Simon Holmes

Human-Centric Engineering

Is your engineering team not running the way you want it to? Chances are it's not a technical issue or a skills gap. Chances are, it's more complex - it's human.

We partner with people who believe what we believe, namely that:
1) Software engineering is a deeply human endeavour
2) Software delivery and organisational performance are predicted by the underlying engineering culture

Alongside consultancy, change management, and interim management two of our most popular services are:

1) Engineering Culture Index
Our Engineering Culture Index provides a way to measure your engineering culture, highlighting the strengths of the team and the issues holding you back.

2) Team Dependencies Matrix
Identify the hidden bottlenecks and dependencies that are slowing your team town.

For both of these we help you with the root cause analysis and corrective actions. They are often combined together into a complete actionable audit.

Co-Founder

Khonsu

B2C travel tech startup headquartered in New York, leveraging generative AI to scale human expertise.

Ensure aligned product & business strategy.

Optimise internal operations to increase efficiency and meet financial goals while ensuring delivery quality remains exceptional.

Define roadmap for product development, prioritising strategic importance, impact, timeliness and benefit for the long-term vision.

Develop technical strategy and direction.

Sounding board and ideas partner with the CEO.

Fractional COO/CTO

Various Publishing Houses

The source of the most meaningful piece of feedback I ever received.

“I interviewed someone today who literally coded his way out of poverty and depression (his words) by self-learning. It was a very inspirational story.

When he told me how he did it, he said 'well there is one book which I found on MEAN'..... and I instantly knew it would be yours.

Pretty cool stuff. You should be proud of what that book did for people.”

There is no feeling quite like elevating the quality of life for somebody, through sharing what you know.

So that’s what I continue to do now.

Not only that.

Through writing my books I honed the craft of breaking down complex topics and explaining them in understandable ways.

Writing a book is HARD.

And you certainly don’t do it for the money.

Good writing is essential for remote work, hybrid work, and the Future of Work.

And I learned a thing or two about writing during the years (yes, YEARS) it takes to write books.

It is the foundation of asynchronous work, collaboration, and communication.

Author

Simon Holmes Ventures

I help tech companies
- Get engineering teams unstuck
- Get to product and profitability faster
- Align teams, strategies, and business goals

I can help you:
- Hit your delivery targets
- Align engineering priorities with business value
- Rebuild your confidence in your engineering team
- Keep your growing team effective and productive as they scale

And most importantly, through all of the above I help you to focus on what's most important - vision, strategy, and business goals.

I specialise in distributed teams - remote or hybrid.

Founder, Coach, Consultant

LivePerson

I worked closely with the CEO to bring the Future of Work into the operational present, into the culture, systems, and processes across the globe.

Co-founded Bella DAO - a Web3 startup - with the CEO, CMO and Senior Leadership Team. Co-authored a whitepaper focused on innovating conversational commerce with blockchain, decentralised ownership, and decentralised operations.

Combined personal vision, drive, and leadership experience to spearhead a collaborative effort with 200 internal contributors to establish an asynchronous-first way of working. Worked cross-
functionally with several stakeholders including the C-suite and Board of Directors. As a result, self-identified burnout reduced by 10% within 9 months during the pandemic.

Appointed by the CEO to lead a cultural transformation project involving 220 employee volunteers across five teams, resulting in increased collaboration, connection, wellbeing, and professional/personal growth. Implemented a change management plan using the Prosci ADKAR framework.

Collaborated with global organisational consulting firm KornFerry and senior SMEs to develop hiring profiles and success profiles for all roles and levels globally, to create a framework for meaningful individual development plans.

Co-founded LivePerson's Diversity Council. Consulted with the Senior Leadership Team, contributing to policy updates and increasing internal NPS by 30-points among specific underserved groups.

Director, Future of Work Strategy

🤝 Coaching and mentoring
Mentored my peers on distributed team management.
Guided both architects and engineers towards solutions through critical thinking, helping them gain this skill and practice the process rather than simply giving a solution or an instruction.

💪 Team retention
I created career pathing, defining new roles and titles to aid both retention and recruiting. At the same time, I pushed for equitable salary levelling - a common problem with a well-tenured technical team.

📈 Efficient and effective
To improve our efficiency and connectedness as a team, I established an Excellent Engineering initiative, mapping out best practices, tools, standards and processes for everybody to align around. To increase buy-in from the team, I involved my engineers and the Solutions Architects in the process of defining what Excellent Engineering meant for us.

🙌 Teamwork and collaboration
Through the above initiative, knowledge sharing, teamwork, and collaboration all increased. We could set and manage customer expectations - internal or external - with much more clarity and better-defined boundaries. Escalations, noise, and stress were all reduced. The confidence in our releases increased.

Director Solutions Engineering

My first foray into managing a distributed team, across two offices in the UK, one in Tel-Aviv and a couple more across Europe.

I developed what would now be called a remote-first model to combat proximity bias. My team became the most highly tenured and respected Technical Solutions team across all regions.

🔮 Looking to the future
I built a team ready for the future by upskilling the existing team and changing the hiring profiles. I changed the titles to highlight the new focus and redefine the responsibilities and expectations for the role.

📈 Improving delivery
I advocated not only for standardised technology stacks but also for new technologies where appropriate. I had two primary considerations:
1: driving innovation
2: having a marked impact on the consistency, speed and agility of the delivery teams

🙋‍♂️ Creating a positive culture
I created a microclimate of positivity and inclusivity in the team. It was important to give everybody a voice, a sense of belonging and a purpose.

🤝 Coaching and mentoring
I coached the Solutions Architects and Solutions Engineers to be more consultative and - on the other side - coached the more experienced consultants to be more technically capable.

Technical Solutions Manager, EMEA

The rarest of rare things - the customer-facing tech role. The geek who can speak.

Externally I worked with the largest Enterprise clients, including O2, Sky, Sony, Maersk, HSBC, RBS, EE, BT,  and Virgin Atlantic.

Internally I worked with sales, marketing, customer success, product, R&D.

I was frequently parachuted in to deal with the gnarly problems.

Innovation, consultancy, technical delivery.

Deployment Engineer / Solutions Architect

Full Stack Training Ltd

I love being able to elevate people's careers and opportunities through sharing knowledge.

I co-founded Full Stack Training in 2014. I leaned on my experience of writing the books to design and build a full-stack training course, delivered both in person or as video on demand.

I sold my stake to my business partner in 2018.

Co Founder

Design Motive Ltd

I looked after the digital side of the agency and was involved during the full life-cycle of projects.

Implemented online project management system (Basecamp) to ensure transparent and efficient management of all digital projects.

Consolidated external IT infrastructure to reduce costs whilst maintaining reliability, including a move towards cloud hosting and CDNs.

Head of Digital

Headed up the internal team, recruited new members and arranged contractors as required.

Introduced SVN systems for tracking updates and versions of source code files.

Web development team leader

Focusing on great front-end development during this period I worked with designers to develop some beautiful and engaging sites.

Senior web developer

Self taught in basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript I started off as a junior. I quickly improved on these base skills and added server-side technologies with Classic ASP (VBscript) on Windows NT, accessing various database sources, including Access, MS SQL and MySQL.

Web developer

Freelance

Developing small websites for friends, family and colleagues starting their own businesses. Always happy to share knowledge and advice.

Web developer / consultant

Trusted human-centric technical leader and published technical author with 20+ years driving innovation through strategic vision, problem-solving, building collaborative relationships, and cultivating high-performing teams. Proven abilities in communicating complex concepts to broad audiences coupled with a unique blend of technical and business acumen.

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