Nathaniel Wilson

Senior Engineering Leader

Hands-on full-stack developer and engineering leader. I ship the code and build the teams that keep it shipping.

Senior Engineer · Tech Lead · Engineering Manager · Technical PM / Product Owner · Fractional CTO. 10+ years, any stack.

Available now · Bristol, UK · remote
n.wilson19954@gmail.com

About

I take ambiguous, high-stakes software and make it ship — then build the team that keeps it shipping after I've gone.

Over a decade I've gone from sole technical founder building a product end-to-end to running engineering departments of 21+ people responsible for tens of thousands of production servers. I've stabilised broken systems, shipped products that survive real users at 3am, and built engineering cultures that retain the people who build them.

I'm a hands-on full-stack developer first — I still write code every week and ship in React, Next.js, Node and TypeScript, Python, mobile (Flutter), and yes C# / .NET and Azure. My edge is range: I'm not tied to one stack, so I make the right architectural call and spot the bad estimate wherever the team is building. The leadership sits on top of staying close to the code, not stepping away from it.

Today I'm Technical Lead on a .NET 8 + Azure platform — my current contract, not the whole of what I do. Before that I was the sole engineer behind a real-time transport platform (Flutter, Next.js, Firebase) running thousands of daily journeys at 99.5%+ uptime, and I've delivered for enterprise clients in motorsport and high-traffic web.

If you need someone who can own delivery and the hard calls from day one, that's me — as Tech Lead, Engineering Manager, Technical Project Manager / Product Owner, or Fractional CTO. Fully remote, Bristol-based, and available now.

Clients

A decade delivering for recognised brands — directly and through consultancies.

McLaren logoMcLaren
British Gas logoBritish Gas
Centrica logoCentrica
Superdry logoSuperdry
Travel Places logoTravel Places
Fliteline logoFliteline
IONOS logoIONOS
AND Digital logoAND Digital
Fasthosts logoFasthosts
Neptune Digital logoNeptune Digital
Ghyston logoGhyston
& others
  1. Technical

    Enterprise distribution / B2B

    Technical Lead (current)

    Leading delivery of a cloud-native, event-driven integration platform — vendor data ingested and matched against an internal data warehouse, surfaced through a secure internal portal.

    VNet-secured, zero-trust architecture; led the squad through design and delivery.

    • C#
    • .NET 8
    • Azure Functions
    • Service Bus
    • Event Grid
    • Snowflake
  2. Tech

    Enterprise / motorsport / high-traffic web (via consultancy)

    Tech Lead

    Technical lead across enterprise client delivery, including real-time and high-traffic platform work for a global motorsport brand.

    Set the standards, quality gates and testing that measurably cut post-deployment defects.

    • React
    • Next.js
    • Node.js
    • Cloud
    • Real-time
  3. Engineering

    Transport-tech startup (children's transport)

    Engineering Manager — sole engineering lead, 3.5 years

    Owned the entire technical function: dual Flutter mobile apps, a Next.js operations portal, and a Firebase serverless backend, with live GPS tracking and safeguarding compliance.

    99.5%+ uptime across services; ~60% faster release cycles; ~30% cloud-cost cut.

    • Flutter
    • Next.js
    • Firebase
    • Real-time GPS
    • GCP
  4. Senior

    Enterprise consulting — e-commerce & utilities

    Senior / Lead Engineer

    Architecture reviews and modernisation for platforms turning over £10M+, with phased zero-downtime migration paths and infrastructure-as-code.

    Eliminated environment drift; aligned tech-debt reduction with quarterly OKRs.

    • AWS
    • Terraform
    • Docker
    • Node.js
  5. Head

    Hosting / infrastructure (Europe-wide)

    Head of Server — 17-engineer department

    Led the department responsible for tens of thousands of Linux/Windows production servers; senior escalation for catastrophic incidents.

    ~40% faster provisioning; ~25% fewer repeat incidents via blameless post-mortems.

    • Linux
    • Windows Server
    • VMware
    • Automation

Experience

  1. 2026 —

    Technical Lead (Contract) · Ghyston

    Architecting and leading delivery of a .NET 8 + Azure event-driven integration platform — vendor data matched against a Snowflake warehouse and surfaced through a secure internal portal.

    Designed the VNet-secured, zero-trust architecture (Functions, Service Bus, Event Grid, App Gateway, Entra ID) and set the technical design board, ADRs and standards the squad delivers against.

  2. 2026 —

    Tech Lead · Neptune Digital

    Own architecture and delivery across concurrent enterprise client projects, including real-time and high-traffic platform work.

    Introduced engineering standards, quality gates and automated testing that measurably cut post-deployment defects.

  3. 2022 — 2025

    Engineering Manager · Transport-tech startup

    Sole engineering leader for 3.5 years — built the entire product from nothing: dual Flutter apps, a Next.js operations portal, and a Firebase serverless backend.

    Thousands of daily journeys on real-time GPS with safeguarding compliance — 99.5%+ uptime, releases ~60% faster, cloud spend ~30% lower.

  4. 2022

    Senior / Lead Engineer · AND Digital

    Led architecture reviews and zero-downtime modernisation for client platforms turning over £10M+.

    Infrastructure-as-Code with Terraform and Docker; aligned technical-debt reduction to quarterly business OKRs.

  5. 2021 — 2022

    Senior Developer / Deputy Lead · Fasthosts

    Led the containerisation of legacy control-panel and billing services across a polyglot stack (.NET/C#, Python, Node).

    Cut deployment time from hours to minutes; blue-green deploys dropped rollback frequency by 50%+.

  6. 2015 — 2021

    Head of Server / Head of SMB Support · IONOS

    Ran a 17-engineer department behind tens of thousands of production servers across Europe — and earlier a 21-person operation.

    Automation cut provisioning ~40%; blameless post-mortems cut repeat incidents ~25%; promoted multiple reports into senior, lead and management roles.

Skills

The full picture — every layer I've led and shipped across. Range is the point.

Languages

  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • Python
  • C#
  • Java
  • Kotlin
  • Dart
  • Go
  • PHP
  • SQL
  • Bash

Frontend & mobile

  • React
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Flutter / Dart
  • React Native
  • Radix UI
  • HTML5 / CSS3

Backend & frameworks

  • Node.js / Express
  • Python
  • Spring Boot (Java)
  • .NET 8 / ASP.NET Core
  • Firebase (Functions/Auth)
  • REST
  • GraphQL
  • Entity Framework Core

Cloud & DevOps

  • AWS (EC2/S3/RDS/Lambda/SQS)
  • Azure (Functions/Service Bus/Event Grid)
  • GCP / Firebase
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Terraform
  • GitHub Actions
  • Linux
  • Nginx

Data

  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • MongoDB
  • Redis
  • Firestore
  • Snowflake
  • Azure SQL
  • SQLite

Architecture

  • Event-driven
  • Microservices
  • Serverless
  • Real-time / GPS
  • Integration & middleware
  • Observability
  • Auth (OAuth2 / JWT / SSO)

AI / LLM

  • OpenAI & Anthropic APIs
  • RAG
  • Embeddings / semantic search
  • Agentic tooling
  • AI-assisted delivery

E-commerce

  • Shopify Plus (Liquid, Storefront API)
  • PrestaShop
  • WooCommerce

Leadership & delivery

  • Team building (3 → 21+)
  • Hiring & mentoring
  • Technical strategy & roadmap
  • Stakeholder mgmt (C-suite / board)
  • Delivery management
  • Agile (Scrum / Kanban)
  • Incident command
  • Budget & cloud-cost ownership

Writing

  1. 20 May 2026 · 6 min

    What a Tech Lead Actually Owns

    The job title says 'lead', but most of the value isn't in the code. After a decade leading teams from 3 to 21 people, here's where a tech lead actually earns their seat.

  2. 15 May 2026 · 7 min

    .NET 8 + Azure Event-Driven Architecture — Notes From the Field

    Building a secure, event-driven integration platform on Azure Functions, Service Bus, and Event Grid — the decisions that actually matter when you move past the tutorial.