Work & Experience
Friendly snapshot of my path as a Tier 3 engineer, designing, stabilising and modernising multi-tenant and regulated environments, supporting policing & critical operations, contributing in volunteer roles, and sharing the tooling, platforms and focus areas that shape how I build resilient, secure systems.
Career Timeline
2024 - Present
IT Third Line Engineer · KCS IT Services & Digital Marketing
Tier 3 escalation across multi-tenant estates: deep diagnostics, root cause investigation and infrastructure architecture. Deliver migrations & modernisation (virtualisation, cloud adoption, IAM re-alignment, segmentation, security hardening), capacity & performance modelling, DR/HA test orchestration, pre‑sales validation, HLD/LLD and runbooks while mentoring lower tiers and embedding observability & automation (PowerShell, Ansible, pipelines) to standardise, cut MTTR and improve resilience, security and cost efficiency.
2023 - 2024
Server & Storage Engineer · Northumbria Police
Owned stability and lifecycle of mission‑critical server, virtualisation and enterprise storage platforms supporting 24/7 policing; delivered capacity planning, performance optimisation, patching & vulnerability remediation, backup/recovery assurance (test restores) and contributed to HA clustering, storage tiering and security control decisions in a regulated environment.
2023
IT Third Line Engineer · KCS IT Services & Digital Marketing
Short‑term escalation cover stabilising inherited customer environments: concise health/risk assessments, remediation of backup gaps, misconfiguration and security posture issues, prioritised onboarding support and lean foundation documentation enabling later modernisation.
2022 - 2023
IT Infrastructure Engineer · Integrity IT Solutions
Top escalation point for datacentre compute, storage, networking, backup and security governance; led migrations, upgrades and consolidation with design & as‑built documentation while introducing automation (PowerShell, Ansible) and monitoring/capacity reporting to improve reliability and reduce MTTR.
2020 - 2022
ICT Technical Analyst · Cumbria Police
2nd line / advanced support for critical policing systems including on‑call response: incident, problem & change execution, PowerShell automation of repetitive admin, patch & security cycles, compliance support and DR procedure refinement.
2018 - 2020
ICT Service Desk Technician · Cumbria Police
Frontline & early escalation: incident triage, deeper diagnostics, AD / Group Policy administration, scripted bulk operations (PowerShell), endpoint hardening & patch coordination, forensic data capture pre‑Tier 2, infrastructure maintenance (certificates, backups, print/file services) and SOP / KB authorship.
2015 - 2018
Senior IT Technician · Newman Catholic School
Sole technical authority across networking, servers, virtualisation & endpoint management; delivered safeguarding & security controls, backup/DR testing, stakeholder engagement and scoped/implemented upgrade & remote access (VPN) projects within tight budgets.
2015 - 2019
Customer Support Representative · CraftSRV Ltd (Part-time)
SLA‑driven support for Linux hosting: provisioning, billing queries, customer documentation, regression testing plus community engagement & feedback support.
Community Involvement
2018 - Present
Ubuntu Archive Mirror Host · Official 10Gbps Mirror
Operate and maintain an official 10Gbps Ubuntu archive mirror since 2018, providing high‑availability package distribution bandwidth to the community and improving regional sync performance.
2020 - 2024
Shift Controller (Volunteer) · Blood Bikes Cumbria
Coordinated urgent, out-of-hours medical logistics: dispatched riders, organised Dark Fiber / comms liaison where required, and ensured safe, timely transport of blood, pathology samples, medication, and critical materials between North Cumbrian hospitals. Supported Great North Air Ambulance Service operations via inter-group coordination, rota management, and escalation handling.
2022 - 2024
Technical Team (Yellows) Volunteer · Insomnia Gaming Festival
Supported multiple festival events delivering on-site technical assistance: deploying and maintaining network & infrastructure for attendee (BYOC) areas, troubleshooting connectivity and hardware issues, assisting production/crews, rapid incident response, and enhancing player experience across large-scale LAN environments.
Clearance & Vetting
Previously held UK security and safeguarding clearances enabling work within sensitive and regulated environments:
(SC: Security Clearance · EV: Enhanced Vetting · RV: Recruitment Vetting · DBS: Disclosure & Barring Service)
Technical Expertise
Tier 3 Infrastructure Engineer: Design, escalation, and optimisation of high-availability, security-focused platforms across critical national infrastructure and large-scale enterprise estates.
Infrastructure & Platforms
Security, Networking & Resilience
Automation, Architecture & Engineering
Experience Scale
🏠Home Lab to Enterprise
From personal lab environments to managing 700+ VM enterprise clusters, bringing deep understanding across all scales of infrastructure.
🏛️ Critical National Infrastructure
Hands-on experience with mission-critical systems including national infrastructure and 24/7 control room operations.
⚡ Tier 3 Escalation
Highest point of technical escalation for complex infrastructure issues, system design, and enterprise-level problem resolution.
Work With Me
Operating from the Lake District with KCS (est. 1998), I help organisations modernise, secure and streamline infrastructure—combining deep escalation engineering with pragmatic delivery.
Managed Services
Servers, network, backup, DR, endpoint support & lifecycle care with roadmap advisory.
Co-Managed IT
Augment internal teams: escalations, tooling alignment, capacity cover.
Security
Hardening, identity, email & endpoint controls, policy uplift.
DR & Resilience
HA patterns, RTO/RPO validation, failover tests, recovery assurance.
Migrations & Upgrades
Virtualisation, cloud, storage & directory transitions with minimal risk.
Automation
PowerShell & Ansible: repeatability, velocity & toil reduction.
Root Cause
Deep diagnostics, remediation plans, stability baselining.
Documentation
HLD/LLD, runbooks, SOPs, KB & operational artefacts.
From rapid escalation engagements to phased transformation programmes—happy to scope what fits.