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 a private equity 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
Seven buy-side and sell-side transactions: technical due diligence, post-merger integration, seller-side diligence, exit and 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 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 automation, auto-approving 50% of key decision processes.
- 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; cited in the 2012 Gates Foundation annual letter as a successful game-based learning company.
- 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.
Leadership
During his tenure Jon has played a key role in stabilising, modernising and consolidating the Group’s technology function through multiple merger and acquisition activities and significant organisational change.
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!
Colleagues
Jon didn’t just show us a better way of working, he did the invisible work behind the scenes too, and was always a champion for the team.
A breath of fresh air, and exactly what the tech team needed. Thank you for all the advice and support.
Jon picked us up out of the mess when the merger happened. It was so refreshing to finally have real, strong tech knowledge in the business.
Insights
Writing on what works.
Everyone in your business is now a developer
Engineering wants control, the business wants tools now. Seven steps that let both happen without a breach, and without Engineering acting as gatekeeper.
Read the article →AI that decides: Jev and the OpenAI Decisions API for business leaders
Two new products pick an answer from a fixed list instead of writing text. What that means for cost, speed and control, and how to test it.
Read the article →Navigating the nuances of technical due diligence
What buyer-side and seller-side technical due diligence actually means, and the questions that matter on both sides of the table.
Read the article →Buy vs. build for today’s CFOs
Buy a ready-made SaaS solution, or build bespoke in-house? A practical framework for CFOs weighing the trade-offs.
Read the article →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.