Michael Hutchinson
Staff Engineer building AI-powered engineering cultures.
Based in Manchester, UK.
I'm a Staff Engineer with over a decade of experience building software across the full stack - from React frontends to cloud-native backends. I hold a Master's in IT from Leeds Beckett University.
Right now, I'm all-in on the intersection of AI and software engineering. I use Claude Code, MCP servers, and custom AI agents every day to multiply team velocity and ship better software, faster.
As a Staff Engineer, I operate across the entire organisation: defining technical strategy, mentoring engineers, driving architectural decisions, and keeping my hands in the code every day.
Here are the areas where Michael focuses his energy - from AI integration to technical strategy:
AI-Powered Engineering
Integrating AI into development workflows - from code generation and review to testing and deployment. Building the tools and culture for AI-first engineering.
Technical Leadership
Driving architecture decisions, setting technical direction, and mentoring engineers across teams. Translating business goals into technical strategy.
Full-Stack Development
Building and scaling web applications end-to-end. Strong in modern React, TypeScript, and cloud-native backends with a focus on developer experience.
Platform & DX
Designing CI/CD pipelines, developer tooling, and platform infrastructure that lets teams ship with confidence and speed.
Selected work and measurable outcomes from the past few years:
Thrive CEO Award
Won Thrive's company-wide CEO Award, recognising the work and impact brought to the platform and team across the year.
DevEx Overhaul
Migrated from Bitbucket to GitHub and rebuilt all pipelines in GitHub Actions, cutting build times from 20 minutes to 8 minutes.
Design System Migration
Replaced three legacy systems (custom + MUI) with a unified Shadcn/ui library across the entire platform, with WCAG compliance and RTL support.
Social Learning Platform
Built a social feature (posts, comments, feeds) now used as a core platform capability by all enterprise customers including Google and Emirates.
Open-source tools and side projects:
strava-mcp-server
Open-source MCP server connecting Claude to Strava. Published on npm with an interactive OAuth setup flow.
parkrun-mcp-server
Open-source MCP server for finding parkrun events globally. No API key needed, uses public parkrun data.
hills-mcp-server
Open-source MCP server for every hill in Britain and Ireland. Ships the whole dataset inside the npm package, so no API key and no network calls at runtime.
kettle-remote
The phone app for a smart kettle whose manufacturer went under, live on the App Store and Google Play. Finds, pairs and boils entirely over your own Wi-Fi, with no account and no cloud, and politely shares the kettle’s single connection between phones.
appkettle
The reverse-engineered protocol behind Kettle Remote, open-sourced. Decoded from the vendor’s Android APK and rebuilt in TypeScript as a library, CLI and MCP server, with a Raspberry Pi bridge feeding Home Assistant.
ukrunner.com
Personal side project tracking every kilometre I've run. Next.js, Sanity CMS, Strava webhooks, and Neon Postgres.
Latest from the blog:
Working on the Pi from My Phone
mosh for connections that survive anything, herdr for terminal sessions that keep working after you pocket the phone, and Claude Code running on the Pi in the middle.
A Backup Is Not a Backup Until You Restore It
Encrypted nightly backups from the Pi to Google Drive with restic and rclone, what actually needs backing up, and the restore drill that makes it real.
Escaping the Hue App: Running My Own Zigbee Network
A £20 USB dongle, Mosquitto, and Zigbee2MQTT versus the Philips Hue app. The hard requirement: my partner loses none of the features she actually uses.
10+ years across insurance tech, e-commerce, and enterprise SaaS:
Thrive Learning Limited
Fully RemoteAI-powered learning platform, 5M+ users, 60+ countries
CDL Software
StockportInsurance technology, ~65% of UK price comparison sites
Boohoo Group PLC
ManchesterE-commerce, £1B+ revenue
Whether you want to discuss a role, a project, or just talk shop about AI and engineering - I'd love to hear from you.