Now booking — available mid September
Sheffield, UK

I turn ideas into
real products.

I work best when the problem isn’t fully defined yet. With ten years building backend systems and cloud infrastructure, I help figure it out and build it properly.

Russell Barnsley-Knox
Technical Direction· MVP Definition· AWS· Serverless· TypeScript· Backend Engineering· Cloud Architecture· Security· 0→1 Builds· Technical Direction· MVP Definition· AWS· Serverless· TypeScript· Backend Engineering· Cloud Architecture· Security· 0→1 Builds·
How I think about it

Build fast to get the MVP in front of users.
Once you know you’re solving the right problem, invest in building it properly.

01

Questions before code

Before writing anything, I spend time on the problem. What are we actually trying to solve? What’s the simplest thing that would tell us whether we’re right?

02

Hands-on, not advisory

I build the thing, not just the plan. Architecture, backend, cloud infrastructure, security. I take it the whole way through without handing off.

03

Direct

If I think something is the wrong thing to build, I’ll say so. If the technical approach has implications worth knowing about, I’ll raise them.

01

Built a search platform from zero. Suppliers uploading, buyers finding. In under three months.

There was a clear vision for what the end user should experience, but no clear path to get there. I worked with the team to define scope before writing a line of code. The real complexity wasn’t search; it was the data. Every supplier sent inventory differently. I designed an integration layer that could accept any format without creating a custom project for each one. Clean data in; fast search out.

02

Rebuilt the product foundation and got features shipping in days, not months.

A product that had served the business well needed to evolve as the company grew. Before redesigning anything, I mapped what it actually needed to do versus what it was doing. Together we cut what wasn’t earning its place, then rebuilt around how the team worked: isolated services, fast deploys, test environments that didn’t require everything running. The result was a platform the team could move fast on.

03

Turned bespoke client builds into a single configurable platform.

Each client event meant starting from scratch: live sessions, on-demand content, sponsor environments, regulated access requirements. Before building anything, I mapped what actually changed between events. The variation was smaller than it looked: different branding, different sessions, different access rules. So instead of building each one, I helped build one platform you could configure. What had taken months to stand up took days.

No pitch.
Just a
conversation.

If you’re building something or think I might be the right fit, get in touch. Even if it’s early and messy, that’s usually when it’s most useful to talk.

If I can help, I’ll tell you how. If I can’t, I’ll say that too.