Work, and what actually changed
Each of these is a real engagement with a named problem, what I did about it and what the client had at the end. Filter by industry if you want to see the closest thing to your own situation.
EdTech & Learning Platforms
From kickoff to working proof of concept in one week with Claude Code
A UK education provider needed a greenfield learner dashboard built against three unfamiliar third-party platforms, with a predominantly junior team. By the
AI-Augmented Development · Architecture Advisory
Professional Services
Silverlight to Vue.js migration with a UI parity constraint
A property management company needed their Silverlight application migrated to Vue.js - but users required the exact same interface. We delivered 90% of 15+
Legacy Modernisation
Wellness & Marketplace
Building a 45+ microservice platform that survived acquisition and 3 agency failures
A three-sided wellness marketplace needed architecture that could survive business uncertainty. We built 45+ microservices that flexed through acquisition,
Fractional Chief Technology Officer Services UK · Project Delivery & Rescue
Insurance & Benefits
Distributed test automation that cut UAT from half a day to 30 minutes
A UK insurance company's UAT process took half a day to complete. We built a distributed test automation system with parallel runners that reduced execution to
Project Delivery & Rescue
Sustainability & GreenTech
Building product aggregation infrastructure for sustainability comparison
An Innovate UK-funded startup needed to aggregate product data from multiple e-commerce sites. We built scraping infrastructure handling both traditional and
Architecture Advisory
PropTech & Legal
Unifying 8 fragmented authorisation systems into one secure service
A leading UK PropTech platform had authorization logic scattered across 8 services. We designed a unified relational authorization service that reduced query
Architecture Advisory · Fractional Chief Technology Officer Services UK
Travel & Logistics
SEO pre-launch strategy that outranked competitors before going live
A UK holiday marketplace needed search presence before booking features were ready. Our pre-launch SEO strategy achieved rankings above competitors' own
Legacy Modernisation
Professional Services
From Auth0 task to full backend rebuild in 8 weeks
A US startup hired us for Auth0 integration. What we found was a backend that barely existed - including a memory leak causing stack overflows. Eight weeks
Project Delivery & Rescue
Professional Services
90% code reduction through SOLID principles and a reflection-based framework
A law firm's legacy codebase had pervasive duplication - 6-8 lines of copy-pasted code for every database interaction. We built a reflection-based framework
Legacy Modernisation
Defence & Security
Low-latency sensor integration for critical security infrastructure
A MOD security contractor needed to integrate new sensor hardware into their automated response systems. We built MQTT-driven processing with sub-500ms latency
AI-Augmented Development
Travel & Logistics
Reducing page load times from 30 seconds to 3 seconds through strategic caching
An airline logistics platform had 12-30 second page loads. Through performance investigation and strategic caching, we reduced this to 2-3 seconds while
Architecture Advisory
Retail & E-commerce
Reverse-engineering a warehouse system without source code access
An online retailer needed their warehouse system rebuilt but had no access to the original VB6 source code. We reverse-engineered functionality from observed
Legacy Modernisation
Professional Services
Building a component architecture before components existed
A professional services software provider needed modern web UI patterns without abandoning their established codebase. We designed a jQuery framework with
Architecture Advisory · Fractional Chief Technology Officer Services UK
Insurance & Benefits
Event-driven document generation for an enterprise benefits platform
A pioneering benefits platform serving major UK employers needed to consolidate scattered manual processes. We designed event-driven architecture using BizTalk
Architecture Advisory
Insurance & Benefits
Transforming 15 WinForms developers into full-stack engineers
A 15-person WinForms team needed to transition to web development. Through seminars, pair programming, and custom patterns, we transformed them into confident
Fractional Chief Technology Officer Services UK
Healthcare & Non-Profit
Independent technical due diligence that saved 60% of proposed budget
A global humanitarian organisation needed independent validation of a vendor's modernisation proposal. Our analysis revealed 60% of costs were addressing the
Technical Due Diligence
EdTech & Learning Platforms
Restoring F5 development to a multi-service learning platform with .NET Aspire
A greenfield learner platform was about to inherit the usual microservice tax: a docker-compose file, mocked dependencies, and developers running half the
Architecture Advisory · AI-Augmented Development
PropTech & Legal
Eliminating documentation debt across 390 repositories
A rapidly-growing PropTech company faced crippling documentation debt across 390 repositories. We implemented AI-powered documentation generation that achieved
AI-Augmented Development · Architecture Advisory
Wellness & Marketplace
Building a three-sided marketplace payment system with Stripe Connect
A wellness marketplace needed to split payments between providers, venues, and the platform. We designed a Stripe Connect integration that handled three-sided
Architecture Advisory · Project Delivery & Rescue
Travel & Logistics
Strangler pattern migration reduces page load times by 50%
A caravan booking platform needed to modernise from .NET Framework to .NET Core. Using the strangler pattern, we migrated incrementally while keeping the
Legacy Modernisation · Architecture Advisory
EdTech & Learning Platforms
Unifying three source systems into a single learner view
Tutors were flipping between three systems to answer basic questions about learner progress. I designed a backend-for-frontend, a progress engine, and a clean
Architecture Advisory
Travel & Logistics
Search performance transformed from 20 seconds to under 2 seconds
A caravan booking platform's search took 10-20 seconds to return results. Through architectural analysis and query optimisation, we reduced search times to 1-2
Architecture Advisory · Legacy Modernisation
Wellness & Marketplace
Eliminating security vulnerabilities and establishing quality gates
A growing marketplace platform needed to address code quality and security concerns. We implemented SonarCloud CI/CD integration, established quality gates,
Architecture Advisory · Legacy Modernisation
EdTech & Learning Platforms
Pivoting an integration to source SFTP two weeks before contract end
Two weeks before contract end, the planned ingest path for the e-portfolio integration turned out to be a labelled proof of concept that nobody had taken
Project Delivery & Rescue · Architecture Advisory
EdTech & Learning Platforms
Coaching a predominantly junior team through a greenfield Aspire build
About two-thirds of the team were junior, including bootcamp graduates and developers new to the languages they were working in. The mentoring side of the
Fractional Chief Technology Officer Services UK · AI-Augmented Development
EdTech & Learning Platforms
Translating a Power BI proof of concept into a production progress engine
A partner organisation's domain expert had encoded apprenticeship progress logic, period-based benchmarks, RAG status, off-the-job hours, in a Power BI proof
Architecture Advisory
Insurance & Benefits
Scaling a benefits platform to support multiple enterprise clients
JLT Group's BenPal platform needed to serve multiple enterprise clients, each requiring bespoke branding and features. We designed a white-label architecture
Architecture Advisory · Fractional Chief Technology Officer Services UK
Not sure which one? That is what the call is for.
Thursday afternoons are usually free. Straight into my calendar, no qualification call before the qualification call.
Or email hello@softweb.uk