All about me.

Hi, I'm Merlin. I was born in sunny Norwich, I'm the son of an artist and a mathematician. I studied Visual Communication at Leeds College of Art (2006 — 2009), where I taught myself to code. While unconventional, I believe art school creates a good foundation for software engineering. It's taught me design fundamentals (hierarchy, typography, composition, colour theory), the value of research, how to communicate to an audience and most importantly how to think about problems.

I have been working as a software engineer for the past 15 years, primarily in startups and scale-ups across a variety of sectors. I've developed a T-shaped skill set with a deep understanding of the frontend stack and a broad understanding of product design and UX, backend engineering and infrastructure, business operations, security and compliance. I'm passionate about building the teams, processes and software that create amazing digital products.

Currently (2021 — 2024) I'm Staff Frontend Engineer at Healios, joining at a pivotal time as the company transitions from healthcare to health-tech. I'm currently focused on improving the technical maturity of the business and building the foundations for future success alongside leading frontend strategy and implementation.

Recently (2014 — 2021), I co-founded and led engineering at Mo, building a 12 strong engineering team and a product used by 100,000 users from scratch. With a small team we created a product that would often win over industry incumbents (Yammer, Reward Gateway, Perkbox etc) in sales processes. Investor due diligence found our engineering team to be "excellent" and "an enabler for the business".