Finding the real problem
Drop me into a fog with no brief. I listen, diagnose honestly, and surface the problem that actually matters, then frame it so an organisation can act.
01 / The road so far
From breaking systems to shaping how a department ships.
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2015–2017
Security roots
I started by breaking things. Threat and vulnerability analysis and penetration testing taught me to find the weakness no one had spotted, and to write it up so other people would act on it.
What that looked like
- SensePost: threat and vulnerability analysis. Compiled advisories on vulnerabilities, campaigns, and APT threat groups for top-level decision-makers.
- MWR InfoSecurity: an internship running vulnerability simulations and evidence-based reporting, then a campus Ambassador hosting security workshops.
- Mobius Consulting: client work running external and internal penetration tests for large enterprises.
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2017
The pivot
Probably the story most worth asking me about. I switched from an Accounting degree to Computer Science, put myself through it while working to pay my way, and joined Zappi as a security intern. A complicated but necessary twist that shaped the foundation of my career.
The academic side
- BSc Computer Science & Information Systems, Rhodes University (my undergraduate degree).
- BSc (Hons) Computer Science, including a Master's module in Malware Analysis and a project in hardware architecture and ALU simulation.
- Worked throughout to fund my studies, juggling responsibilities the whole way.
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2018–2021
Finding my lane
Cyber security, then high-volume-traffic Ruby on Rails, then the pull toward observability and platform engineering. I was finding the work I'd keep coming back to: making big systems legible and teams faster.
The progression
- Started part-time blue-teaming while finishing my Honours, then a cloud internship (AWS, Lambda, containers, log analysis).
- Moved into Ruby on Rails product engineering at high traffic and scale, then into observability, tooling, and optimisation.
- Tools that stuck: distributed tracing, MySQL at scale, Docker, AWS.
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2022
Observability and platform engineering
I rolled out distributed tracing in its early days, before the OpenTelemetry wave, building internal JavaScript libraries and context propagators to wire up full-stack, multi-language tracing across the org.
Going deeper
- The tracing journey: internal libraries, to Honeycomb, then vendor-agnostic with OpenTelemetry and Grafana Tempo, experimenting across many vendors along the way.
- Built our user-behaviour stack (Mixpanel, FullStory, then Datadog RUM and Session Recording) to give product teams powerful, reliable signal.
- Connected Business Intelligence across 30+ micro-services and monoliths, at scale, for deeper organisational insight.
- Plenty of deep performance-optimisation work in and around it all.
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2022–2024
Technical lead, and getting product-minded
Led the team behind the money in Purchase Operations and Store Core: pricing, quoting, checkout, payments, revenue recognition. It's also where I fell for product, the user, and the loop of build, measure, learn.
The remit, and the shift
- Technical lead across pricing models, quoting, checkout, payments, and revenue recognition; shipped a new SaaS pricing strategy.
- In Store Core, made critical revenue-generating pipelines observable, prioritised, and reliable, solving long-running, deep routing issues in legacy systems.
- Got deliberately product-minded: studied the craft, listened to users, and leaned on Mixpanel and Datadog to build features people love.
- Shipped fast, gathered feedback, and validated results through verbatim and analytics. That loop is now the method behind everything I do.
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2024
Staff Software Engineer
Stepped up to Staff and left the traditional engineering teams to join the engineering leadership team. I took on the problems that crossed every team's boundary and belonged to no single one. By choice, on the leadership-IC track.
What changed
- Joined the engineering leadership team; my mandate widened from a team to the whole department.
- Overhauled our bug-management process: how we triage and service user bug reports, and how engineering engages Support, Customer, and Operations teams.
- Championed the OKRs, KPIs, and SLOs that shape how leadership makes engineering decisions.
- Chose the IC track deliberately: influence and depth over a management title.
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2025–2026
Writing and sponsoring the engineering strategy
I write and sponsor the engineering strategy for the department: diagnosing where we lose time, choosing the bets worth making, and rallying teams to turn them into shipped change.
The themes I've shaped
Across the strategy I've had a hand in many of the pillars of how a department ships: CI and CD, local development, developer craft, quality, cost optimisation, vendor migrations and negotiations, and a heavy push on AI adoption.
- I lead by sponsoring the work and the people, not just authoring documents.
- I stay current as a keen reader and conference-watcher, especially on technical leadership and the human side of organisations. Soft spots: Will Larson, Simon Sinek, Daniel Pink, and the Pragmatic Engineer newsletter.
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June 2026 · alongside Zappi
Founder, Medicus
Co-founded medicusforme.co.za, a telemedicine platform working to put a doctor within reach of more of South Africa. I build it on nights and weekends.
A little more
- A personal venture with my partner, Dr James, built under my employer's waiver.
- I look after the product, build, and operations; Dr James brings the medicine.
- Early days, with hopes of growing into a multi-doctor platform over time.
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Next
The road ahead is open
I'm steering toward engineering leadership, without ever closing the door on product. Harder problems, bigger scope, more ambiguity. Drop me somewhere with no map and let me find what's worth solving.