Real systems. Real risk. Shipped without drama.
A selection of projects. Stabilising, consolidating, and modernising real-world platforms across multiple technologies, without unnecessary risk.
Internal systems modernisation
Modernised a project-tracking platform ahead of a security audit. A classic ASP application alongside an ageing Rails system, both carrying growing operational risk.
Years of technical debt, fragile behaviour, and security concerns made a direct rewrite risky. The business needed to pass audit requirements while keeping day-to-day operations running.
Stabilised the loudest issues first to reduce pain. Introduced a new application in parallel, redirected traffic through it, progressively replacing pages and endpoints while delegating to the legacy system underneath. Functionality migrated incrementally using a strangler-fig approach.
A smooth migration with minimal disruption. Reduced technical debt, met audit requirements, and gave the business a platform that was easier to change and maintain.
Digital asset repository migration
Architected and delivered a large-scale migration of Matalan’s image asset repository to a new platform provider. Millions of images and complex metadata transformation.
The existing plan relied on a high-risk, 36-hour upload window with limited rollback options. Failure would have caused significant disruption.
Designed a distributed ETL pipeline made up of small, focused services, each handling one stage. Stages ran in parallel with clear checkpoints and idempotent operations to allow safe retries and rollbacks.
Millions of images migrated successfully in around 30 minutes. A risky one-off process was replaced with a fast, repeatable, observable migration system.
Platform migration & modernisation
Brought in to consolidate a split platform built across C# Entity Framework and Ruby on Rails into a single, modern Rails application.
The system was brittle, slow to change, and prone to operational issues including frequent SSL problems. Payments were tied to legacy PayPal subscriptions, limiting flexibility.
Resolved infrastructure issues first to improve reliability. Migrated functionality into a single Rails platform using Turbo to deliver a fast, SPA-like experience without frontend complexity. Established a clear path from PayPal to Stripe and deployed the new frontend and admin using blue-green deployments.
A unified, performant platform that allowed the business to move faster and adapt as requirements changed.
Rails & frontend upgrade
Modernised an ActionPark platform built on Matestack, an unsupported framework that introduced long-term risk.
Outdated dependencies and a bespoke frontend abstraction limited upgrades, hiring, and performance improvements.
Upgraded Ruby to a current stable version and migrated views and interactions from Matestack to Hotwire and Turbo, preserving existing behaviour while simplifying the stack.
A maintainable, modern Rails application with load times on key screens improved by up to 4×.