owning a budget, managing vendors without losing the plot. Most of what I know about technology, I now apply through other people.

Where I am now

These days I help large, long-lived server estates move into the cloud in a way that holds up. That means sensible foundations, security that trusts nothing by default, rules written as code instead of documents nobody reads, and a close eye on what it all costs. Questions of control and sovereignty come up in nearly every conversation.

I also use AI every day, for code and for thinking things through. It has changed how I work more than any tool since version control.

What I’ll write about

Honest notes on cloud migrations, governance people actually follow, and what leading engineering teams looks like in practice.

First posts coming soon.