About Me

Hi! I’m Val, I’m a choice-first work activist on a mission to grow a generation of tech leaders that don’t suck. You can come chat to me on LinkedIn. I’m a tech leader and qualified coach with 16 years of experience working in start-up and agency environments. I am VP of Engineering at Thirdfort, a £10m ARR company on a mission to protect people from fraud.

I offer private, remote, one-to-one coaching.

I also have a 5 ⭐️ online course, Holy Shit I’m A Manager!, provides the first aid Engineering Managers need to succeed in the role. Check it out in the link above 👆.

Previously I was Director of Engineering at appsec unicorn Snyk, responsible for multi-million projects spanning several squads. I was also Head of Engineering at insuretech unicorn Zego, and Director of Engineering at tech startup Care Sourcer. I act as an executive coach to founders on the Barclays Eagle Labs and Codebase Techscaler programs.

I have over a decade of hands-on engineering experience, from building critical payments systems at scale with Deliveroo to client-facing software for companies including Skyscanner and Storm ID. I played a key role in establishing Scotland’s first coding boot camp, building the instructional team and curriculum while teaching 100+ students how to code. I have also run workshops at Agile Scotland on effective pair programming and given talks at Lead Dev Edinburgh and others.