Vetted on a call by a Wave consultant, not scraped. £120,000 and above.
Twenty years of building and then leading, with several chief technology officer and fractional CTO stints in between the engineering. Architected platforms serving more than 50 million monthly users and designed a framework managing over 500 software components. Ruby on Rails, Node.js and Python across the application layer, AWS with CloudFormation and Ansible underneath, and recent work with MCP and AI coding tooling.
Looking forWinding down current work with roughly a month's notice, targeting around 140k and flexible on how they're engaged, including an employer of record or a contract of record through a Romanian entity.
Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Python, GraphQL · React, React Native, Ember.js · AWS, CloudFormation, Docker, Ansible, Jenkins, Neo4j
A long run of founder, CTO and fractional CTO roles at startups either side of staff and principal engineering posts, now site reliability work at an online marketplace. 13 employers, average stint 2 years 7 months, with a longest of 12 years 8 months.
The employment structure needs settling first. They're open to an employer of record or a contract of record through a Romanian entity, and the target figure was quoted in euros.
Degree in computer science.
Nearly 8 years at one scientific publishing and analytics business, which is rare at principal level and says something about how deep the estate knowledge goes. Owns application and infrastructure availability, scalability and compliance, defines SLIs and SLOs across products, and runs the CI/CD pipelines and monitoring with New Relic and Datadog. Currently embedded in a team putting AI features into production, with Kafka, Neo4j, Solr, EKS and Terraform in the mix.
Looking forNot actively looking. Engaged out of curiosity from a message and would move for cultural alignment and a salary uplift. Minimum base is £125,000 and they have already turned down a role over it.
How they came acrossIn no rush, which changes how this conversation has to go. Asked about shared goals and culture before asking about anything else, and was precise about the numbers.
AWS, EKS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Puppet, Ansible · Kafka, Neo4j, Solr, Airflow · New Relic, Datadog, OpenTelemetry, Jenkins
Systems and DevOps engineering at an e-learning business and a higher education analytics firm, then nearly 8 years at a scientific publishing and analytics business. 3 employers, average stint 4 years 1 month.
Hard floor of £125,000 base. They declined a role at £115,000 with a 25 per cent bonus because the base fell short and the timing would have cost them a March bonus.
Masters in modern communication technologies with business management. Red Hat RHCSA certified.
Grew an SRE organisation from 3 engineers to 30 while infrastructure spend went from 5 million dollars to 50 million, supporting a business moving from 70 million to 500 million dollars of annual recurring revenue. Currently leads 23 engineers across the UK and Europe and still writes code, most recently a TypeScript and Node project on Cloudflare Workers. Runs more than 30 production Kubernetes clusters across AWS and GCP.
Looking forPassively looking. Interesting work and career progression are the pull, ideally in a startup with a high-performance engineering culture, and they were comfortable with the idea of moving from a Kubernetes-heavy estate to serverless.
How they came acrossPragmatic about learning a new stack rather than defending the one they know, which at this level is the thing worth checking. Busy with a multi-cloud programme but made time and gave straight answers.
AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, EKS, GKE · Terraform, ArgoCD, Spinnaker, Helm, Istio · Python, Go, TypeScript, Cloudflare Workers, Kafka
Test automation and software engineering at a global IT services firm of more than 200,000 people, then a global energy major, a UK retail and commercial bank, and now a financial crime screening business. 4 employers, average stint 2 years 7 months.
Passive rather than active, and notice period isn't confirmed. This is a conversation to be won, not an application to be processed.
Masters in computer software engineering. CKA, CKAD, CKS and Google Professional Cloud Architect.
Tell me which came closest and I recalibrate, then come back with 10 to 15 more inside 24 hours.
Show me the wider bank