Chief Technology Officer
Technology leadership built for value creation.
CTO, CPTO and Group CTO across fintech, proptech, edtech and biotech. I create value through technology and product: turnarounds, scale-ups, acquisitions and exits, most recently through the management buyout of a £10m+ proptech group.
Services
Three ways I help.
Technology & product leadership
CTO, CPTO and Group CTO roles in PE-backed, VC-backed, AIM-listed and privately owned businesses. Board reporting, budgets, regulatory work spanning FCA and ISO 27001, and teams of 5 to 60 across the UK, EU and nearshore.
AI engineering
Agentic development under a governed lifecycle: 95% of delivered software, human review before merge, nothing released without automated verification and test coverage. LLM automation embedded into core operational workflows, reaching 50% auto-approval on key decision processes while cutting the operational headcount needed to run them by 40%.
M&A & due diligence
The full transaction cycle: buy-side technical due diligence for a top-10 PEI 300 private equity firm, post-merger integration, seller-side diligence, exit and management buyout. Cost restructuring and value creation mandates.
Positioning
Where I sit.
Most technology leaders operate in one lane. I sit in the overlap, where technical decisions, product direction and commercial outcomes have to agree.
Key achievements
A record of outcomes.
Experience
Selected engagements.
Group Chief Technology Officer
Proptech group with £10m+ revenue and 180 staff, providing tenant referencing, insurance and lettings services. Led group technology through cost restructure, a buy-side acquisition, integration and a management buyout backed by mid-market private equity.
- Reduced combined group hosting spend from $720k to $180k, applying the same playbook at both entities.
- Established agentic development workflows now producing 95% of delivered software, and operationalised LLM referencing automation, auto-approving 50% of tenant references.
- Removed £1.2m of annualised cost in four months, recovered £1.5m to £2m of at-risk client ARR, and raised deployment frequency from monthly to daily.
- Secured investment for a group-wide device rollout across 140 staff, moving off a non-compliant Windows 10 estate to a mixed Windows, macOS and ChromeOS fleet (70% Chromebook).
Technical Advisor, Secondary Due Diligence
Buy-side technical due diligence on a complex acquisition opportunity: integration options, legacy complexity, copyleft exposure, cyber security posture, data-centre footprint and organisational capability.
VP of Engineering, then CTO of Solutions Engineering
FCA-regulated B2B2C fintech backed by Balderton, QED and Smash Capital, grown from Series A to C and a $400m+ valuation.
- Grew engineering from 5 to 30 and delivered over 300 client launches across 4 countries.
- Raised technical win rate from 25% to 85%, helping win the NHS, Next Retail, Bupa and other FTSE 100/250 clients; an RPA solution enabled over 50% of NHS Trusts.
- Created a data-focused multi-million pound recurring revenue stream, first contracted at £1m with a major credit reference agency, and secured the initial ISO 27001 accreditation.
Chief Technology Officer
Series A B2B SaaS connecting hospitality point-of-sale to Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo.
- Part of the executive team that sold the business to Just Eat for £22m; performed all seller-side due diligence.
- Grew product and engineering from 20 to 60 across five countries while sustaining 2000% growth in monthly transaction volume.
- Cut point-of-sale integration time from 6-8 weeks to 2, a leading factor in the acquisition.
Earlier roles
- DNA Worldwide, Interim Group CTO: re-architected a D2C ancestry product across genome processing, data pipelines and lab management.
- Growth Street, Interim VP Engineering: turnaround plan approved by the board; delivery frequency from monthly to three times weekly.
- Fitbug (AIM listed), Interim CTO: halved operating costs, pivoted B2C to B2B, releases from monthly to five times a week.
- Chroma Sports, Chief Product & Technology Officer: turnaround executed and business sold to Editec Lotteries for £3m.
- TransferGo, CTO: recovered a failed launch in a month; customers grew from 12,000 to 100,000; transaction processing time down 70%.
- Mangahigh, CTO: scaled a global edtech to 2 billion maths games a year; teams from 3 to 35; credited in the Gates Foundation annual letter.
- 1998 to 2010: engineer to architect to head of systems across two top-5 European digital agencies, an insurtech and IoT adtech businesses.
Testimonials
In their words.
Jon took the bull by the horns and added structure, people, breadth and depth to almost all areas of the business, whilst tackling the many fires tech startups experience, before they could turn into infernos.
We hired Jon to restructure the engineering team, with the goal of improving productivity and happiness levels. Jon far surpassed my expectations and those of the team. I look forward to seeing which company Jon transforms next!
Contact
The next value creation opportunity is a conversation away.
If any of this sounds like your business, I would love to hear from you.