Technology leader who still gets his hands dirty. Engineer at heart, building good systems and better teams.

Ngāti Kahungunu | Ngāti Rangitāne · Pōneke

I started out writing code, and somewhere along the way I started leading the people who write it. I didn't move into leadership to get away from the work — I did it because I care about how the work gets done, and who it gets done with. So I'm a bit of an odd one: I lead the way I used to build. Make the implicit explicit, define the contract, write the thing down. Most days that's a strength; occasionally it looks like over-engineering. I've made my peace with both.

These days I lead a mix of people — engineers, and technical folk who don't write code: support, data, Salesforce, delivery. Different crafts, same principle: give people a clear problem, the room to solve it their way, and the context to do it well. And I haven't put the tools down — I still read the pull request, still have opinions about the architecture, still want to build the thing.

I'm Māori — Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Rangitāne — with Te Ātiawa, Scottish, English and Irish lines woven in too. I'm learning te reo Māori, and slowly piecing together my family history, the Māori lines and the Pākehā ones both. Te Tiriti matters to me — not as an abstraction, but as something still being worked out, with mahi still to do.

Away from the desk, I ride at the Karapoti Classic, run the odd parkrun with Suki my Borderdoodle, grow chillies in a glasshouse, and tinker constantly with Linux, AI, and automation. There's a cat, Iroh, who supervises and contributes nothing.

This is where I think out loud — mostly about doing technology well, where AI is actually useful, and building a life with a bit of independence in it.

Kia ora, and thanks for reading. The best place to find me is LinkedIn.

✨ Crafted with a little help from AI — because of course it was 🤖