I work as an independent technical consultant and senior .NET developer, helping businesses, agencies and in-house teams solve complex technical problems, build robust digital platforms and evolve existing systems. With nearly 30 years of experience, I combine practical engineering with a broader technical perspective, providing advice and hands-on development when you need it.
Discovery-led engineering focused on real-world requirements
Good technical solutions start with understanding the problem. I work closely with clients and teams to understand their goals, existing systems and constraints before recommending an approach. The result is practical engineering that works for the business today and can evolve over time.
Nearly 30 years of hands-on .NET engineering
I’ve spent nearly three decades building and evolving production .NET systems, from eCommerce and CMS platforms to APIs and complex digital applications. My experience includes architecture, development, integrations, performance and long-term platform evolution, with deep specialist experience in Umbraco and nopCommerce.
UK-based, working with clients nationally and internationally
I work with businesses, agencies and in-house teams across the UK and internationally, usually through remote or long-term engagements. I can provide specialist technical expertise, additional development capacity or take responsibility for delivering a wider piece of work.
‘Why are you doing this two days before Christmas?’ was Craig’s first question when he replied to our email enquiry on December 23rd 2010.
I answered because, with this ‘Beast from the East’, I hadn’t seen a customer for nearly three months here in the North East, but they were still golfing down in the South West and other parts of the UK! Secondly, I wanted someone who could help, guide, teach and train us, and who was local enough to come and show us how to do things. As a Golf Professional at a busy Club, my strengths lie there.
Our relationship with Craig started there. He rang us, came to see us and took the time to understand what we actually wanted. That was important to us. Other companies we enquired with emailed us back and ‘told us’ what we should do.
Our brief was to create a clean, unfussy site that made us look a lot bigger than we were, and he certainly did that.
That approach has continued ever since. Craig has helped us maintain, update and improve the site, while continually advising us on new ideas, technology and opportunities. He has always taken the time to understand what we are trying to achieve before advising us on the best way forward.
We now have many more skills ourselves and are still learning more. You cannot afford to stand still or you will get left behind in this incredibly fast-moving business.
Along the way, Craig also helped us rebrand our logo and image to be crisper and more up to date. He has also helped us with the integration and management of our social media channels and advertising.
I can’t recommend Craig highly enough. He is a man of many talents, but what has really stood out for us is his ability to understand what we need, explain the options and then provide the technical expertise to make it happen.
Employing Craig as our technical consultant was definitely one of our better decisions.
Your questions answered.
Below are answers to the most common questions about engagement, delivery, and working methods.
01
Engagements are typically based on scope, complexity, and delivery requirements rather than fixed templates.
For smaller pieces of work or ongoing development, I operate on a day-rate basis. For larger CMS or eCommerce platforms (such as those built on Umbraco CMS or nopCommerce), work is usually scoped and delivered in structured phases or milestones.
Most engagements begin with an initial discovery or scoping phase, followed by a staged delivery approach aligned to key technical and business milestones.
Long-term clients often move into retained support or ongoing development arrangements.
02
I’m both. I work as an independent technical consultant and senior .NET developer, combining technical strategy and architecture with hands-on development.
I can help define the right approach, design the architecture and then build and deliver the production-ready solution using technologies such as C#, ASP.NET Core and Azure, with specialist experience in platforms including Umbraco and nopCommerce.
That means you can bring me in for technical advice, hands-on development, or both, depending on what your project needs.
03
Where required, I can assist with deployment and environment setup, typically within Azure or client-managed infrastructure.
My primary focus is on application architecture, performance, and stability rather than long-term hosting provision.
04
Yes.
Many clients choose to retain ongoing support for platform development, optimisation, integrations, and performance improvements.
This is particularly common for CMS and eCommerce systems that evolve over time and require continuous technical refinement.
05
Yes — performance is a core part of how I design and build systems.
This includes:
- efficient database design
- clean API and service architecture
- caching strategies where appropriate
- reducing unnecessary system overhead
- ensuring scalability under real-world load
The goal is always stable, predictable performance in production environments.
06
Yes.
I regularly collaborate with agencies, internal development teams, and technical stakeholders as part of larger delivery teams.
This often includes working under NDA, contributing to existing platforms, or providing senior technical oversight on complex systems.
Built on ASP.NET Core with CMS and eCommerce foundations
All systems are built using ASP.NET Core, typically leveraging platforms such as Umbraco CMS and nopCommerce as a foundation.
Rather than relying on rigid templates or off-the-shelf implementations, I design and extend these platforms to meet specific business, performance, and integration requirements — ensuring each solution is tailored, scalable, and maintainable.
The focus is always on engineering quality, not tooling or surface-level implementation.
Every project begins with understanding requirements, constraints, and long-term goals
I typically work through an architecture-first process — defining system structure, data models, and integration points before implementation begins.
This ensures that design decisions are grounded in how the system will actually function in production, not just how it appears visually.
Once the architecture is defined, development follows a structured delivery process with clear milestones, validation, and iterative refinement through to deployment.
Alongside CMS and eCommerce platforms, I also develop reusable SDKs, integrations, and API-focused tooling using modern .NET practices.
Recent public work includes:
- A production-focused .NET payment integration library for Elavon
- A strongly-typed SDK and integration playground for the tado° API
- API abstraction layers and OAuth-based authentication systems
- CI/CD-enabled open-source tooling and integration libraries
These projects reflect the same engineering principles applied throughout my commercial work: maintainability, clarity, scalability, and production reliability.
View technical work on GitHub.
After the success of our Just Sport Pro Club website build, we again enlisted Craig’s help to develop our Avec Sport site, which prior to this was built on an extremely old out-of-the-box platform. The difference between the old and new site was like night and day, giving us a website which was clean, professional and one we were proud to promote and advertise.
As with our Just Sport Pro Club sites, the Avec Sport site has always been kept fresh and updated. However, the biggest change came when we deployed our rebranding across the company. This required a completely new theme and a full facelift of the website, with Craig providing the technical guidance and expertise to make sure it looked right and functioned just as well on mobile as it did on desktop.
Alongside the rebrand, we wanted to introduce the most significant new functionality we had ever added to the site, all of which needed to be bespoke. Craig took the time to visit us on multiple occasions to understand exactly what we were trying to achieve and to make sure the technical solution delivered what we needed. The end result was very impressive and pushed our site ahead of what many of our competitors were offering.
As a result of the work carried out on our main retail site, we were also able to create a series of mini retail sites that could be offered to teams as their own online club stores. We now have 40+ sites running from a single system. This became an impressive selling tool for us when looking for new business and gave us an additional edge over our competitors.
Throughout the project, Craig provided not just development expertise but the technical guidance and problem-solving needed to turn our ideas into a robust, scalable solution.
I've worked with and for a great deal of well known brands over the years.
With over 25 years of experience building .NET systems, these principles guide how I approach architecture, development, and long-term platform ownership.
From initial engagement through to delivery and ongoing evolution, trust is central to how I work.
The systems I build often sit at the core of a business — including CMS platforms and eCommerce solutions — so reliability, communication, and predictable delivery are essential throughout the entire lifecycle.
Technical decisions should be transparent and understandable.
I focus on clear communication around architecture, trade-offs, and implementation decisions, ensuring stakeholders and teams always understand how and why a system is being built in a particular way.
This is especially important in complex platforms where CMS, eCommerce, and API-driven systems need to work together reliably.
I work on systems with long-term impact, not short-term delivery.
That means focusing on performance, scalability, maintainability, and how a platform evolves once it is live in production.
From initial architecture through to optimisation and ongoing improvement, I remain focused on delivering systems that continue to perform under real-world conditions.