About

I’m an engineering leader and builder. Over twenty years I’ve gone from low-latency trading systems at investment banks, to founding-CTO of an institutional crypto analytics startup acquired by Coinbase, to Staff Engineer at Coinbase, to founding engineer at a fintech, and now CTO & Co-Founder of Mirador — a real-time Web3 observability platform.

I’m most useful at the zero-to-one and one-to-scale boundaries: designing the architecture, building the first version myself, and then scaling the team and platform around it.

What I’m doing now #

CTO & Co-Founder, Mirador — November 2025 – present

Building a real-time Web3 observability platform. Designed and built the core beta — a streaming stack in Go, Kafka, and Redis — integrating 6 blockchains and 4 bridges in under three months. Hands-on across backend, infrastructure, and AI-driven CI/CD. Leading beta launch, ETH Denver showcase, and a planned mid-year fundraise.

Recent roles #

Founding Engineer, Ekorn — October 2024 – September 2025

First permanent engineer in London. Stabilised and launched the MVP. Redesigned the GCP architecture. Modernised the stack to Kotlin, gRPC, and Vertex — taking key paths from seconds to milliseconds. Built the integrated FactFind tool. Hired and mentored four engineers.

Staff Engineer, Coinbase — May 2021 – November 2023

FCM technical lead for Coinbase Financial Markets. Led the architecture of the futures product through to NFA approval and launch. Drove vendor integrations, RFP processes, and the technical work to bring Skew’s products into the Coinbase Prime ecosystem.

CTO, Skew (acquired by Coinbase) — May 2019 – May 2021

First hire post-seed. Built the Analytics and RFQ Trading Platform from scratch. Achieved $1M ARR within six months of the paid offering. Worked with regulators on RFQ oversight. Integrated with CME SmartStream. Led the technical due diligence for both fundraising and the Coinbase acquisition.

Senior Staff Engineer, Blockchain.com — November 2017 – May 2019

Led the market-making, risk, and algorithmic execution platform. Designed dynamic quote-tier market-making with internalisation and auto-hedging. Built a Smart Order Router, execution algos, and an automated inventory management system tied into pre-trade risk.

Associate Director, UBS — January 2016 – November 2017

Contributed to UBS’s Low Latency Order Management System and eFX middleware.

Machine Trading Engineer, Rand Merchant Bank — December 2006 – December 2015

Led the development of RMB’s fully automated cross-asset market-making and trading platform. Designed FX order management, automated hedging, and risk systems. Trading certifications for JSE and SAFEX. Completed CFA Level I.

Software Developer, Dariel Solutions — February 2006 – November 2015

Prudential Life insurance platform (white-labelled Discovery Life).

Integration Developer, Telkom — February 2004 – January 2006

C/C++ integration on BEA Tuxedo. Drove early adoption of BEA WebLogic (J2EE).

Education #

• BSc Honours, Computer Science — University of Pretoria, 2006 (completed with distinction)
• BSc, Computer Science & Mathematics — University of the Witwatersrand, 2004

Awards #

• Coinbase High Impact Award
• Coinbase Pay for Performance Award
• Blockchain.com Best New Joiner award
• Rand Merchant Bank Watch Award

Selected references #

• Coinbase FCM achieves NFA approval
• Coinbase Futures goes live
• Coinbase acquires Skew
• Skew & CME SmartStream technical write-up
• Octopus Ventures: Our investment in Skew
• Institutional Investor: Why financial market data is moving to the cloud

Get in touch #

The best way to reach me is by email or LinkedIn. I’m based in Shepperton, near London, and I’m open to advisory conversations, fractional CTO engagements, and the occasional good problem.