About Me

My name is Neil McKinnon. I am a highly skilled, motivated, astute, pragmatic, and approachable team player with nearly twenty years of commercial software engineering experience across the full software engineering lifecycle. I have a first-rate technical knowledge - particularly across the software architecture, design and development fields - enabling me to make well-informed decisions promptly, quickly comprehend highly technical information, convince key stakeholders, and work to a very high standard.

I also have extensive experience of working in different roles, including: technical/solutions architect, systems consultant, technical lead, (senior) software developer/engineer, team management lead, business analyst, build & deployment manager, and software contractor.

I am a good motivator and coach, spending lots of time mentoring, creating clarity, and empowering others to grow their skills, talent, and confidence to find their own solutions to problems.

I would describe my typical role as a combination of Software Architecture (Technical, Solutions, and Enterprise) and Development consultancy activities. I am comfortable with both higher-level strategic work, and lower-level, hands-on activities.

I succeed in my role through a solid mix of technical, personal, and leadership qualities that have enabled me to: build strong relationships across the business; drive change; define realistic visions, goals, and strategies; collaborate, recommend, negotiate, and compromise with stakeholders to solve problems in an efficient, cost-effective manner, using guiding constraints (e.g. MVP).