Fractional CTO — Data & AI · London · Remote-first
Don't read my CV. Interview it.
Twenty-five years building data, analytics and AI systems end to end — and still shipping. Founder of describe.me: 10,000+ users, architected and built solo. Ask me anything below; the answers come from a quarter-century of receipts.
I started at National Grid before it was National Grid — coordinating gas network projects at Transco in 2002. Today I'm the technical authority behind National Grid's Electricity Transmission data platform.
In between I've held every seat in the data organisation — analyst, engineer, architect, manager, founder — and the commercial ones beside it. The pattern never changed: make the strategic call, then be the person who implements it.
The journey · 2002 → now
2024 — nowConcept AI Ltd — Founder & CTO+
describe.me: an AI recruitment platform matching people on skills and genuine aspiration — 10,000+ active users in year one. Architected and built entirely solo: backend, web client, cloud infra, LLM pipelines, payments, GDPR, email. Most of the industry uses AI to do more, faster. We use it to do better, calmer.
2024 — nowNational Grid — ET data platform technical authority+
Contract title says Lead Data Engineer; the role is platform technical authority. Hired and inducted every engineer and analyst as the function grew 4 → 20+ and 1 → ~30 data products; led the adoption of AI-assisted engineering; owned platform lifecycle decisions through to an evidence-based decommissioning.
2019 — 24The contract run — eight engagements+
Consumer health (Haleon — global ESG lakehouse, >90% faster), payments (Dojo), energy consulting (YLD), commerce (JLA — a lead engine that returned record revenues), regulated national statistics (Pearson — DfE/Ofqual), professional services and start-ups. Walked in cold, delivered, left capability behind.
2017 — 19Kantar & GVC/Entain — the commercial years+
Led Kantar's central analytics function; client-facing lead on a regulated national QoS survey. Then post-acquisition forensics at GVC/Entain: unified affiliate spend across three merged entities with fuzzy matching at scale — £15M of savings identified, worldwide supplier renegotiations.
2014 — 17First consultancy — climate analytics, before it was cool+
Ran my own analytics consultancy: an EU Climate-KIC-funded application predicting future energy and water use from Met Office UKCP climate projections — productionised with Birmingham City University, used by Birmingham City Council (Europe's largest local authority) to target adaptation investment. Plus a sustainable logistics business.
£1M+ tenders priced and won (Staples). ERP integration owned end to end (Dynamics NAV). A national traffic-control rollout coordinated (Serco). Teams of 10–30 led at npower — in my early twenties. And where it began: gas network projects at Transco, now National Grid Gas.
Four pieces of work
The receipts.
10k+
describe.me — an AI platform, built alone
Every layer by one pair of hands: architecture, LLM matching engineered for cost and transparency, payments, compliance, growth. Live, revenue-bearing, calm by design.
4→20
National Grid — building the builders
Technical authority while the ET data function scaled five-fold. Hired every engineer, set the standards, led AI adoption — and made the hard platform calls, including the reversals.
EU
Climate-KIC — climate analytics for a city
Met Office climate projections turned into an investment-targeting tool for Europe's largest local authority, a decade before ESG data was a job title.
£15M
GVC/Entain — post-merger forensics
Three companies' affiliate spend, unified and de-duplicated at scale. Fifteen million pounds of savings identified; supplier contracts renegotiated worldwide.
Ways to engage
Outcomes, not availability.
AI & Data Architecture Audit
Fixed scope · ~5 days · fixed fee
Estate review, AI-readiness, cost engineering, and a written roadmap your board can act on. The fastest way to find out what I'm like to work with.
Fractional CTO / Tech Director
Retainer · 1–2 days a week
Strategy, hiring, standards, vendor judgement — a technology leader who still reads the code, without the full-time cost.
Build & Rescue
SoW · milestone-based
A defined deliverable, led hands-on from architecture to production. I've shipped alone; imagine what happens with your team.
Interim & Full-time
Contract · 5 days a week
CTO, head of data & AI, principal architect — the badge matters less than the scope. Committed terms earn a keener rate.
All engagements through Concept AI Ltd — outside IR35 by structure, not by wishful thinking. Multiple concurrent clients by design.
No headshot, deliberately. I built describe.me on the idea that people should be judged on substance rather than appearance — it would be odd not to hold myself to it. The photographs below are ones I took, not ones taken of me.
Mount Toubkal
London
West Highland Way
Cycling
Paintings
Travel
Artist & photographer
Awarded, exhibited, currently showing in London. I also piloted image capture for Google Maps Immersive View — art practice meeting AI product development. Full portfolio at rich22222.com.
Cycling infrastructure
Adviser to Transport for West Midlands and Birmingham City Council on cycling infrastructure — the connective tissue between campaign groups, councils and engineers.
Environment
Founder and strategist for environmental initiatives — the same conviction that built a climate analytics tool in 2014 and an ESG lakehouse in 2023.
Mount Toubkal
London
West Highland Way
Cycling
Paintings
Travel