Greater Glasgow Area
I was about 7 years into my career when I noticed most managers sucked 🫠. I'd spent years in hands-on engineering across pretty much every language, sector, and company size going. Often the only person in the room who looked like me. 🌈 Never mind the neurodivergent, queer and disabled version of me. I loved the work, but I felt every bit of the missing mentorship, the lack of support, the constant wondering if I belonged. 💡Turns out I wasn't imagining it. 😭 82% of UK managers are thrown into their roles without formal training. 😱 One in three employees quits because of poor management. Not because managers try to be terrible. Because nobody told them what was expected of them. Or what great looked like. I kept meeting those managers. So I decided to do something about it. I've been running fun, inclusive, high-performing engineering teams of 150+ from Series A to Series G, across more sectors and tech stacks than I've read romantasy books. And I read a lot. I became an ILM Level 5 qualified executive coach, but the real qualification is the decade of doing it. I created the course I wish I'd had when I first had that "holy sh*t I'm a manager" moment. 👉 https://www.outragedracooncoaching.com/holy-shit-im-a-manager/ You can get coaching from someone who has read about management. Or someone who has lived it. 👉 https://www.outragedracooncoaching.com/ Call me 🤙 P.S For tiny pockets of delight in a world that often feels too serious, come follow me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/outragedracoonpaws
Joined Doccla as VP of Engineering and quickly stepped into an interim CTO role at a $32M HealthTech Series B, a pivotal moment for the business with a lot to build and not much time to do it. The work has spanned technical delivery, platform stability, compliance in a regulated healthcare environment, coaching leaders, and rebuilding trust between engineering and the wider executive team. All at the same time, with high stakes throughout. It's been the kind of complex, multi-front challenge I thrive at.
I coach engineering managers of all levels and folks in tech, and deal with whatever mess is keeping them up at 3am in the morning. I offer specialist support for neurodivergent, queer and disabled people. No bullshit, no six weeks of "how does that make you feel?" with no tangible outcomes. I also created Holy Sh*t I'm a Manager™ an online course for new engineering managers who've been handed a team and approximately zero guidance on what to do 👉 https://www.holyshitimamanager.com/ And I mentor through Barclays Eagle Labs and Techscaler, because I believe people shouldn't have to figure this stuff out alone.
Joined Thirdfort as VP of Engineering reporting directly to the CEO at a $20M LawTech/FinTech Series B. The team had real potential but the technology, delivery and culture all needed a reset — and needed it quickly. That meant getting under the hood of everything at once. Modernising how we built and shipped software, fixing delivery so the business could actually rely on engineering, and doing the harder, slower work of rebuilding team culture and confidence. By the time I left, the organisation was in a fundamentally different place — technically, culturally, and in terms of how engineering was perceived by the rest of the business.
$8.5 billion Series G cybersecurity giant, leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant, #19 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list generating £200M ARR. I led the Foundation team in Platform to create enterprise-grade authentication, authorisation, api infrastructure and integrations. We were delivering on FedRAMP certification and critical integrations (Slack, Jira) and multi million pound projects on the journey from scale-up to high performance enterprise company. I grew and nurtured the engineering manager layer, both in my group and other divisions through coaching and training.
Series C £150M funded insuretech unicorn. Lead my department through the drastic changes of hyper growth. Built out the Engineering Management function for my department and others, designing an inclusive, attractive and scalable hiring process. Coached and mentored the Engineering Managers to be as high performing as possible, setting the tone for a productive and friendly, kind culture. Delivered on a highly ambitious rebuild of the private hire product with tight deadlines and difficult compromises.