Swindon, England, United Kingdom
You are probably looking for someone who can take on a hard, unproven engineering problem and deliver it through a team of capable engineers. People who can do both are rarer than they should be. Plenty of strong engineers have never led. Plenty of managers stopped opening schematics years ago. I have spent my career where the two meet. Over eleven years at Dyson, I took proprietary technology that had not been built before to market. As the first Senior Design Manager in its Power Systems department, I was pioneering the role itself, with real autonomy and no established process to follow, so I built the structure as I went. In that role I directed two teams of 135+ engineers to deliver a £65M+ next-generation motor programme, from concept through to mass production. That is where my view formed. The technology is seldom the constraint; the decisions, the structure, and the people usually are. Give me a genuinely difficult problem and a few strong engineers, and getting the best from them to solve it is the work I most enjoy and where I have proved most effective. It is what I am doing now at Loop Earplugs, building the team and the ways of working behind the company's first in-market electronics product. What I can offer: • Novel, safety-critical electronics taken from an unproven idea to a product on shelves. • Complex programmes delivered across global sites, to deadline, and under C-level scrutiny. • Teams built and led, from 10+ to 20+ to 135+, that kept delivering after I moved on. • Development and governance frameworks I built from the ground up, now adopted across engineering, operations, and quality. I am at my best where the technology is new and the way of working has not been written yet, whether that is an established company handing me real autonomy or a scale-up building its hardware capability for the first time. I am less suited to steady-state roles where the problem is well understood and the process already runs itself. If you have an engineering problem that has not been solved before, and you want someone to build both the team and the structure to deliver it, I would be glad to talk. BEng Electronic Engineering (University of Pretoria). MIET, CEng application in progress. Dual UK/South Africa citizen.
Lead electronics, embedded systems, and systems-integration strategy for Loop's first in-market electronics product, a first-of-type connected wearable with functional-safety and regulatory-compliance obligations. • Lead a growing multidisciplinary team across electronics hardware, firmware/embedded software, software, and systems/integration, building the structure, roles, and decision systems to scale beyond project-based execution. • Identified capability gaps and opportunities, then developed new engineering frameworks from the ground up (Requirements Management, Engineering Safety, and Risk Management), securing buy-in from senior stakeholders up to VP-of-Product level to establish them and drive adoption across the engineering, operations, and quality departments. • Established AI-enabled engineering workflows (building tools, skills, and artefacts) to increase delivery speed, ensure repeatable development quality, and make more efficient use of engineering time. • Own system-level architecture and trade-offs across hardware, firmware, software, acoustics, wireless/BLE connectivity, mechanical integration, manufacturability, certification, cost, and roadmap, including replaceable-battery and Right-to-Repair compliance. • Lead cross-functional decision-making across product, industrial design, acoustics, quality, manufacturing, supply chain, and legal, and own supplier, chipset, and development-partner strategy. • Coach senior engineers through high-stakes roles and resolve cross-functional friction to keep a resource-constrained programme moving without absorbing the technical work myself.
As the first Senior Design Manager in Dyson's Power Systems department, directed two international teams of 135+ engineers to deliver a £65M+ next-generation "Hyperdymium" motor programme from concept through design, manufacturing, and mass production. The programme delivered two production motor variants from a single, automated, hybrid manufacturing platform: a low-voltage, high-current motor now shipping in the Dyson PencilVac, and a high-voltage, low-current motor in the Dyson Airwrap Co-anda2x. • Held end-to-end accountability up to C-level for programme scope, delivery strategy, organisational structure, supplier engagement, and risk across multiple global sites. • Partnered with Director and C-level leadership on long-term technology roadmap, platform strategy, and investment decisions as part of Dyson's Senior Management community. • Led resolution of launch-critical EMC, product-safety, reliability, and manufacturing-readiness issues under high commercial pressure. • Drove organisational effectiveness through team optimisation, process improvement, and succession planning.
Grew the UK electronic hardware team to 20+ engineers, delivering reusable electronic systems for major new product introductions (NPI) including Wash G1, G5 Detect, and PencilVac. • Co-led team strategy with Dyson's Global Head of Electronics; presented electronics strategy and trade-offs at C-level. • Drove circuit design, system architecture, DFMEA, and compliance engineering. • Mitigated global chip-shortage risk through modular/agile development and design reuse.
Established and led a team of 10+ electronics and sensors engineers, delivering the V12 Detect Slim, V15 Detect, and Laser Fluffy products. • Led hands-on design of compliant, reliable system architectures under aggressive timelines. • Owned planning, resource allocation, and global project transfers; supported governance reviews. • Kept development moving through COVID-19 and global supply constraints via new risk processes.
Designed, developed, and field-supported the Electronic HW and Embedded SW for access control terminals deployed across Southern Africa. • Circuit design, development, and verification, including component specification. • Embedded SW development using C and Assembler on PIC18 and PIC32 microcontrollers. • CPLD design and testing in VHDL. • Digital communication protocols and circuit implementation, including SPI, I2C, RS232, RS485, TCP/IP, and USB, including Android Debug Bridge (ADB). • Integration of a wide range of OEMs and peripherals, including RFID modules and antennas, biometric and proximity card readers, barcode scanners, breathalyser modules, and android mobile phones. • On-site system installation, commissioning, and continued customer support. • Contribution to internal and external product marketing and promotions.