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My career

My career to date has been shaped more by curiosity than by planning — I followed interesting problems, took on things that scared me slightly, and ended up covering a lot of ground as a result.

Developer to tech lead to technical director to VP, agency to start-up to product organisation, small teams to global scale — the thread through it all has been trying to understand how good software actually gets built and shipped, and what gets in the way.

  1. Started tinkering on the web

    Learned by experimenting with very early web tech while at university, using hand-rolled HTML and browsers like Lynx and Mosaic.

    Learning by doing

    Personal experiments, self-teaching, and a pro bono rebuild of the website for a food company I worked for in the late 90s opened the door to a career that I couldn't have imagined at the time

  2. Incepta Group

    My first proper web role in big, fancy London, doing what was then called "new media" for multiple brands in a large PR & marketing agency group.

    The first "real" web job

    Remember when "Webmaster" was the go-to job title?

    I was a Group Webmaster!

  3. British Chambers of Commerce

    Took on a digital revitalisation role before moving back to agency life for a more informal, delivery-focused environment.

    Responsibilities

    Revitalising the organisation's digital presence in a more formal in-house setting.

    Extensive stakeholder engagement and vendor management for the London headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce network.

  4. Cimex

    Spent 7 years growing from individual contributor to team leadership, delivering multiple web projects across e-learning and public-sector digital clients, and becoming an effective translator between business and technical worlds.

    Projects

    Get Set for London 2012 - the official schools project for the London 2012 Olympics.

    Royal Armouries museum

    Filmclub.org

  5. R/GA

    Spent 5 years as Technical Director at a digital agency that has been called out as "one of the 30 most influential companies in the history of the internet", moving further into senior digital delivery and architecture work.

    My favourite project was probably Google Web Fundamentals - Google's first stake in the ground on modern, standards-led responsive development, which my small, agile team built from scratch in record time.

    Projects

    2011: GS.com for Goldman Sachs

    2012: Aston Martin car configurator

    2013: Do: More (Unilever)

    2014: Google Web Fundamentals

    2015: McDonalds Happy Studio

  6. Interim agency role

    Short transition period focused on improving technical delivery for major brands before the next long-term move.

    Responsibilities

    Delivery improvement work for Unilever and EasyJet accounts.

  7. Indicia

    A delivery transformation role, reshaping the technical model from in-house product delivery to a more standardised, outsourced operating model.

    Projects

    Dyno.com

    JD Wetherspoon intranet

    RDG Digital Railcard

    E.ON

  8. Blu Health Co.

    Co-founder and CTO of a start-up working to create a new generation of connected services to improve everyday mental health

    Responsibilities

    Balanced engineering, product, commercial, and user priorities.

    Built the proof-of-concept technical platform and web app.

    Exhibited at WebSummit in 2019.

  9. Deltatre

    Joined as one of a small team of Technical Directors delivering major projects, stepped up to grow and run a team of 12 TDs, took on engineering best practice across the organisation, and am now VP Product Engineering and Architecture, focused on technical leadership, engineering alignment, and pragmatic delivery.

    Consumer expectations in this space are set by the R&D budgets of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV — which raises the bar just a bit!

    Responsibilities

    Initially: delivering streaming platforms for global clients, including BritBox for ITV

    Then: modernising engineering best-practices across product and delivery teams

    Latterly: product engineering leadership & technical alignment after the Endeavor Streaming acquisition

  10. Whatever comes next

    As my 7½ years at Deltatre came to an end on 28 August 2026, I am now looking forward to what comes next.

    I'm treating this as a deliberate, structured transition point in my career.

    I want to work with interesting engineering and product organisations to help them get out of their own way.

    To do list

    A sabbatical.

    Spending more time with my family (but not in a "disgraced Tory MP in a sex scandal" way).

    Finish off some overdue DIY jobs at home.

    Tinker with some personal coding projects.

    A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure.

    Or maybe some consultancy work?...

All of which brings me to where I am now — thinking about what comes next, and writing about the things I have learned along the way.

If you have need of my kind of brain in your organisation, I offer consultancy (AKA "Engineering Judgement for Hire"), and am also open to interesting new full-time opportunities if the right thing comes along.

I’m happy to have a conversation and see whether it’s relevant — I'm easy to find on LinkedIn or you can reach me by email at hello@andyhawkes.co.uk.

If you want the more narrative version of my career, the seven year itch covers some of that thinking.

I've also written in more detail about a few of the key projects that have shaped me and my career in What is best in life?

Or if you want the full detail then you can check out my LinkedIn profile, because that's what we all use these days, isn't it? I still have a proper CV though if you prefer the old school ways!

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