Builder, Founder, Engineer

Part of the leadership team integrating Space 48, Brave the Skies, Bring Digital, and This is Digital into Glass Atlas. Operated as CIO across the integration: consolidated Google Workspace, GitHub, and 1Password, defined the Data Security Policy, and led the company to Cyber Essentials certification.

The scale of this was the interesting part. Even something that sounds simple, like giving everyone a Glass Atlas email address, meant understanding how four agencies were using Google Workspace, Microsoft, 1Password, Bitbucket, GitHub, and their own internal communication habits. The technical work mattered, but so did the empathy. We had to avoid it feeling like one parent agency muscling in, so a lot of the work was listening, asking the right questions, managing migrations carefully, and giving people guidance that matched their actual context. It was technical consolidation, but it was also culture, trust, and shared operating patterns.

• Glass Atlas

• React
• Laravel
• Postgres
• Redis
• Heroku

Shipped an all-in-one import/export app for BigCommerce handling bulk data management, migrations, scheduling, and spreadsheet workflows. Architected the processing pipeline with discrete steps and abstraction layers so complex multi-stage transformations could progress reliably.

• Introducing Shift
• Hypa Shift

• Next.js
• Capacitor
• Cloudflare Workers
• Durable Objects
• WebRTC
• WebSockets
• TypeScript

Designed and built a voice calling app for kids as a side project, end-to-end. Next.js frontend wrapped with Capacitor for native app distribution, Cloudflare Workers backend with Durable Objects managing call state, WebSockets powering real-time call notifications and session management. Built AI-assisted using Amp Code.

This came from a conversation about young children, phones, and the awkward gap where they want to speak to friends from school but still need something safer than a normal device. We both loved the independence of Yoto cards, so the question became: what if voice calling worked like that? James started exploring the hardware side, and I used it as a chance to build the largest thing I had made on the Cloudflare stack, with a proper real-time backend and a Next.js/Capacitor prototype on top.

• React
• Laravel
• Postgres
• Redis
• Heroku
• BigCommerce APIs

Spun out the BigCommerce apps work into Hypa, a standalone product identity with a suite of apps serving hundreds of customers. I was sole developer for the first two years, building the React frontends, Laravel backends, Postgres databases, and Heroku infrastructure before moving into product lead and senior engineering responsibilities.

This came from an itch for productisation as much as anything. BigCommerce was growing, the app marketplace already had strong best-of-breed players, and I could see room for platform experts to build a suite of practical apps for store owners who wanted to improve operations or the storefront experience without turning every change into a custom project.

• Introducing Hypa
• Hypa

• React
• Laravel
• Postgres

Designed and built a BigCommerce app for managing metafields through a UI rather than the API alone. Became a foundational product in the Hypa portfolio and retained market position as competition entered.

This one started over a Christmas break. I had been watching the BigCommerce forums and Slack, and people kept talking about metafields being useful but awkward because they were only available through the API. There had been an app, but it had disappeared and no one could get hold of the developer. That felt like latent demand sitting in plain sight. The first version could be very simple: a working UI over the API. Get that out, see whether people actually installed it, then decide how far to take it.

Moved into an innovation role as the agency doubled in size through a Foresight Private Equity partnership. Identified the BigCommerce apps opportunity, pitched it internally, and created the space to pursue product work inside an agency environment. This initiative became the origin of Hypa.

Led the first stage of the BigCommerce apps initiative, taking it from internal pitch to working products and an emerging roadmap. Built Automated Categories, Category Merchandiser, and the first version of Metafields Manager from scratch as sole developer.

• Space Bar podcast

Led engineering for a team of around 50 developers. Introduced lean delivery principles to reduce time-to-visible-work, using early platform prototypes to make discovery more concrete. Proposed and led the company's first playbook initiative, replacing tribal knowledge with structured documentation, defined processes, and discovery plays for drawing out project requirements, priorities, and risks with clients.

I've never been very comfortable with important things living only in people's heads. This work was about going back to basics: what helps work flow through the system, what gives teams enough order to move well, and where process needs to stay pragmatic instead of becoming something we follow just because it has always been there.

Led discovery and business analysis for Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate's ecommerce platform. Designed the 'Available To Purchase' service, which manages product batches, expiry dates, stock calculations, shipping methods, and delivery dates at checkout. Produced the requirements and technical specification for the service. It is still in operation 8+ years later, now also powering a corporate gifting application.

This was one of those projects where the complexity was genuinely fun. Fresh products, batches, expiry dates, ERP data, packaging lead times, delivery dates, bank holidays, and a minimum freshness window all had to collapse down into something simple for the customer: a calendar at checkout. I like that kind of systems problem. If the work is done well, the customer never sees most of it.

Post-acquisition role bridging product and engineering with public-facing ecommerce strategy. Led client discovery and technical scoping, published a Progressive Web Apps guide, and represented the company at Magento Imagine and community events. Delivered conference talks, webinars, and technical writing across the Magento ecosystem.

• Introducing Ecommerce Evangelist Tom Robertshaw
• PWA guide

Meanbee and Hivemind were acquired by Space 48. Several Meanbee team members grew into leadership roles across the combined business. I took on ecommerce evangelist responsibilities, led business analysis and technical discovery for key clients, and became a senior voice in the engineering team.

• Java
• Perl
• AWS
• Redshift
• Laravel
• Postgres

Built a platform that scanned millions of websites monthly to detect and report on technology adoption. Rebuilt the early Perl scripts into Java scanning infrastructure across AWS, with results stored in Redshift and queried through a Laravel/Postgres frontend. Also shipped an API and Chrome extension for real-time technology detection. Paying customers included Rackspace, Magento, and PayPal.

This started as a "wouldn't it be cool if?" project. I was building an agency on Magento, had experience crawling the web from Netcraft, and wanted to know how many Magento sites were out there. I used the Alexa top million, wrote my own technology signatures, and ran it once out of curiosity. Then the Magento community responded well, so I kept going each month and widened it into a broader view of the ecommerce market.

• Projects archive

• PHP
• Magento
• MySQL

Co-founded Meanbee while studying Computer Science at Bath, after an early Magento build showed there was a real opportunity in ecommerce implementation. Built client sites and extensions around university, placements, and summer breaks, then rented an office before final year to give it a proper go. We went full-time after graduation and grew it into a specialist Magento agency with clients across the UK and US, reaching 15 people at peak.

Meanbee started through friendship and timing as much as a grand plan. Nick and Andy were first on the scene when Magento launched, and one of the first builds was for a store selling clothes for dogs. During the Netcraft year, Nick and I would use the flexi-hours to start early, finish mid-afternoon, then go home and do another two or three hours of Meanbee in the evening. By the time we rented that office before final year, it felt less like a side project and more like something we wanted to graduate into.

• Perl

Inspired by my internship at Netcraft, wrote Perl scripts to scan the top one million websites and map ecommerce technology adoption. The results became a widely cited reference in the Magento ecosystem and were referenced by Magento/eBay at Imagine 2013. This project led directly to Hivemind and reflected the same long-running interest in web-scale analysis that later led me to contribute the Web Almanac ecommerce chapter.

This started in my final year of university, when Meanbee was already running on the side and I still had Netcraft in my head. I wanted to know how many of the Alexa top million sites were using Magento, so I wrote a Perl crawler and some technology signatures to look for the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript fingerprints Magento left behind. I blogged the first number, people found it interesting, and then the obvious next question was how Magento compared with other platforms. So I kept running it month by month. Roy Rubin, Magento's CEO at the time, even commented on some early posts, and the reports started being shared around the ecosystem. One day it also led to me being on stage at a Magento event in London, wearing a wig and pretending to be Dido. That backstory can wait.