Development Lead

RAVEN Team, Royal Air Force • Leeming, England, United Kingdom

May 2023 - February 2025

Certificates: Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) • ISO/IEC 27005 Risk Manager • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner • Spring Boot For Beginners • Certified in Cybersecurity (CC)
Honours & Awards: King’s Birthday Honours List • Individual 3* Commendation • RAF Talent Strategy Markered

Development Lead

Development Lead for an in-house developed, multi-classification secure communications system that transformed the RAF’s approach to capability delivery. Responsible for securely integrating data centre technologies within deployed networking environments to deliver a fully service-managed platform with comprehensive network and cyber monitoring. Lead and mentor a team of eight engineers, guiding technical delivery and fostering professional development to meet operational requirements. Oversee and innovate system operation across two UK hub sites and ~86 customer sites, ensuring resilience, security and continuous improvement in mission critical environments.

Key Achievements/Projects:

• Recognised on the King’s Birthday Honours List 2024 and awarded a three-star commendation for scaling secure remote access to high-security MoD infrastructure, a feat recognised as unique in the field. Evolved an original one-month prototype into a production-ready, dual-hub redundant solution, delivering eight additional nodes on end-user demand including a dedicated system for the UK Chief Joint Operations, Britain’s most senior operational commander. All nodes are live across active operations.
• Central to delivering the Raven system across live military operations at a total programme cost of ~£15M over five years, providing greater capability than a lower-performing alternative that was projected to cost ~£80M to scope and architect alone, maximising operational effect and Defence value for money.
• Technical lead for a £2M dual-site data centre and redundant NOC/SOC hubs, fully configuring core infrastructure and coordinating Defence and industry partners through installation. The architecture now delivers 99.3% critical service availability at each hub site and increased remote-site mission-critical availability from 92% to 100%.
• Designed and implemented a dual-site, single-cluster Splunk SIEM infrastructure, now recognised as the strategic analytics platform for Air Command’s deployed networks and funded for long-term adoption.
• Architected the system to Zero Trust and Secure-by-Design principles in compliance with NIST SP 800, JSP 440, and JSP 604, ensuring robust protection and interoperability across multi-classification environments.
• Led technical engagement with Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, and VMware to evaluate next-generation firewall, SD-WAN, and SD-routing solutions, producing documented architecture options that informed the programme’s technology roadmap.
• Led scoping and design of a migration from legacy architecture to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) using NSX, vSphere, and vSAN, defining capabilities, benefits, and migration paths to improve scalability, performance, and security posture.
• Transitioned SOC tooling from legacy IDS and PCAP to Corelight, streamlining analyst workflows, improving network visibility, and enhancing real-time threat detection.
• Implemented CI/CD pipelines with structured Git version control, introducing code validation and ensuring secure, traceable infrastructure deployments across all system nodes.
• Overhauled backup and disaster recovery processes across MSSQL, VMware, Windows, and Linux, automating tasks and delivering visualised recovery insights for first-line operators.
• Enhanced automated system build tooling to enable parallel environment provisioning, removing technical constraints and allowing the programme to scale effectively.
• Led a 14-member remote recovery team during live operations, restoring CIS services following major equipment failure and ensuring NATO operations could continue without interruption.
• Re-engineered the system’s network architecture from a single-hub DMVPN design to a dual-hub MPLS-over-DMVPN topology, aligning with secure service provider networking standards. Without this redesign the dual-hub infrastructure would have been unreachable to edge nodes, making this a foundational change that unlocked the redundancy, resilience, and performance improvements delivered across all ~86 remote sites.
• Owned full operational responsibility for an infrastructure estate of 151 physical servers, 348 virtual machines, 300+ network devices, and 201 security appliances across two hub sites and ~86 remote nodes. Maintaining reliability, compliance, and security across a mission-critical Defence programme operating continuously on live operations.
• Technically directed the design and delivery of Project ACHERON, a cross-domain data fusion solution that aggregated feeds from multiple low-cost sensors and high-end air platforms into a single-pane operational picture for key decision-makers. Adopted by 50+ tri-service users, the system directly enhanced operational effectiveness by ensuring commanders had real-time situational awareness to inform effect delivery across the battle space.
• Served on the Cyberspace Profession Advisory Team (CPAT) and 90SU Shadow Board, mentoring junior personnel and contributing to the strategic development of the RAF’s cyber profession.