AI engineering enablement · engineering leadership · financial technology
Berkhamsted / London, United Kingdom
A hands-on engineering leader who has worked in regulated finance since
1998, now leading AI engineering enablement at one of the world's largest
listed hedge fund managers. Earlier I founded and led the firm's
quantitative analysis function and wrote the pricing and analytics
libraries it still runs on. I founded the firm's AI enablement programme
and lead it across the client services engineering group, around 20
engineers, alongside running Solutions Technology. I build the infrastructure
myself - coding agents, MCP servers, skills, evaluation harnesses and CI
safety layers - then drive adoption across engineering and the business.
My approach is measurement first: objective evidence of what AI changes,
and honesty about what it does not.
Selected work
AI engineering enablement
Founded and lead the firm's AI enablement programme, a formal part of my role from 2026. It spread by referral, without line authority, and an internal review cited it as the firm's exemplar for technology AI training.
Extended the programme beyond the client services engineering group to a second investment division from mid-2026.
Built a two-tier AI code-review safety layer - deterministic scanning plus an LLM advisory pass - running in CI across the group's repositories. Adopted firm-wide and folded into the firm's AI governance framework.
Built the measurement behind the programme: token-attribution tooling, a productivity baseline across the team's pull requests, and an ROI evidence register. One configuration change cut per-session token use by roughly two-thirds, confirmed the same day.
Built a multi-agent code-audit capability and ran it across the group's repositories, surfacing material defects that manual review had missed. Each audit was individually costed.
Engineering and platform leadership
As Head of Solutions Technology since 2022, accountable for the group's technology estate: architecture, standards, delivery and long-term platform design for bespoke, multi-asset investment mandates.
One of the team's highest-throughput contributors while leading it, still hands-on in the codebase.
Led a live disaster-recovery failover test, and designed a support rotation that replaced an ad-hoc process.
Experience
Head of AI Enablement and Head of Solutions Technology
Man Group · Principal Engineer · since 2022
Head of AI Enablement for the client services engineering group, around
20 software engineers, and Head of Solutions Technology, the engineering
behind Man Solutions' bespoke, multi-asset investment mandates. Lead a
team of seven. Own technical strategy, architecture, standards, delivery
and the AI tooling agenda.
Founder and lead, Quantitative Analysis
Man Group · c. 2010-2022
Founded and led the firm's quantitative analysis function, reporting to
the Chief Risk Officer. Created the firm's C# pricing and analytics library
and its Excel and Python wrappers, still in firm-wide use today.
Quant Analyst
GLG Partners · 2007-2010
Front-office quantitative analysis and development. Began the pricing and
analytics library that moved into Man Group with the 2010 acquisition.
Head of Development; Senior Developer / Technical Architect
Brevan Howard · 2003-2007
Software architecture and design, and management of the back and
middle-office development team at a global macro hedge fund. Progressed
from Senior Developer / Technical Architect to Head of Development.
Senior Developer
Barclays Capital · 2001-2003
Built the risk and reporting engine for the Emerging Markets trading system.
Earlier career
1993-2001
Renault UK - Project Manager / Senior Developer (2000-2001): managed delivery and built interfaces for Renault's global web programme.
Merrill Lynch - Project Manager / Developer (1998-2000): managed the end-user computing programme across Europe, the Middle East and Africa for the Year 2000 project, spanning front, middle and back office.
Coopers & Lybrand - Management Consultant (1995-1997): computer and database specialist in the Forensic Accounting division.
Computeach - Developer / Trainer (1993-1994): senior Windows developer and trainer.
Writing, speaking and open source
Writing - essays on AI in production engineering at cronyn.co.uk, built around the thesis that trust, not capability, is the binding constraint on value.
Speaking - talks and panels on measuring whether AI helps in production. Topics and bios.
Open source - contributions to pythonnet (.NET / Python interop) and NArctic (a C# port of the Arctic time-series store).
Skills and background
Self-taught engineer, coding since 1981 and professionally since 1993.
Focus: AI adoption and governance · agentic tooling (agents, MCP servers,
evaluation harnesses, CI safety) · engineering leadership · quantitative
finance technology · regulated environments.