Who am I?
Thanks for popping by!
I am a software engineering leader with well over 20 years experience (15 years as a manager and leader). I have led teams of front-end, back-end, full-stack, devops and native app engineers. I have experience of managing Managers, Engineering Managers and Staff and Principal Engineers.
For a lot of us working remotely is challenging and so I created a Pecha Kucha to share with work colleagues. Pecha Kucha is Japanese for 'chit chat' and it's a simple 20 slide (of max 20s duration) about a topic. In this case the topic was me! Getting to know each other like this I believe increases our 'connectedness'
In a similar vein, there is a trend for creating Readmes. This is a short document on how I like to work / communicate. Here is mine
This site contains summaries of my work history / major achievements, but if you'd rather see it in CV/Resume format you can find it here
Achievements / Competencies
What I've done
Team Building
In my first role as an EM I scaled a team of 15 from scratch creating a new product. Even whilst scaling we achieved 50% YOY revenue growth. We also were very early adopters of Agile improving throughput on the team.
I doubled the size of my pillar at Expedia. Largely due to leadership wanting a new project to come to my pillar versus another pillar as they felt we would be more capable of success.
Recruitment
I have scaled many engineering teams and attracted top engineering talent to my team.
At Qogita, in challenging market conditions, with very little natural draw I scaled a team from 5-35 within 8 months largely by persuading engineers from my network I'd worked with in the past to come and work for me. I also spoke at conferences and on podcasts to explain the Employer brand and attract talent to the organisation.
Culture
By creating environments of autonomy in all positions I have led, attrition in my teams have been less than company and dept average (eg 0% at Fourth vs 11% dept)
Engagement rates (pulse survey) of my department at Qogita was 10% above the next best department.
Product
At Qogita, the focus was making sure the engineers were fully understanding the customer and the problem statement to deliver the best value. By coaching them on this and doing things like week-long ideation workshops, their engagement levels rose. Examples included them going off and doing their own personal research into the business challenges (aside from product managers) and being the first to respond to questions from stakeholders (rather than revert to Product Managers)
Coaching/Mentoring
I founded and ran a multi-track peer-peer engineering leadership program at Expedia; supporting 30+ new and experienced managers develop their management and leadership capabilities.
I mentor upcoming Engineering Managers. One of my mentees landed an EM role at google and another achieved two promotions in three years.
Technical Excellence / Delivery
By adopting the spotify model of chapters and guilds at Qogita we were able to identify key areas of technical improvements in the system. I then took to company prioritisation meeting when we increased allocation from <10% to 25%
At Qogita we looked at improving delivery throughput by looking at the DORA metrics. With DevOps team we implemented changes to process (CI/CD, environments, review process) so that for most of the metrics the teams moved from fair/good to good/elite
Presentation Skills
Highly competent presenter and public speaker:
• Led presentation to Board for adoption of initiatives ie innovation time, employee engagement initiative , leadership development program). Influenced to get buy-in and allocation of resources.
• Presentation to potential investors of organisation
• Spoken at many conferences on engineering leadership including to over 1500 at LeadDev London. Excellent feedback on talk via Twitter
Change Management
Led the team through a number of reorgs at Expedia. In order to have greater engagement in the process (which is a challenging process that can result in attrition) I introduced a reTeaming approach to the reorg, whereby the engineers have some of the autonomy on where they go post reorg.
Experience & Roles
2021 - Present
Head of Engineering, Qogita
• Scaled Engineering team 5-35 in 6 months in challenging market conditions (Pre Series A - Post Series B)
• Member of Senior Leadership Team
2016-2021
Director, Engineering; Expedia Group
• Lead pillar of 100 cross-functional engineers across 13 teams, 5 locations
2014-2016
Lead Software Engineering Manager, Fourth
• Accountable for 5 delivery teams (approx. 50-60 software engineers)
2001-2014
Developer - Senior Developer - Engineering Manager, Brady
• Doubled revenue on new product whilst scaling team to 15
Recommendations
What those who I have worked with have said about me. Check full comments on my LinkedIn
He did a great job scaling the team in a very short period, and I can confidently feel we have a top-tier engineering team thanks to his hard work.
Jonathan is friendly, intelligent, articulate, adaptable and importantly a good leader
He played a crucial role in my decision to transition to the startup world due to his ability to effectively communicate the culture he was building. His communication style was authentic, honest, and engaging, highlighting the qualities possessed only by great leaders.
I highly recommend Jonathan as an inspirational and empathetic leader who has the perfect skillset to build out high performing and happy engineering teams.