Staff Software Engineer at Axon. I build and lead high-scale distributed, data-intensive and AI-enabled systems.

I am a Staff Software Engineer, systems architect and engineering leader with more than twenty-five years of professional experience building software products, platforms and engineering teams.

My work focuses on distributed systems, SaaS platforms, search, data-intensive architecture, production reliability and technical leadership. I have led engineering teams, built platform and infrastructure capabilities, decomposed monolithic systems, designed event-driven architectures and mentored engineers across multiple stages of company growth.

At Axon, my current work is within Axon Evidence / DEMS, a large-scale public safety digital evidence platform. My role includes Staff-level technical leadership across architecture, design review, reliability, search, evidence workflows and AI-enabled product capabilities.

Current Focus

My current technical focus includes:

  • Architecture and design review for large-scale production systems

  • AI-enabled evidence workflows and applied LLM infrastructure

  • Search, indexing and retrieval systems

  • Data-intensive and event-driven systems

  • Cloud infrastructure, reliability and observability

  • Media and evidence processing workflows

  • Mentoring engineers in system design, technical judgment and production operations

  • LLM-assisted software engineering and product development workflows

Recent professional experience

Axon

April 2022 – Present

Axon’s mission to Protect Life inspired me to join as a Staff Software Engineer in April 2022.

I work within Axon Evidence / DEMS, a large-scale public safety digital evidence platform used for evidence ingestion, storage, retention, search, review, redaction, sharing and disclosure workflows.

My role involves Staff-level technical leadership across architecture, design review, reliability, search, evidence workflows and AI-enabled product capabilities. I work with engineering teams on system design, operational maturity, data-intensive architecture and production reliability.

Evidence search and retrieval systems

Evidence ingestion and post-ingestion processing

AI-enabled evidence review workflows

Redaction-related workflows

Internal LLM and AI-assisted engineering infrastructure

Cloud-based distributed systems

Reliability, observability and operational scale

Mentoring, technical leadership and engineering development

Loop Returns

January 2020 - April 2022

I joined Loop Returns as one of the early engineering hires after its Series A investment round, initially to build and lead platform and infrastructure work as the company prepared its product and engineering organisation for scale.

My work covered platform engineering, infrastructure, engineering leadership and event-driven architecture. I helped improve engineering processes, supported rapid team growth and contributed to the transition from a monolithic application toward event-driven services.

Platform and infrastructure engineering

Event-driven architecture

Monolith decomposition

AWS infrastructure

Asynchronous processing

Ecommerce returns and exchanges workflows

Reverse logistics, shipping and tracking workflows

Fraud-related decision workflows

Integrations and customer communications

Data pipelines, search and dashboard filtering

Engineering team development and technical leadership

Sprint Media

2017 - 2020

I joined Sprint Media after its CRM and marketing platform, Sprint Campus, had reached product/market fit and was beginning to scale.

I was hired as a founding engineer to help bring engineering in-house, scale the existing application and build the engineering organisation needed to support the product’s growth. My work later developed into a Chief Technology Officer / Head of Engineering role.

SaaS product architecture

CRM and marketing automation workflows

High-volume email campaign processing

Search and reporting infrastructure

Customer data and integrations

Multi-region deployment and failover

Engineering hiring, onboarding and technical leadership

Ambitious Digital &
Alistair Shaw Consulting

2012 - 2017

I led and delivered a range of SaaS, CRM, ERP, ecommerce, online learning and workflow systems through Ambitious Digital and later as an independent consultant.

This work included online learning platforms for language learning and medical training, warehouse management and stock-control systems, CRM and ERP tools, media processing workflows, and my own SaaS product, Vendirun.

SaaS, CRM, ERP and ecommerce systems

Online learning platforms for language learning and medical training

Warehouse management and stock-control systems

Media processing and video workflow systems

CRM and marketing automation products

Infrastructure deployment and production operations

Technical consulting, developer training and customer delivery

Independent product development through Vendirun

For more details on these roles and to look back even further, a current CV is available on request.