00 — INDEX SOLUTION ENGINEER / SENIOR TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP SOLUTION ENGINEER

Finding solutions to your problems.

Helping growing companies streamline their businesses & focus on what they do best.

Available for new problems to solve.

01 — WHO THIS IS FOR

4 SITUATIONS

You might recognise your situation in one of these.

If any of that sounds familiar - that's the kind of work I do.

02 — HOW I CAN HELP

3 ENGAGEMENT TYPES

I take on a small number of engagements at a time, focusing on understanding your company & ways of working, and identifying what improvement will have the biggest impact.

Solution Implementation

FIXED SCOPE · DEFINED DELIVERABLE

You know what you want implementing, and you need someone to implement it. A defined fixed deliverable, based on a flat-fee.

Process & System Analysis

FIXED SCOPE · DEFINED DELIVERABLE

A review of your existing systems & processes to identify bottlenecks and high-impact areas for growth. You will be provided a clear review write-up and recommendations for next steps.

Ongoing Technical Expertise

DAY-RATE

Ongoing support with your technical processes & systems.

03 — SELECTED WORK

2 CASE STUDIES

CASE 01

Foundation Health

ROLE
First hire outside the founding team
SCALE
5 → 65 people · 35+ engineers
OUTCOME
Secured $20m+ Series A
SCOPE
Platform from scratch · IaC · CI/CD

Leading through hypergrowth and a pivot.

I joined Foundation Health as the first hire outside the founding team — early enough to help shape the technical foundation from day one, architecting and building the initial platform from scratch, including infrastructure as code and CI/CD.

When the company pivoted, I led my team through the transition, driving development of its next product from the ground up. Along the way, I defined the engineering processes — code quality standards, testing and QA practices, and production ownership — that let my team scale without breaking down, and had a genuine hand in shaping similar practices as engineering grew more widely across the department.

Over that period, Foundation Health scaled from 5 people to over 65, with the engineering team growing to 35+, and secured a Series A of $20m+.

CASE 02

cinch

ROLE
Tech Lead
TEAM
4 engineers
SCOPE
Critical, dept-wide shared platform
STACK
Serverless AWS — API Gateway, Step Functions, Lambda, EventBridge, SQS

Architecting a critical, shared platform.

At cinch, a national motoring marketplace, I was appointed Tech Lead for a new platform intended to become a critical, shared service used department-wide — the kind of foundational system multiple other teams would come to depend on.

I led a team of four engineers and designed a fully serverless AWS architecture — API Gateway, Step Functions, Lambda, EventBridge, and SQS — built for that shared, cross-team use case. I worked closely with the Product Owner and both technical and non-technical stakeholders to translate requirements into architectural decisions the wider department could build on.

04 — ABOUT

13 YEARS · 6 INDUSTRIES
David McQueen

Backend-leaning full-stack engineer and technical lead with 13 years' experience across healthcare, motoring, retail, gaming, government, and travel.

That includes being the first engineering hire outside the founding team at a healthtech startup that scaled from 5 people to a $20m+ Series A. I lean on Domain-Driven Design to bridge technical and business goals, and I'm comfortable picking up whatever language or stack the problem actually calls for.

Remote-native and based in France. I work with teams across the UK, the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia — there's almost always enough overlap in the working day to collaborate closely, wherever you are.

  • 13 YEARS
  • 6 INDUSTRIES
  • 5→65 TEAM SCALE

05 — HOW WE'D WORK TOGETHER

3 STEPS
  1. Intro call

    We talk through what you need, and what "done" looks like. If that's not fully clear yet, that's fine — defining it together is part of the value.

  2. Plan & recommendation

    I put together a proposed way forward: scope, service type, and what I'd deliver.

  3. Agree deliverables & start

    Once we're aligned, we agree concrete deliverables and get moving.

I work best against a clear goal — even one we define together as we go — and I aim for every engagement to end with something tangible in your hands: a report, a working system, a handover to your team.

06 — TECHNICAL EXPERTISE

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE

CLOUD & INFRA

  • GCP
  • AWS
  • Serverless
  • Infrastructure as Code
  • CI/CD

ARCHITECTURE

  • Domain-Driven Design
  • Event-driven systems
  • Distributed systems
  • API design

PRACTICE

  • Code quality standards
  • Testing & QA
  • Production ownership
  • Team scaling

LANGUAGES

Backend-leaning full-stack. I pick up whatever language or stack the problem actually calls for.

07 — TESTIMONIALS

IN THEIR WORDS
“David was an invaluable asset to our team. His candour and feedback helped ensure continuous improvement in both the software we built as well as our ways of working. David has an impenetrable need to do the right thing, resulting in all his solutions being well-thought-out and robust. He successfully led our team through the design and development of cross-functional, cross-team, full-stack projects, with a keen ability to transform stakeholder needs into scalable, secure, and reliable software.
“David is a true team player, often going out of his way to mentor and coach less experienced members of his team. He'd often check on me, unprompted, to see how my day was going. I've thoroughly enjoyed working with David, and would love the opportunity to do so again.”
Varuna Venkatesh Engineering Manager @ Prolific · worked with David at AO
“Dave was my Tech and Team Lead when I joined Foundation Health in 2025. He's the best I've ever worked with in my long career, both on a technical and a managerial level. [...] It was immediately obvious how exceptional a Team Lead Dave was: the smooth cadence of work was a clear quality indicator. It's a team with structure, and we were involved in each step: from epic tickets, to estimation, to prioritisation, the engineering work itself, and making it supportable. [...] Dave is a large part of why that works, both by leading by example, and his structured approach to managing projects."
“Dave's technical leadership was invaluable: he showed a deep understanding of asynchronous (event-based) systems, the boundaries and responsibilities of each core system, and an invaluable infrastructure-as-code experience. With his guidance and reviews, we quickly converged on a coherent architecture, delegating responsibilities to the right sub-systems. Dave show great technical oversight in considering the critical facets: scalability, minimal PII exposure, replayability, insightful instrumentation, and reliable infrastructure. I designed a working system, Dave improved it and taught me how to make it an observable and reliable working system. Working with Dave has been a privilege, his outcome-based way of thinking has improved the way I design systems, and I'm already benefiting from the wisdom he shared. He's both technically impressive, and an inspiring leader.”
Mike Davies Senior Software Engineer · reported to David at Foundation Health

08 — CONTACT

REMOTE-FIRST

Let's talk.

The best place to start is a short intro call — we'll discuss your current systems and where you want to make improvements, and what "done" looks like for you.

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