Gareth Hughes
Gareth Hughes

Gareth Hughes

Senior Engineering Manager · Sydney, Australia

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Expert .NET and JavaScript engineer and hands-on technical leader with 20 years of experience across England and Australia, with over a decade of engineering leadership. Proven track record delivering technical transformation and platform modernisation at scale — across domains including real estate, compliance, travel, and digital media.

Currently building production SaaS tooling — Squirrel Notes and Fragile — using AI-assisted development workflows, demonstrating active IC technical contribution alongside organisational impact.

Core competencies: System design and architecture, event-driven architecture, cloud-native platforms, legacy modernisation, CI/CD pipeline development, agentic AI integration, and engineering team leadership — across delivery models from large enterprise waterfall projects to agile product-led organisations.

Skills

Architecture & Design

Event-Driven ArchitectureMicroservicesDDDCQRSSystem DesignMicro-FE

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS (ECS, Fargate, Lambda, DynamoDB)KubernetesTerraformCDKOpenTelemetryElastic

Languages & Frameworks

C#.NET Framework.NET 5+TypeScriptNode.jsReactVue.jsPHPGraphQL

Data & Messaging

PostgreSQLSQL ServerDynamoDBSNS/SQSKafkaSnowflakeEntity Framework

DevOps & Tooling

CI/CDDockerAzure DevOpsGitHub ActionsIaCServerless FrameworkOpsGenie

AI & Automation

Agentic AIClaude CodeGitHub CopilotAmazon QAI workflow design

Security & Compliance

IAM Policy DesignSecrets ManagementAPI SecurityISO 27001PCI DSS

Side projects

Squirrel Notes

Mar 2026 – Present

A privacy-first, zero-knowledge note-taking app for ADHD brains. Built and launched end-to-end as a production SaaS product using AI-assisted development tooling — gaining firsthand intuition for where AI accelerates delivery and where human judgment remains essential.

TypeScriptNode.jsAWSGitHub CopilotCDK

Fragile

Apr 2026 – Present

A self-hosted engineering metrics dashboard that connects to a Jira Cloud instance and surfaces DORA metrics, sprint and Kanban planning analytics, cycle time analysis, and roadmap accuracy tracking.

TypeScriptNode.jsAWSGitHub CopilotTerraform

Experience

Senior Engineering Manager — MyPass Global

Sydney · 2024–Present

Led software engineering and data across six cross-functional squads (25–30 engineers), responsible for re-platforming and platform stability including future-state architecture design in collaboration with engineering squads.

  • Directed a high-performance engineering department across six squads, establishing a new Platform Engineering function to bridge developer experience and operational stability
  • Acted as primary technical stakeholder in enterprise discovery, designing future-state architecture that secured a $6–8m ARR partnership
  • Authored a multi-year technical roadmap covering legacy infrastructure transition to event-driven architecture, including a comprehensive database migration strategy
TypeScriptNode.jsAWS (ECS, Fargate, Lambda, DynamoDB, SNS/SQS)PostgreSQLTerraformCDKClaude Code

Lead Engineer — A-Leagues

Sydney · 2023–2024

Established a new engineering team, building agile processes and optimising ways of working from the ground up.

  • Delivered aleagues.com.au for the 2023/24 season including full data migration from the legacy platform
  • Built and launched 13 club websites including complete data migration
  • Led initiative to rebuild data ingestion pipelines, reducing cloud costs by 70% through event-driven architecture
  • Established engineering standards and CI/CD practices for the new team structure
PHPWordPressTypeScriptReactAWS (Lambda, SNS/SQS, DynamoDB)Azure DevOpsCDK

Senior Developer — Pluralsight

Remote · 2022–2023

Technical integration between A Cloud Guru and Pluralsight platforms following acquisition, working across distributed systems and event-driven architecture.

  • Led large-scale Node.js version upgrade across multiple services, improving security posture and enabling modern tooling
  • Developed custom Serverless Framework plugin to standardise secrets management across 50+ Lambda functions
  • Architected integration with Pluralsight's Kafka-based event platform using Inbox/Outbox pattern for reliable message delivery
TypeScriptNode.jsGraphQLServerless FrameworkKafkaAWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, Secrets Manager)

Software Engineering Team Lead — Wilbur

Remote · 2020–2022

Brought in to take over from an outgoing engineering team; established agile methodologies and modernised legacy systems while maintaining business continuity.

  • Migrated legacy .NET application from Azure VMs to AWS Fargate, reducing infrastructure costs and improving deployment velocity
  • Architected and developed a new repair portal using cloud-native technologies with CQRS/MediatR patterns
  • Modernised application stack from .NET Framework to .NET 6+
  • Created and deployed build pipelines using Azure DevOps with Terraform
C#.NET 6AWS (ECS, Fargate, SQS/SNS, Lambda)SQL ServerPostgreSQLTerraformVue.js

Software Engineering Team Lead — Domain

Sydney · 2019–2020

Responsible for the billing platform, managing complex stakeholder relationships across Strategy, Salesforce, and Operations teams.

  • Delivered a complex price change project introducing a price-banding system, coordinating across multiple business units
  • Designed and delivered architecture for migration from bulk billing to real-time billing with Zuora and Salesforce integrations
  • Improved platform stability through service modernisation and caching strategies
C#.NET FrameworkAWS (EC2, SQS/SNS, Lambda)SQL ServerElasticsearchSalesforce

Technical Director — Helium

Sydney · 2016–2019

Responsible for all technical aspects of the consultancy including strategy, team resourcing, and engineering processes. Combined hands-on technical leadership with client-facing responsibilities.

  • Established technical strategy and engineering processes for a growing consultancy
  • Led technical engagement for major clients including NSW Government and ALDI
  • Delivered end-to-end solutions from pre-sales through to production handover
C#.NET FrameworkNode.jsReactVue.jsPHPAWS

Earlier roles

CompanyRole
Corporate Travel ManagementSenior Developer
HotelsCombinedSenior Developer
NineContractor
TechnoPhobiaJunior → Developer → Senior Developer

Education

Sheffield Hallam University

BSc (Hons) Computing — Software Engineering — First Class