Principal Associate
Specialist senior capacity, when you need it - cloud, data and AI delivery at principal grade, agency-free and under your brand. I deliver through you, never around you.
What I do
- Full-stack delivery - platform, application, database and pipeline, in one pair of hands
- Cloud and IaC - Azure from zero: Terraform, landing zones, private networking
- Data and databases - modelling, migration, performance, BI and reporting
- Integration and migration - legacy estates connected and moved cleanly
- AI delivery and AI productivity - AI into production, and AI-accelerated delivery
- Defence
- Banking
- Insurance
- Energy
- Commodities
- Healthcare
- Identity
I plug into your delivery, not around it
Most of my career has been spent as the senior specialist inside somebody else's programme - working to their governance, in their delivery, in front of their client. That is a particular skill, and it is not the same thing as being a good engineer. It means picking up the shape of how you work, fitting into it without friction, and being the person who makes your team look good in the room.
So this is a supplier relationship, not a dependency. I keep several engagements live, which is exactly why you get someone who turns up, delivers the thing and hands it over cleanly - rather than someone quietly making themselves permanent.
Selected track record
- Built the cloud platform for a national defence healthcare system from zero - 700,000+ patient records
- Lead architect on a £1B+ regulated remediation platform - 100,000+ cases, passed FCA and SOX audit
- Sole cloud architect for a UK-first certified national digital identity platform - a significant Azure estate
- Deployed network-isolated, in-tenant LLM inference for agentic coding inside a secure boundary
Twenty-six years of judgment, and the confidence to carry it in any room - credible with the engineers, the executive and the board alike, and safe to put in front of your client
Why me
- Seasoned judgment
- Credible at every level
- At ease in regulated work
- A supplier, not a dependency
Working with you
- Day rate or fixed-scope SOW - happy either way, priced before we start
- White-label or co-branded - the client sees your team, or ours
- I complement your team - additional senior capacity, not a replacement for it
Consultancies I've worked with
Questions, answered
- Day rate or fixed price?
- Either - happy both ways. A day rate to work alongside your team, or a fixed-scope SOW where a package of work carves off cleanly.
- How do you price it?
- Against your margin, and agreed before anything starts. A day rate where I am working inside your delivery alongside your people, because that is what your commercial model is usually built around; a fixed price on the outcome where a package of work carves off cleanly and you would rather carry no delivery risk. Either way you know the number before I begin, and it does not move mid-engagement. I am not an agency, so there is no agency margin stacked on top and nothing between you and the person doing the work. Rates are not discounted - the case for me is a principal who delivers, not a cheap pair of hands - but they are quoted against the specific engagement, so tell me the shape of the work and the client, and I will tell you what it costs.
- Can you work white-label?
- Yes. The client sees your brand throughout, or ours - whatever the engagement needs.
- Will you approach our clients?
- No. I work through you, never around you. That is the deal.
- How do you handle our client's governance?
- As if it were my own. Most of my career has been delivering inside somebody else's programme - to their standards, their security model and their reporting lines. That is a distinct skill from engineering, and it is the reason I am safe to put in front of your client.
Fifteen minutes will tell you if this fits
Bring the problem - the stalled pilot, the systems that don't talk, the manual process eating your team. You will get a straight answer on whether it is sprint-shaped, what it would cost, and when it could be running.
Delivered inside defence, banking and national digital identity
I reply within 24 hours