Monkey’s Thumb Ltd.

I have over a decade of experience building, scaling and leading software development teams in start-ups, including CTO roles at Econsultancy, FutureLearn and Unmade.

I use this experience to help organisations overcome the challenges to building more effective and inclusive software development teams.

In practice this includes:

• Working with early stage projects to help define and build the teams needed to deliver them.
• Working with established teams to help them overcome the practical, cultural, leadership or organisational problems that prevent them from helping their businesses reach their objectives and become more productive, sustainable and rewarding to work in.
• Coaching, mentoring or support members of a leadership or engineering team through periods of growth and change.
• Taking a part-time CTO, VP Engineering role or Agile Coach role for a start-up that is not yet ready to commit to having someone in the role full-time.

Contact

I’m happy to discuss ideas or chat about how we might work together.

You can email me at joel@monkeysthumb.co.uk or feel free to drop a 30 minute call in my calendar any Thursday. Book using Calendly – no need to email first.

What people say about my work

• Joel was the founding CTO and subsequently COO of FutureLearn from launch and built the company over 5 years, laying the foundations for its successful fundraise at a valuation of £100m in 2019. He is not only a clear expert in his technical field but also one of the best managers and leaders I have had the privilege of working with. He was a core part of the senior leadership team of FutureLearn and highly influential in all aspects of strategy and operations. The high-performance, supportive culture that we built at FutureLearn was heavily influenced by Joel's leadership instincts and expertise. I strongly endorse Joel as an outstanding CTO and extremely valuable all-rounder in a start-up/scale-up company.

  Simon Nelson, Chief Executive Officer at FutureLearn

• Joel is a talented CTO, who I’ve enjoyed working alongside for the past two and half years. He brings experience to the table, in not only building effective technology development teams but ones that are inclusive, supportive and that people love to work within. These skills have allowed Unmade to build better products but have also been applied across the organisation to make it operate more effectively as a whole.

  Simon Rea, Chief Operating Officer at Unmade

• Joel is great at setting up stable and supportive technology cultures that reliably deliver impact. He naturally empowers a team to make decisions for themselves and helps them develop to become better technologists. He’s very perceptive about what dynamics are playing out within organisations and always looking to find ways he can help improve things.

  Matt Walton, Chief Product Officer at FutureLearn

• Joel is an excellent leader and mentor. He actively listens and asks questions that make you reflect and give you more confidence in your decision making. He also promotes an environment where you learn from your mistakes, take ownership of your successes and take pride in your work.

  Pilar Sopena, Senior Engineer at Unmade

Elsewhere on the internet

You can also find me on Twitter, on LinkedIn and on my blog.