Gareth Thomas - MEng (Hons), CSP-SM

Executive Profile

I have spent over 20 years building software systems and the engineering teams behind them. Most companies do not have the luxury of stopping everything to fix technical debt or install new processes; you have to rebuild the bus whilst it is driving down the road. I get brought in when a business hits a critical inflection point: when delivery has stalled, architecture is struggling under scale, or engineering needs to be professionalised ahead of an acquisition or post-funding round. No buzzwords or dogmatic frameworks - just solid craftsmanship, first-principles problem solving, and treating engineers like adults.

• Scale-Up & Acquisition Exit: Succeeded the retiring founder as CTO at ScholarPack. Overhauled legacy practices from first principles, migrating our core monolith to AWS Fargate microservices in 6 weeks during the summer holidays without downtime. Directed ISO 27001 implementation, scaled to power 10% of all UK primary schools with 95%+ test coverage and daily releases, and steered technical due diligence through acquisition by The Key.
• Scale-Up & Engineering Leadership (0 to 40+ & Multi-Team Orgs): Built the software engineering organisation from scratch at myenergi, scaling from 0 to 40+ engineers across 4 countries during hyper-growth (IoT hardware, cloud platforms, mobile apps). Across career, led multi-team organisations of up to 60+ engineers, aligning distributed onshore and nearshore delivery.
• Interim CTO Turnaround: Stepped in as Interim CTO for a private-equity-backed Smart Energy IoT scale-up following corporate acquisition. Unified fragmented software development across disparate groups into a single cohesive function, established core engineering practices, and built an aligned team that delivered.
• Safety-Critical Systems: Restructured software delivery for military flight mission planning systems supplying the RAF and UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), decoupling flight-safety compliance packages to unlock concurrent delivery of international defence contracts.
• Clinical HealthTech Integration: Fractional CTO for primary care clinical founders, conducting forensic technical due diligence to retire an unviable offshore agency build, eliminating cash burn and embedding digital triage pathways directly into NHS clinical systems (TPP SystmOne).
• Technical Due Diligence & Advisory: Trusted advisor for private equity, VC funds, and founders - evaluating codebase maintainability, IP ownership, cloud economics, and authoring pragmatic development plans for engineering teams post-raise.

Core Areas of Expertise

Selected Executive Experience (Munci Ltd)

• Data Pipelines & Ingestion: Built resilient backend services and background workers to ingest high-frequency half-hourly (HH) smart meter data via n3rgy and MUG APIs, handling consent renewal workflows, data reconciliation, and failure recovery.
• Algorithmic Core IP: Implemented the platform's core energy analytics engine, combining third-party appliance disaggregation (Onzo) with custom weather-normalised Heating Degree Day (HDD) models to calculate verified household savings.
• Mobile Application Delivery: Engineered and stabilised the cross-platform React Native / Expo mobile app (iOS & Android); authored custom App Store Reviewer test harnesses and mock seeding engines to successfully pass Apple App Store and TestFlight verification.
• Platform & Cloud Modernisation: Replaced legacy Heroku/WordPress services with a clean Supabase / PostgreSQL architecture with Row-Level Security (RLS), automated migration ledgers, and containerised local dev environments.
• Engineering Governance & Security: Mentored core engineers, established spec-driven development (OpenSpec), hardened CI/CD test suites, and led rapid incident remediation on cloud infrastructure (AWS SES).

• Unified fragmented software development across disparate groups into a single, cohesive engineering function with clear delivery cadences and ownership.
• Modernised engineering operations across hardware, firmware, and software - transitioning embedded firmware engineers to Git/CI and integrating agentic AI development tooling to accelerate productivity.
• Architected secure, enterprise cross-border networks for a new manufacturing facility in Hong Kong and modernised Chinese manufacturing site infrastructure using Ubiquiti networking.
• Deployed enterprise time-series data infrastructure (Tiger Data) and modernised Terraform deployment pipelines with automated security scanning to monetise smart meter telemetry.
• Streamlined operational overhead, closing redundant site offices and migrating internal systems to secure cloud storage.

• Validated software architecture and platform scalability for core heat pump design tooling.
• Authored comprehensive engineering team professional development plans and competency frameworks across the department to support post-raise scaling.
• Advised executive leadership on delivery practices and technical roadmap prioritisation.

• Decoupled core product feature development from flight safety compliance packages, introducing a 3-week LTS release cadence.
• Expanded capacity from 1 constrained pipeline into 3 concurrent cross-functional delivery streams, hiring 5 core software engineers.
• Enabled simultaneous delivery of major international defence contracts across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and South America supplying the RAF and partner air forces.

• Conducted forensic technical due diligence, retiring an unviable offshore build to eliminate capital waste and managing out the external vendor.
• Pivoted architecture from a detached portal to direct EHR integration, embedding patient digital literacy triage pathways directly into TPP SystmOne.
• Successfully handed over operational delivery to the local healthcare partnership IT team to preserve client runway.

• Founded Software Engineering Department: Hired, structured, and led the software division from 0 to 40+ FTE across 4 countries (UK, Ireland, Germany, Australia) during hyper-growth.
• Cloud & IoT Platform Architecture: Defined and executed global AWS cloud architecture (Fargate, Lambda, API Gateway, TypeScript, React Native) connecting millions of IoT devices (zappi, eddi) to user mobile apps in real time.
• Industrial & Data Scale: Re-architected monolithic on-premise infrastructure into resilient cloud services; designed factory telemetry and manufacturing data lakes for high-volume automated production lines.
• Hybrid Org Delivery: Established a high-velocity delivery model uniting core internal engineering teams with vetted nearshore partners (ApexLab) to flex capacity efficiently.

• Executive Succession & Modernisation: Appointed to succeed the retiring founder, overhaul legacy engineering practices from first principles, and prepare the company for institutional sale.
• Zero-Downtime Cloud Migration: Migrated legacy monolith to AWS Fargate containerised microservices in 6 weeks during school holidays without user disruption (applying the Strangler Fig pattern).
• Quality & Release Velocity: Introduced TDD, BDD, and automated CI pipelines, increasing test coverage to 95%+ and reducing critical production bugs to near-zero.
• M&A Exit & Due Diligence: Key technical executive leading acquisition by The Key; subsequently retained for group-level M&A technical due diligence on further acquisition targets.
• Compliance Certification: Directed the implementation, audit, and certification for ISO 27001 ISMS (awarded August 2019).

Earlier Executive & Enterprise Leadership

• Juniper Education Group - Group Head of Development (2020 - 2021): Aligned multi-product development teams following PE consolidation; unified disparate engineering groups and defined cloud modernisation roadmaps.
• Barbon Insurance Group - Solution Architect / Head of Development (2015 - 2016): Insourced core tenant referencing platform, cutting vendor spend; architected automated underwriting under FCA and PCI-DSS compliance.
• TATA Steel Europe - Site IT Director (Trostre) / Systems Engineering (2004 - 2014): Managed £4m operational budget; directed 24/7 IT operations, disaster recovery, and high-availability SCADA for continuous manufacturing.

Education, Credentials & Speaking

• MEng (Hons) Electronics with Computing Science (2:1) - Swansea University (2004)
• Certified Scrum Professional - ScrumMaster (CSP-SM) - Scrum Alliance
• ISO 27001 ISMS Implementation: Extensive hands-on track record directing audits and delivering full accreditations (ScholarPack, Barbon)
• Industry Speaking: Regular speaker at national and regional tech conferences (The National DevOps Conference, Agile on the Beach - talks recorded on YouTube)
• Community Leadership: Chair, Digital Lincoln  |  STEM Ambassador  |  Code Club Volunteer

Engagement Model & Terms