Principal Associate
Principal delivery through your consultancy - cloud, integration, data and AI delivery under your governance and in front of your client. I deliver through you, never around you.
What I do
- Full-stack delivery - platform, application, database and pipeline, in one pair of hands
- Cloud and IaC - Azure from zero: Terraform, landing zones, private networking
- Data and databases - modelling, migration, performance, BI and reporting
- Integration and migration - legacy estates connected and moved cleanly
- AI delivery and AI productivity - AI into production, and AI applied inside the delivery itself
- Defence
- Banking
- Insurance
- Energy
- Commodities
- Healthcare
- Identity
I plug into your delivery, not around it
Most of my career has been spent as the senior specialist inside somebody else's programme - working to their governance, in their delivery, in front of their client. That is a particular skill, and it is not the same thing as being a good engineer. It means picking up the shape of how you work, fitting into it without friction, and being the person who makes your team look good in the room.
So this is a supplier relationship, not a dependency. I take on defined work, deliver it, and hand it over documented well enough that your team carries it without me. The engagement ends when the work does.
Selected track record
- Built the cloud platform for a national defence healthcare system from zero - 700,000+ patient records
- Lead architect on a £1B+ remediation platform - 100,000+ cases, passed FCA and SOX audit
- Sole cloud architect for a UK-first certified digital identity platform - a significant Azure estate
- Deployed network-isolated, in-tenant LLM inference for agentic coding inside a secure boundary
Twenty-six years of judgement, and the confidence to carry it in any room - credible with the engineers, the executive and the board alike, and safe to put in front of your client
Why me
- Seasoned judgement
- Credible at every level
- At ease in regulated work
- A supplier, not a dependency
Working with you
- Day rate or fixed-scope SOW - happy either way, priced before we start
- White-label or co-branded - the client sees your team, or ours
- I complement your team - additional senior capacity, not a replacement for it
Consultancies I've worked with
Questions, answered
- How is it engaged?
- A day rate for embedded delivery, or a fixed-scope SOW for a bounded outcome. There is no agency margin on top; you contract with DBHQ Consulting Ltd direct. Terms are agreed before work starts and do not move mid-engagement, and reflect the responsibility, complexity and delivery risk involved. Rates are not discounted: the case for DBHQ is principal judgement with hands-on delivery.
- Can you work white-label?
- Yes. The client sees your brand throughout, or ours - whatever the engagement needs.
- Will you approach our clients?
- No. I work through you, never around you. That is the deal.
- How do you handle our client's governance?
- As if it were my own. Most of my career has been delivering inside somebody else's programme - to their standards, their security model and their reporting lines. That is a distinct skill from engineering, and it is the reason I am safe to put in front of your client.
- DBHQ Consulting Ltd
- Company 06839674
- VAT GB 947 3073 10
- £2m professional indemnity
- £2m public liability
- UK-based and remote-first
- NDA and MSA ready
- References on request
Start dates and working days are agreed before commitment. Code and delivery documentation are maintained in agreed client-accessible locations. Continuous support and guaranteed emergency cover are not included.
A similar constraint in your client programme?
DBHQ can take on an agreed engineering workstream within your delivery governance, under your brand. Describe the milestone, the constraint and the work involved.
I reply within 24 hours