Daniel Grimes - selected delivery record

First engineer and cloud architect on a major defence programme, rebuilding its clinical systems from the ground up.

Daniel's role

First engineer and cloud architect

Working arrangement

Contractor within a consultancy-led programme

Environment

Major defence programme, multiple security boundaries

Outcome

An Azure estate built from zero, and a Terraform framework adopted as the programme-wide standard

• Built the programme's entire Azure estate from zero: three isolated environments on a hub-and-spoke network across multiple security boundaries
• A Terraform framework of reusable modules, adopted as the programme-wide infrastructure standard
• Enabled multiple COTS vendors to develop and integrate on the platform
• Deployed production, network-isolated AI coding assistance inside the secure boundary - and wrote the adoption patterns the engineering team uses

See the production delivery route→

Lead architect and design authority, seven years, for an FCA-regulated platform handling a tier-1 UK bank's remediation portfolio.

Daniel's role

Lead architect and design authority, seven years

Working arrangement

Contractor on the bank's own programme, retained through a consultancy for the final transition and handover

Environment

Tier-1 UK bank, FCA-regulated remediation portfolio

Outcome

An FCA and SOX audited platform processing 100,000+ cases

• 100,000+ cases processed, representing over £1 billion in remediation value
• A configurable workflow framework built from scratch that passed FCA and SOX audits
• Technical lead for a team of 5-10 developers; introduced CI/CD to a team that had none
• Scaled from a single pilot to bank-wide adoption

Sole cloud architect for the Azure infrastructure behind a UK digital identity platform interoperable with the major consumer identity wallets.

Daniel's role

Sole cloud architect

Working arrangement

Contract architect within the provider's own platform team

Environment

UK digital identity provider

Outcome

The first UK certification against all five national trust-framework roles

• Full Azure estate designed and built across three subscriptions
• Directly enabled the first UK certification against all five national trust-framework roles
• Implemented AI/ML container services for proof of identity and age verification
• Zero-trust architecture for biometric and PII data: private endpoints, full network isolation, encryption throughout

Azure and integration consultant for an infrastructure services group weighed down by manual finance reporting and disconnected legacy systems.

Daniel's role

Azure and integration consultant

Working arrangement

Contract consultant on the group's own systems

Environment

Infrastructure services group

Outcome

Finance reporting automated end to end, and a stalled legacy integration finally working

• Built an Azure data warehouse that automated finance reporting end to end, replacing manual re-keying
• Resolved a stubborn legacy Informix-to-Azure integration so the systems finally talked to each other
• Performance-tuned the production SQL Server behind call-centre operations

Integration and data-migration consultant for a global energy-trading firm connecting its trading systems and moving off legacy platforms.

Daniel's role

Integration and data-migration consultant

Working arrangement

Contract consultant on the firm's own integration and migration programme

Environment

Global energy-trading firm

Outcome

The trading systems integrated, and a legacy platform migrated to SAP

• Built the enterprise integration layer tying the trading systems together (SQL Server, SSIS, SSAS)
• Delivered a cross-commodity data warehouse with ETL and tabular models for analysis
• Led the migration of a legacy system to SAP using custom SQL abstraction tooling

A complete AI-powered consumer platform - 28,000+ published products across 1,600+ brands, a recommendation engine, real-time price comparison and a mobile app - designed, built and launched by one engineer in months.

Daniel's role

Founder and sole engineer

Working arrangement

Own venture, self-funded and built solo

Environment

ScentVerdict - a consumer AI product, designed and launched from zero

Outcome

28,000+ products published live, with a recommendation engine, price comparison and a mobile app

• A verdict for every one of 28,000+ products, generated by an automated multi-stage content pipeline with budget-aware spend controls
• AI and ML throughout: a pgvector similarity engine driving recommendations, and a bespoke generative renderer producing original visuals for every product
• Cloud and DevOps end to end: a Terraform and Terragrunt estate (app platform, managed Postgres, object storage, CDN), five environments and CI/CD from build to live
• SecOps built in: content security policy, rate limiting, OAuth, secrets management and automated dependency and security scanning
• Data engineering at scale: automated retailer-feed sync with conflict resolution, barcode-level product matching and duplicate detection across thousands of pairs
• Full stack, one engineer: server-rendered web, a native mobile app, structured logging and observability, and automated test coverage - details on request

See how AI is used on an engagement→

See ScentVerdict↗ (external site)

Co-founder and CTO: designed and built a national click-and-collect platform spanning 1,500+ locations, an early Azure adopter in 2014.

Daniel's role

Co-founder and CTO

Working arrangement

Own venture, co-founded and built from zero

Environment

National click-and-collect network, 1,500+ locations

Outcome

A platform live across 1,500+ locations, an early Azure adopter in 2014

• Built the complete platform on Azure - web apps, SQL Azure, Redis and messaging
• Integrated bi-directionally with payment-terminal hardware for real-time parcel tracking
• Secured the API with OAuth, API keys and certificate authentication via an API gateway