Microsoft · Met Office · Public sector, climate science
Azure services for a climate supercomputer
Challenge
Microsoft and the Met Office set out to deliver a new Azure-based
supercomputer to enable better climate change models. The programme
has been reported publicly by BBC News. It was an SC-cleared
programme, so this summary stays with what is already public and
what Adam's role involved.
Approach
Adam was embedded with Microsoft consultants in agile teams. He
designed the technical architecture for his vertical in line with
the wider programme and delivered it end to end, producing
deployment plans and architecture documentation for each
microservice. He later returned as Lead Software Engineer, progressing
from senior engineer to squad lead and then lead engineer: running a
feature team, supporting peer leads and acting as programme architect
for his project manager, with roughly half his time on hands-on
engineering. He also established AI-assisted engineering practices
for code navigation, test generation and incident triage.
Outcome
Cloud-native services on Azure Kubernetes Service, deployed with Bicep
and Helm, built for sub-second response targets at very large data
scale, with documentation for smooth handover and on-call support.
The AI-assisted practices improved team throughput and reduced
time-to-fix.
Tools: C#/.NET, Dapr, GraphQL, Kubernetes (AKS), Bicep, Helm, Terraform, Azure DevOps, Cosmos DB, Azure SQL, Event Grid, Event Hubs, Service Bus.
Landmark · Ofgem · Energy regulation
An energy switching framework built for load
Challenge
Landmark was engaged to create Ofgem's new energy switching
framework, taking a process that took around four weeks down to a
single day. That meant sending millions of messages in short time
frames against a demanding SLA, on infrastructure that had already
been chosen.
Approach
Adam built core parts of the framework, including message signing,
addressing and reporting through Log Analytics, and improved the Azure
DevOps pipelines. He introduced SRE practices around monitoring and
load and capacity planning, using k6 and JMeter to find performance
issues and race conditions under load. When testing showed the system
could not meet its SLA, he designed and led the architectural changes:
re-architected queues with sharding, revised Cosmos DB containers and
partition keys, and distributed caching invalidated through the Cosmos
DB change feed. He also introduced Terraform.
Outcome
The architectural changes enabled the system to exceed its SLA
requirements, and Terraform greatly simplified releasing code and
infrastructure.
Tools: C#/.NET, Azure Functions, Azure Queues, Cosmos DB, Azure Cache for Redis, APIM, Terraform, ARM templates, k6, JMeter, Log Analytics.
UK Hydrographic Office · Marine geospatial data
Turning DataHub around
Challenge
DataHub, a metadata-driven storage hub, is a core capability for the
UKHO, which stores very large amounts of data. The initiative was
failing and the team was underperforming.
Approach
Adam joined as Principal Software Engineer and Technical Product
Owner, leading two teams of 25 people in total. He worked with
enterprise, data and senior architects on a roadmap, rebuilt the
team's testing and monitoring, and introduced a no-blame culture with
post-mortems after deployments and outages. The team modernised a
legacy Java/Kotlin solution into C# and moved from Hasura to
HotChocolate GraphQL. He also designed the architecture for a sister
team's Angular project feeding external data into DataHub, using
Azure Defender for Storage as a precursor to entering the hub,
wrote the UKHO's containerisation policy and presented to
Architectural Review Boards.
Outcome
A failing initiative became a delivery stream with clear product
outcomes, and a FinOps review of the Azure subscriptions saved around
£60,000 a year initially.
Tools: C#/.NET, GraphQL, Azure Functions, APIM, Event Grid, Event Hubs, Data Lake Storage, Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, AKS, Helm, Terraform, Azure DevOps.
Schneider Electric · Wiser Home · Energy and IoT
DevOps transformation and a new IoT platform
Challenge
The Wiser Home insights platform helps households reduce their energy
bills through data and predictions about gas and electricity use. When
Adam joined, code was published from Visual Studio straight into any
environment, including production. There was no CI/CD, no
configuration management and little useful monitoring.
Approach
Joining as lead cloud developer, Adam became solution architect within
days, leading a team of five. He led the team's shift to DevOps:
Azure DevOps YAML pipelines that separated infrastructure and code,
Terraform for the hybrid, multi-cloud estate, Terratest so
infrastructure code was tested too, and a rebuild of the cloud
configuration in Terraform. He designed a new IoT cloud to unify the
US and EU estates into a UK-hosted platform, integrated third-party
IoT feeds into the Event Hubs architecture, and documented the changes
needed for disaster recovery and monitoring.
Outcome
Repeatable, tested deployments in place of manual releases, a platform
design aimed at better reliability, compliance and customer
experience, and a customer-facing budgeting feature, including
seasonal calculations, to help households manage energy use and cost.
Tools: C#/.NET, Azure Functions, Event Hubs, Cosmos DB, Blob and Table Storage, Terraform, Terratest, Azure DevOps, App Insights, Log Analytics.
Office for Students (via Cadence Innova) · Education regulation
A secure self-service regulatory portal
Challenge
The Office for Students needed a new website so education providers
could handle their regulatory needs themselves. The work called for
thorough requirements gathering, a strong focus on security and tight
timescales.
Approach
As the sole full-stack developer, Adam architected the front end and
middle tier of a Sitefinity portal integrated with Dynamics CRM. It
let providers create contacts, assign logins and permissions, link
contacts to regulatory roles, raise regulatory cases, and track
messages and cases. A configurable validation layer made sure
communication between Sitefinity and CRM was untampered and matched
expected inputs.
Outcome
An accessible, mobile-friendly portal that passed three external
penetration tests by two companies.
Tools: C#/.NET, MVC, Sitefinity, Dynamics CRM 365, Azure, Azure AD, NUnit, Moq.
Stonewater · Housing
Platform consolidation with AI-assisted tooling
Challenge
Internal product teams needed faster, safer delivery. Infrastructure
as code was deployed manually and inconsistently across subscriptions.
Approach
In a DevOps-focused role, Adam implemented subscription vending and a
hub-and-spoke network model, built Terraform-based Azure Managed
DevOps agents, and consolidated the IaC into modular, repeatable
scripts that deploy across multiple subscriptions per environment. He
also introduced AI-assisted engineering tooling for code review
support, troubleshooting and automation helpers.
Outcome
Better security, consistency and time-to-environment for delivery
teams, more reliable pipelines, and AI tooling aimed at shorter cycle
times and higher delivery throughput.
Tools: Terraform, Azure DevOps, virtual networking, App Service, Key Vault, Blob and Table Storage.
Pets at Home · Retail
A new website and customer import
Challenge
Pets at Home was launching a new website, and its existing customers
needed to move across to it.
Approach
Adam worked on the new Pets at Home website and on the customer
import, migrating existing customer data to the new site.
Outcome
Existing customers were moved across so they had a seamless
experience on the new site.
