Experienced startup tech leader, skilled at growth and seed stage. I have led on both tech and product strategy, contributed to overall business strategy, built teams from scratch and managed individual contributors, team leads and managers of managers in departments ranging from 2 to 50 engineers, both fully and partially remote.
Download printable PDF summary (Sep 2020)
Experience
VP Engineering - Lingokids
Oct 2020 - Present
Lingokids helps parents raise amazing children. Our mobile app teaches language, numeracy and other skills through interactive games and videos.
I head the 50-strong Engineering department, which I have grown from 20 engineers. It encompasses backend, mobile, platform, data and game engineers, as well as QA. I have ensured professional growth by evolving our management structure and practices.
I lead on technical strategy, prioritising and executing initiatives to release our app weekly and deliver user value more frequently; instrumenting and improving app performance to increase user retention; expanding the capabiilities of our experimentation platform to accelerate learning; eliminating costly app hotfixes by improving QA and release practices; and simplifying our codebase by identifying and terminating an underperforming strategic bet.
I continually improve our development practices in collaboration with our Engineering Lead group. I have encouraged product-minded engineering to maximize the impact of our work. I have invested in technical design and quality practices to ensure sustainability. I ensure teams own and improve their development processes through retrospectives and post-mortems.
I collaborate with other members of the executive team, contributing to company strategy and operational excellence.
I founded our exercise club, Lingokilometres, encouraging employees to keep healthy and active. We have achieved over 750 weekly goals including members completing their first marathons.
VP Engineering - Housekeep
Jan 2019 - Sep 2020
Housekeep allows customers to book, manage and pay a local cleaner online and enables cleaners to manage a high volume of customers.
As a member of the Exec team I lead on technical strategy and planning: prioritising and delivering impactful changes to our product and business. I ensure we get the maximum possible value for our effort, applying Lean principles to refine scope and iterating rapidly.
I recruit and manage our engineers, ensuring they are motivated and delivering a quality product on time. Building psychological safety and focusing on each individual’s strengths are key elements of my management style.
I oversee architectural decisions and manage tech debt to ensure we maintain the agility needed to drive our business forwards. I manage delivery, both day-to-day and for larger deployments of complex functionality, for both our booking platform and Housekeeper mobile apps.
I introduced Business Intelligence tooling and provided training to the wider business to enable data driven decisions, improving outcomes and prioritisation.
In response to COVID-19 I led the creation of a decentralised system to transfer house keys, and a new deep clean offering. I also successfully advocated for a strategy of small investments in new revenue streams to make our business more resilient.
As a namesake member of the Housekeep Gazelles running club, I helped raise £2,500 for charity in a half marathon.
It is an absolute pleasure to work alongside a VP of Engineering who is such an excellent motivator, strategic thinker and problem solver. Read more
- Diana Holmes Kheti, Head of Product
Technically excellent. Respected in the team. He’s raising the game of the mid-level members of the team that he pairs with.
- 360 Feedback
Cares about people, cares about good code, exceptional manager and mentor.
- 360 Feedback
Interim CTO - Firefly Learning
Jun 2018 - Jan 2019
Firefly provides virtual learning platforms to hundreds of schools around the world.
Stabilised and embedded a new team structure after previous CTO’s departure. Responsible for a department of 16 encompassing backend, frontend, mobile, infrastructure, QA and delivery. Readjusted several roles and addressed team concerns to ensure retention.
Re-prioritised projects to focus on key strategic initiatives; worked with team leads to create detailed estimates and refine scope to derisk delivery timelines.
Mapped the need for technical specialisms and adjusted hiring plans, onboarding a new recruitment partner to deliver on open roles.
Oversaw resolution of incidents during support-heavy start of school year period. Led tech team to put in place mitigation and guidelines to minimise disruption in future.
Successfully led technical due diligence process, securing £5 million of additional VC funding.
Christy worked well with our tech, his team and the leadership team. A star tech leader with a bright future. Read more
- Joe Matthewson, Founder & COO
Consultant CTO - Deuce Tennis
Jan 2018 - Sep 2018
Deuce aims to make it simple, fun and affordable to play tennis. I joined at seed stage with no technology in place, working 1½ days/week.
Led on tech and product strategy. Advised the founding team on product prioritisation and scope, advocating for Lean principles.
Built team of 3 developers and 1 QA by evaluating nearshore partners and conducting remote interviews. Led on system architecture, best practises and tech vs product trade-offs.
Delivered an MVP responsive web app for booking tennis coaching sessions. Launched an initial pilot. Iterated on the app by incorporating user feedback, adding court bookings and recurring payments.
Christy quickly understood our business and problem space and helped us prioritise and refine our product ideas into a deliverable plan. He interviewed offshore agencies and found two excellent developers, who he built immediate trust and rapport with. Read more
- Gordon Collier, Founder
Consultant Technologist/Head Of Technology - WhiteHat GB
Dec 2017 - May 2018
Whitehat is a tech startup that facilitates apprenticeships for non-graduates.
Focused on quantifying candidate potential for apprenticeships by normalising and aggregating existing data and creating data pipelines to pull from live sources.
Prepared a cohort of candidates for evaluation for Google Software Engineering Apprenticeships. Devised and provided training on problem solving, whiteboard interviews and site reliability. Set weekly coding challenges and provided mentorship to assist solving them.
Led the tech team of 3 engineers and was part of the GDPR readiness taskforce, creating policies and providing company-wide training on information security.
VP Engineering - Conversocial
Apr 2016 - Oct 2017
Conversocial enables enterprises to provide exceptional customer service over social media.
Led the engineering department, scaling from 15 to 21 developers, and set technical strategy, as well as sitting on the Exec team and contributing to overall business strategy.
Oversaw 5 team leads, working closely with them to ensure business goals were met and teams performed well. Introduced a career ladder to support ongoing professional development of the whole department and ran bespoke training days. Overhauled interview processes and recruited 7 engineers over 12 months.
Headed the security team, maintaining ISO 27001 certification. Liaised with enterprise client security teams through both RFPs and audits.
Led technical due diligence on the acquisition of HipMob and created integration plans for their technology stack.
Christy was always a pleasure to work with, having an outstanding grasp of not only technical design requirements but also Product and Business needs. Incredibly popular with his team - especially in his capacity of VP where he rapidly implemented a number of key systems and processes designed to support his team and the way they worked. Read more
- Mat Munro, VP Product
A natural people person as well a great technical leader that was well respected by the team. When I decided to move on from my role I felt comfortable knowing that the team would be in excellent hands. Read more
- Colin Howe, CTO
Lead Developer - Conversocial
Nov 2014 - Mar 2016
Led team to develop initial release of Conversocial Crowds in collaboration with Google: a mobile first web app to allow peer to peer resolution of customer queries.
Built a new responsive application with React frontend, new endpoints, data models and backend services. Served from same web servers as main application using new subdomain and custom Django middleware. Also personally productionised data scientist’s analysis into question classifier service.
Also led team to develop Customer Profiles component, allowing rich view of customers with annotations, tags and notes and full history of changes.
Geographically mirrored Flask service to comply with EU data law, required custom auth layer to enable client browsers to talk directly with service. React frontend to display and edit customer information, as well as configurable iFrame component.
Other projects include Twitter compliance firehose consumer; Twitter batching backdrop fetcher.
Technologies: Python, React.js, Javascript, Flask
Christy embodies the ideal of a technical leader that understands what it means to be client-focused. He is a CTO with a stellar future. Read more
- David Stobs-Stobart, VP Product
When I first joined his team with no software experience, he took me under his wing. He taught me how to be a good software engineer, valuable employee and responsible adult! Read more
- Tom Hopkins, Technical Lead
Organiser - Python and Django Coding Meetup
May 2013 - Nov 2014
Hosted a biweekly meetup to work on Python and Django projects.
Provided advice and assistance to both new and experienced Python/Django users. Gave lightning talks on development tooling and techniques.
Software Developer; Senior Developer - Conversocial
Oct 2011 - Nov 2014
Independently designed and implemented backend for Threaded Conversations, porting entire workflow to use conversations rather than individual messages.
Created data models and threading service, provided new endpoints in collaboration with frontend team ensuring high performance throughout, created data migration tooling and orchestrated migrations for all customers.
Other projects include analytics service and frontend; approval workflow; internal tooling for admin and debugging; production deploy web service.
Technologies: Python, Django, MongoDB
As an engineer he was well respected for his technical knowledge and ability to adapt to new challenges while continuing to deliver functionality that was critical to the growth of the business. Read more
- Iain Bullard, Technical Lead
Software Developer - Revector
Oct 2010 - Oct 2011
Revector provides mobile telephone fraud detection and prevention to network operators.
Introduced Django to provide more robust tooling after identifying recurring revenue loss due to misconfiguration; this involved writing custom ORM bindings to support MySQL views of timeseries data.
Other projects include Python API bindings for CRM; new Javascript visualisations; reporting features for client frontend.
Technologies: Python, Django, Javascript
eLearning Development & Support - Gravesend Grammar School
Jul 2009 - Jul 2010
Developed room booking system in Ruby on Rails; trained teachers in use of software; introduced, administered and supported new Virtual Learning Environment.
Education
BSc, Mathematics - University of Bristol
2006 - 2009
2:1 (Hons). Final year project: “Chaos in Billiards” included Python simulation, awarded 1st.
Recommendations
It is an absolute pleasure to work alongside a VP of Engineering who is such an excellent motivator, strategic thinker and problem solver.
There is breadth and depth to what Christy can do, from building and running a tech team and setting out architecture to hands-on programming, data analysis and finding root causes at all hours.
Down to earth and approachable, he was quick to establish trust and comradery. He leads with enthusiasm and is dedicated to delivering exceptional support and guidance to all.
I highly recommend working with Christy, he works hard and is an asset to any business.
- Diana Holmes Kheti, Head of Product, Housekeep
Christy joined Firefly as an interim at a critical time and was able to contribute immediately. He picked things up incredibly quickly, getting familiar with our growing team and tech stack and helped to embed a new squad structure and way of working. Christy worked well with our tech, his team and the leadership team. A star tech leader with a bright future.
- Joe Matthewson, Founder & COO, Firefly Learning
Christy joined us at early seed stages with zero tech in place. He quickly understood our business and problem space and helped us prioritise and refine our product ideas into a deliverable plan. He interviewed offshore agencies and found two excellent developers, who he built immediate trust and rapport with. They felt like full members of our team rather than contractors and the whole unit was working effectively with minimal lag time.
As the team built our MVP Christy ensured that we could frequently feed back on work in progress. He clearly explained trade offs and guided the team to create the most possible value for the least possible spend. He incorporated user feedback from soft launches to ensure any issues were addressed early.
When we demoed our MVP to investors they were frankly shocked at how much we had been able to accomplish given our budgets. I wholeheartedly recommend working with Christy and would love to do so again.
- Gordon Collier, Founder, Deuce Tennis
I worked with Christy for nearly three years at Conversocial - first in has capacity as an Engineering Team Lead and later as VP Engineering.
Christy was always a pleasure to work with, having an outstanding grasp of not only technical design requirements but also Product and Business needs. Incredibly popular with his team - especially in his capacity of VP where he rapidly implemented a number of key systems and processes designed to support his team and the way they worked. Systems that were still in place and functioning well long after he had left the organisation.
If you have the opportunity to work with Christy in the future I would highly recommend you to take it.
- Mat Munro, VP Product, Conversocial
I initially hired Christy as an engineer during my time at Conversocial. It rapidly became apparent that Christy is an incredibly bright individual and was going to become a huge asset to the team. Christy worked hard (and smart) whilst also being great with his co-workers. Christy soon became one of our first team leads and grew into the role with apparent ease.
Christy did such a great job that when the company grew and we needed a VP Engineering we performed an external search and found nobody that we would be as happy with. Christy took on the VP role and made it his own. A natural people person as well as a great technical leader that was well respected by the team. When I decided to move on from my role I felt comfortable knowing that the team would be in excellent hands.
I keep trying to find ways to work with Christy again and the dots never quite joining up. Whoever next gets to work with Christy should count themselves very lucky.
- Colin Howe, CTO, Conversocial
Christy is instantly recognizable as a natural leader. He draws in technical and non-technical colleagues alike with his energy, sense of humour, and work ethic. Christy embodies the ideal of a technical leader that understands what it means to be client-focused. I admired his capacity to manage huge workloads and the demands of a fast growing junior team without once getting agitated or impatient. I really enjoyed working with Christy. He is a CTO with a stellar future. VC’s, take note.
- David Stobs-Stobart, VP Product, Conversocial
Christy was first my manager as a team lead, then later as VP Engineering. In both roles he was approachable, considerate, and unwavering in making tough decisions. When I first joined his team with no software experience, he took me under his wing. He taught me how to be a good software engineer, valuable employee and responsible adult!
In the VP role, he quickly demonstrated an ability to effectively manage frequently changing requirements from other parts of the business whilst maintaining a strong sense of direction within the Engineering team. He fostered a culture of mutual respect, transparency and engineering excellence. I would strongly recommend Christy to anyone looking for help in managing their engineering team.
- Tom Hopkins, Technical Lead, Conversocial
Back to Conversocial (Lead Developer)
I worked with Christy for a number of years in two quite different roles, firstly as his peer within the engineering team at Conversocial and then reported to him after he transitioned into the VP of Engineering role. Throughout both roles Christy brought a positive energy to everything he did which made him a pleasure to work with.
As an engineer he was well respected for his technical knowledge and ability to adapt to new challenges while continuing to deliver functionality that was critical to the growth of the business. As an engineering leader he worked tirelessly to balance the needs of a growing engineering team and the overall business strategy.
Should the opportunity arise I’d definitely work with Christy again and highly recommend him.
- Iain Bullard, Technical Lead, Conversocial
Back to Conversocial (Developer)
Personal Projects/Open Source
- before_after - sugar over Mock library to enable easier testing of race conditions
- skicam - home-made GoPro/MP3 player using Raspberry Pi & Camera Module
- magpie - Monopoly Deal clone using React/Redux
- ringoffire - in-browser party game for friend’s birthday
- kettle - rollout system with web interface and rollback capabilities
- zephzone - single command to enable focus, with companion Android app
- londoncommute - London bus commute mapper