About Me
Hi, I'm Rick! đź‘‹ I am a software engineering lead with nearly 15 years in the industry, currently specialising in development on the Microsoft .NET stack, with a long-standing passion for usability, accessibility and sustainability.
I'm currently working as a Staff Engineer at Umbraco where I get to build Umbraco's paid products and add-ons, as well as the main umbraco.com website. This means I'm working across tech stacks—C# .NET, SQL and Umbraco as well as HTML, CSS and JS.
I'm previously a 3Ă— Umbraco MVP (2023-2025) and part of the Umbraco Community Sustainability Team.
A little bit about me
I'm entirely self-taught, both as a developer and as a drummer, and I think that tells you most of what you need to know about me. I like having a go, getting it wrong, breaking things, and figuring it out as I go.
It started with FrontPage and Dreamweaver, and properly took hold when MySpace launched and I became the person at school who customised everyone's pages. From there it was PHP, building GTA fan sites, and then a little bit of WordPress (the less said about that, the better!).
My first "proper" developer job
I was working in an admin role at a housing association when a developer job came up. I knew nothing about C# or .NET, but I had front end and PHP skills and decided to take a chance. Their CMS of choice was Umbraco 4, so I learnt on the job, and I've been hooked ever since.
Getting more and more involved
My real jump into the community came during the first Covid lockdown, when I tried the Unicore alpha (Umbraco on .NET Core, as it was back then), wrote up my first impressions, and got a mention on umbraCoffee. That was the push I needed to start sharing more: blogging, helping out on the forum, and eventually turning up to the Manchester meetup.
That led to my first package, a Codegarden talk about practical ways to cut the carbon footprint of your website, and a few MVP awards along the way. I never expected any of it!
Me at Codegarden 2023 with my MVP award!
What I've been building
My rule of thumb is simple: build things that are useful, and that people actually want to use.
BlockPreview came from copying the same code between projects over and over, so I finally packaged it up. It was inspired by an article from 24 Days in Umbraco on advanced block list editors.
ContentAudit is a bit of a proof of concept and brings site crawling and SEO auditing right inside Umbraco.
I also helped build the Sustainability package from the Community Sustainability Team, and I've written and spoken about digital sustainability at 24 Days and Codegarden.
In my spare time
Most of my spare time belongs to my wife, Han, and our daughter who arrived in May 2026 and has already rearranged our whole world (in the best way!). We're also mum and dad to a little boy who was born in February 2025 and was only with us for a short time, but he changed us for good, and he's a big part of our family and of who I am.
Rick running Manchester Marathon 2026 in aid of CDH UK
In 2024 Han and I decided to take our health seriously and started walking 10K steps a day. That turned into Couch to 5K, and now I'm a regular runner, usually out in the mornings or at lunchtime. Running is where I do my best thinking. I also play the drums, drink good coffee, hunt down the local pilsner wherever I go, and never say no to a decent slice of pizza. And yes, it's nearly always stripes.
No matter where I am in the world, I will probably find a slice of pizza.
Employment history
Umbraco
I joined the Commercial Products team in 2025 to help work on paid products like Forms and Engage, as well as the main umbraco.com site.
I also helped bring the brand new product Umbraco Automate to market in July 2026.
Wattle
I joined Wattle as Lead Software Engineer to help with projects, particularly those involving Umbraco website builds. I work across multiple technology stacks, including C#, .NET, SQL, and Umbraco as well as HTML, CSS / Sass, JS / ES6+, and Node.
I was collaborating with my Wattle colleagues and contributing to delivering high-quality website solutions for our membership organisation clients.
Nexer Digital
As the Development Team Lead at Nexer, my role is mostly about line management, mentorship, and support for our developers. I run one to ones with my immediate team, setting and reviewing objectives, and helping people with training and support plans. Working closely with the Head of Technology, I play a role in shaping and executing Nexer’s technology strategy. This includes client focus, technology partnerships, and internal DevOps approaches. I am also involved day-to-day in problem solving, technical architecture and helping the team with P1s.
Beyond that, my responsibility includes running recruitment and onboarding processes. This ensures the integration of new team members into the existing delivery squads. Overall, my experience blends technical expertise with leadership skills, contributing to the efficiency and growth of both the team and the organisation.
I have been involved with pitching to clients, writing proposals and demoing new technology to clients, as well as still being involved in day-to-day delivery of projects, mainly built on Umbraco.
Places for People
In my second stint at Places for People, I was the lead Umbraco engineer responsible for managing and maintaining existing v7 sites. I also led the project to rebuild the main placesforpeople.co.uk site in Umbraco 8, running a team of other developers as part of a squad, similar to Spotify’s squad model.
In my time here I was part of the team looking into microservices using .NET 5 and Docker deploying into AWS, and helped modernise the department’s approach to build and release using Azure Pipelines for CI/CD.
Shout Digital
My role at Shout saw me working as a full stack developer using the Microsoft .NET stack, Umbraco (versions 4-8), Sitecore (versions 8 and 9), and front end tech such as Angular, Node and React.
Key successes include working on an optimised and redesigned booking system for Parkdean Resorts which led to a ~30% uptick in conversions, moving Newcastle Airport from a bespoke CMS onto Umbraco 7 and delivering the first Umbraco 8 project into production for CPP.
I led on projects and communicated updates regularly to key stakeholders internally and externally on regular standups, sprint retrospectives and sprint planning. I was also been involved in writing User Stories and planning backlogs and sprints.
I was also responsible for creating and maintaining build pipelines through Azure DevOps that built to both local on-prem servers as well as virtual machines and web apps on Azure.
Fat Media
My role at Fat Media was as part of the Flexible Resource team, comprised of people of different skillsets who must respond to short term client work that will take ~3 days. I supported on front end development work as well as lead on projects requiring back end development within WordPress, as well as picking up some C# ASP.NET work in Umbraco.
Places for People
I was part of the internal web development team, responsible for building both internal and external websites and applications for the company and its subsidiaries. We primarily developed in C# ASP.NET, and I was the main developer for front end development.
I worked on a two-person team to develop and successfully take our first piece of commercial software—the Cirrus complaints handling system (cirruscomplaints.net)—to market. Other notable successes include: redevelopment of the company intranet, providing information and support to over 3500 staff across the country; technical restructure of group websites with excess of 100,000 hits per month and huge cost savings; development of employee benefits site.
My day to day jobs included monitoring our support logs with our Web Support team, updating key business leaders on the progress of projects, and researching new technologies to aid in product development.