Professional Background

Background

What's on this page

This page contains information about my professional background in various key areas. It isn't my complete CV and doesn't go into detail about my various projects, jobs or experience. This page does explain how I've ended up where I am and where I hope to be headed. To learn the details of my experience, you might be more interested in my CV.

Hardware Innovation Leadership

I'm a hardware innovation leader who has spent over a decade solving the fundamental problem that costs the computing industry billions: the abstraction gap between how software thinks about memory and how hardware actually stores data. My breakthrough Object Memory Architecture delivers 2-5x performance improvements while eliminating memory safety vulnerabilities at the silicon level.

Through three startup companies, I've raised £4M in funding, led teams of 14+ engineers, filed four patents, and demonstrated that innovative technology must be paired with rigorous market validation. My unique journey from teenage programmer to proven entrepreneur positions me to bring this computing innovation to market.

Leadership Through Innovation

Beyond technical innovation, I'm committed to knowledge sharing and educational impact. I created FlingOS as an open-source educational resource, pioneered the Digimakers Roadshow programme at Bristol University, and structured Midspace as a Community Interest Company to maximize social benefit during the pandemic.

Today, I'm focused on bringing Object Memory Architecture to market through strategic partnerships and pre-seed funding. Having learned from both successes and failures, I understand that innovative technology requires the right team, market timing, and customer validation to achieve maximum impact.

Computer Science / Software Engineering

The Foundation: Early Systems Programming

My software engineering journey began at age 8 with C# and Windows Forms, but the real breakthrough came during work experience at Imagination Technologies. Exposure to graphics drivers and low-level systems revealed the layers beneath application programming, setting the stage for my breakthrough discovery.

At 15, I designed and built a complete 8-bit processor in Minecraft — demonstrating early intuition that computation isn't magic, but logical systems that can be reimagined. This was followed by two internships with Imagination Technologies' Windows Graphics Driver team, where I learned how hardware and software truly interact.

Operating system development became my laboratory for understanding the critical abstraction gap. Starting with COSMOS, I quickly branched out to develop FlingOS — a C# operating system that required writing a custom compiler from MSIL to assembly code. This compiler work revealed the fundamental inefficiency that would define my career.

The Discovery: Object Memory Architecture

FlingOS became more than an educational project — it was the crucible where I discovered the abstraction gap between C#'s Object Memory Model and hardware's Linear Memory Model. This wasn't just academic observation; it was the identification of a fundamental inefficiency costing the industry billions.

My PhD research at Bristol focused on formal proofs in Agda, specifically proving the correctness of our Integrated Hardware Garbage Collector. Working with Professor David May, we didn't just identify the problem — we solved it, designing hardware that eliminates the abstraction gap entirely.

When the pandemic hit, I applied this systems thinking to virtual conferencing. Co-founding Midspace (Clowdr CIC), we bootstrapped to nearly $500K revenue while serving conferences with thousands of participants. This experience taught me how to scale distributed teams and deliver under extreme pressure — skills essential for hardware startup leadership.

Systems Innovation at Scale

My approach to software engineering goes beyond implementation — I challenge fundamental assumptions about how systems should work. The rise of functional programming validates my belief that object-oriented thinking deserves hardware-level support, making our Object Memory Architecture perfectly timed for the industry's evolution.

Hardware Research & Design

Innovative Processor Architecture

My hardware journey began with building an 8-bit processor in Minecraft at age 15 — 32 bytes of dual-ported RAM, full ALU, MMU, and 256 bytes of program memory. While each instruction took 30 seconds, this project demonstrated intuitive understanding that computation is just logical systems that can be reimagined.

Working with Professor David May (legendary designer of Inmos and XMOS processors) transformed this intuition into rigorous engineering. Together, we designed the Integrated Hardware Garbage Collector — hardware that eliminates the abstraction gap between object-oriented software and linear memory models.

My PhD research in Bristol's Trustworthy Systems Lab focused on formal verification of our IHGC design. Using Agda for mathematical proofs, I demonstrated that our garbage collector works perfectly every time — making it viable for commercial hardware implementation where reliability is paramount.

Proven Performance Gains

Our Object Memory Architecture isn't theoretical — it delivers measurable results. Through rigorous testing and validation, we've demonstrated 2-5x performance improvements while completely eliminating memory safety vulnerabilities. This represents the first fundamental advancement in processor architecture since the introduction of cache hierarchies.

Startup Companies

VyperCore: Scaling Innovative Technology

VyperCore represented the commercial breakthrough for our Object Memory Architecture. I co-founded the company, raised £4 million in Series Seed funding, and grew the team to 17 people (14 engineers). We filed four patents, demonstrated 2-5x performance improvements, and proved that our IHGC technology could eliminate memory safety problems at the hardware level.

Leading VyperCore taught me that innovative technology must be paired with rigorous market validation and the right leadership team. Despite our technical breakthroughs, we couldn't demonstrate sufficient customer demand to secure our next funding round — a lesson that reshaped my approach to bringing innovation to market.

Midspace: Pandemic-Era Innovation

During the pandemic, I co-founded Midspace (Clowdr CIC), a virtual conference platform serving universities globally. As CEO and lead developer, I bootstrapped the company to nearly $500K revenue while leading a fully remote international team across the US, UK, and Netherlands.

Midspace served over 30 conferences with thousands of participants each, built entirely open-source from scratch. The experience taught me how to scale distributed teams, deliver under extreme pressure, and navigate complex international client relationships — skills essential for hardware startup leadership.

Early Entrepreneurship: Slide My Way

At age 15, I co-founded Slide My Way, developing the first complete HTML5 animated advertising platform with in-browser editor — launching nearly 10 months ahead of Google's equivalent HTML5 Creatives. While we couldn't compete with Google's market reach, this early success demonstrated my ability to identify market opportunities and execute innovative technical solutions.

Current Focus: Market-Driven Innovation

Having acquired VyperCore's assets with former colleagues, I'm now focused on bringing Object Memory Architecture to market through strategic partnerships and pre-seed funding. I've learned that innovative technology requires the right team, market timing, and proven customer demand to achieve maximum impact.

Education

I'm altruistic by nature so I've become involved in a number of educational projects. I started teaching whilst running the Computer Science Society at my secondary school in lower sixth and have gone on to work for the University of Bristol's Merchant Venturers School of Engineering Outreach Programme (or MVSE Outreach for short!).

As part of MVSE Outreach I helped set up and lead the Digimakers Roadshow programme. I created a Micro:bit Space Invaders workshop which has been to dozens of schools and taught to hundreds of kids as part of Digimakers and Digimakers Roadshow. The workshops were completely free and we provided all the equipment necessary.

MVSE Outreach also ran its main Digimakers event four times per year in the "We The Curious" science center (just by Millennium Square in Bristol).

I'm not currently planning to become a teacher, but there is a high chance I will remain involved in education in the future.

Note: MVSE has since been renamed SCEEM - School for Computer Science, Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Engineering Mathematics - and now to just the School of Computer Science. The university shut down its CS outreach programme for reasons known only to themselves (and presumably the accountants).

Recruitment

I was involved annually in the recruitment of 2nd-year undergraduate students for Caterva (now Alelion) year-long placements. I worked on this freelance on behalf of Essaimage Associates Limited with Robert Owen and other members of the team.

As part of my recruitment work I performed CV reviews and technical interviews via phone (BT Conferencing system) and Skype. I interviewed primarily for the Web/mobile development, Data analysis and Control systems developer roles covering web technologies down to C++ programming.