How I got from a school swimming lane to writing software for a living.

I went to Richmond College, sat Physical Science at A Level in 2019, and swam for the school for most of the eight years I was there. Swimming is the part of that CV I would defend hardest: it is the first thing that taught me that a small amount of unglamorous work, repeated, beats a burst of enthusiasm. Most of how I build software comes from that.

Computer Systems Engineering at NSBM Green University came next, a degree that sits deliberately between electronics and software, which is probably why I have never been very interested in only doing the front end. I finished in 2024 with a 3.57 GPA and a Second Class Upper, and swam for the university team along the way. I also coordinated the engineering association for two years, which mostly meant organising workshops and then chasing people to actually come to them.

My first real build was an internship. In 2022 Medisense Laboratory needed a system for the whole lab (reception, cashier, mini lab, main lab, x-ray, results, agency accounts) and I was the intern who got handed it. I did the backend in Java and Spring Boot, designed the database, and learned the single most useful lesson of my career so far: the interesting part of software is never the interface, it is the six departments that all disagree about what a “patient” is.

A frontend internship at Amerck Inc. in 2023 sharpened the other half: React, Redux, RTK Query, Tailwind, and the first time I worked inside a proper Jira and GitLab process rather than inventing one. Then in 2024 came the final year research project: Vital Care, an ICU monitoring system that scores patients continuously against NEWS2 and escalates on its own. It was selected for the TIDAC research symposium, and it is still the piece of work I would show first.

After graduating I spent a year at Olee AI as an associate engineer, building the platforms behind a range of AI products in Next.js, across Supabase, MySQL and MongoDB. From November 2025 I held two jobs at once: cloud products in Next.js, Nest.js and Angular at 4Axis Solutions, and language models in production at LAB360. I finished up at 4Axis in August 2026, and the language-model work is what I do now: it is the most genuinely new thing I have worked on.

Looking back, the through-line is obvious even to me: I keep taking on the whole thing. The shop and the stockroom. The ward view and the alert logic. It is more work and it is harder to hand over, but it is the only way I know to build something a client can actually run without me.