What I'm working on

At the moment

I'm thinking a lot about the transition from technical leadership to organisational leadership.

For most of my career I've optimised systems. Increasingly I'm interested in optimising organisations — the decisions they make, the trust they build or erode, and the conditions that allow good engineering to thrive or quietly disappear.

Acting Head of Data at PEP Health, deep in the back half of a full AWS platform rebuild. The architecture is in good shape. The current focus is engineering standards, team capability, and making sure what we've built can outlast my involvement.

Also in the early stages of building Townsend Data Consultancy — figuring out what kind of work I want to take on and building the foundations to make that possible.

Current rabbit holes

• Better engineering judgement — how engineers develop it, and what gets in the way
• AI inside engineering teams — what's actually changing and what isn't
• Platform transformation — the organisational side, not the technical side
• Making good engineering visible to the people making budget decisions
• Why organisations gradually lose trust in their technology

Reading

• An Elegant Puzzle — Will Larson. The most practically useful book on engineering management I've come across.
• The Goal — Goldratt. Returning to it. Holds up surprisingly well as a lens for thinking about data platform bottlenecks.

Building

• This site — trying to make it something I'd still be using in five years
• A set of platform assessment frameworks I've been meaning to write down properly

Beyond work

Getting back out on the hills more regularly. The Peaks are on the doorstep and I don't use that enough. Playing guitar most evenings — currently working on fingerpicking arrangements of things that probably weren't designed for acoustic guitar.