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 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:
Integrating AI into development workflows — from code generation and review to testing and deployment. Building the tools and culture for AI-first engineering.
Driving architecture decisions, setting technical direction, and mentoring engineers across teams. Translating business goals into technical strategy.
Building and scaling web applications end-to-end. Strong in modern React, TypeScript, and cloud-native backends with a focus on developer experience.
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:
Migrated from Bitbucket to GitHub and rebuilt all pipelines in GitHub Actions, cutting build times from 20 minutes to 8 minutes.
Replaced three legacy systems (custom + MUI) with a unified Shadcn/ui library across the entire platform, with WCAG compliance and RTL support.
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:
Open-source MCP server connecting Claude to Strava. Published on npm with an interactive OAuth setup flow.
Open-source MCP server for finding parkrun events globally. No API key needed, uses public parkrun data.
Personal side project tracking every kilometre I've run. Next.js, Sanity CMS, Strava webhooks, and Neon Postgres.
10+ years across insurance tech, e-commerce, and enterprise SaaS:
AI-powered learning platform, 5M+ users, 60+ countries
Insurance technology, ~65% of UK price comparison sites
E-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.