What I Am Looking For

Jonathan Dean

A permanent role Link to heading

I am looking for my next permanent technology leadership role: CTO, VP of Engineering or Engineering Director, in a business where technology is central to what it does.

I build engineering organisations that deliver business outcomes, through platform transformation, organisation design, and bringing AI into how engineers work. A smaller team on a hard technical problem interests me as much as a large organisation. Some of the most enjoyable work I have done has been close to the technology, and AI has made it possible to be hands-on again while leading.

I work best remotely, and have led a fully remote engineering organisation across four countries. I am open to hybrid within reach of Birmingham, UK.

Fractional work in the meantime Link to heading

Alongside that search, I have capacity for a few days a week of fractional work. The problems I can help with:

  • Adopting AI in engineering. Moving a team from individual experiments to a shared workflow, with the standards, review and scaffolding that make it safe, and measuring whether it is working. I have written about how my team worked, what to measure, and running teams of agents.
  • Structuring an engineering organisation. Designing teams around ownership as a company grows, as I did with unFix, including what I would do differently.
  • Delivery practice. Getting to continuous delivery, with automated quality gates, feature flags and releases that are a decision rather than a side effect of deploying (more here).
  • Technology leadership for an early-stage company. For a founding team without a senior technical leader: architecture decisions, build versus buy, hiring the first engineers, and working with investors. At Eyoto we grew from one employee to forty and secured over £10m in VC and PE funding.

How it works Link to heading

Engagements are mostly remote, a set number of days a week, with a clear scope agreed up front. I would rather be in the work than advise from a distance, so where it helps I pair with the team and build things.

Get in touch Link to heading

Email [email protected] or message me on LinkedIn.