I am Joel Chippindale. I am a CTO adviser and also have 20 years experience building, scaling and leading software development teams, mainly in start-ups, including CTO roles at Econsultancy, FutureLearn and Unmade.
I believe in the importance and value of building inclusive, empowered, sustainable teams and have experienced the challenges of nurturing the cultures, skills and practices that enable teams and individuals to achieve their full capabilities.
I use my experience, beliefs and skills to help organisations overcome the challenges they face in building more effective and inclusive software development teams.
In practice this includes:
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 book a 30 minute call during my unoffice hours on Thursdays — no need to email first.
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.
It's been an absolute pleasure working with Joel as our CTO Advisor. The wealth of experience he brings from his years as a CTO/COO in high-growth, mission-driven companies has been invaluable to us. He's particularly astute when it comes to building great engineering cultures, and he really helped us shape our thinking around what we need to get our new tech product off the ground. When meeting one-on-one, Joel is an excellent listener, responsive, humble and kind. I'd highly recommend him to any growing startups keen to build engineering teams that are inclusive, harmonious and high performing.
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.
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.
I worked with Joel recently for over a year on an EdTech project, and I learned so much from him. Joel operates smoothly at a C-suite level, where he’s knowledgeable and confident about technology but is also a great communicator with both fellow technologists and with “lay persons”. He’s got fantastic tech craft chops and is also highly skilled on the “people” side of things. He’s influential and calm, and able to build confidence with stakeholders and teammates alike. He’s also deeply credible on the operational aspects of digital businesses and departments. One of the best aspects of having Joel as a colleague and teammate is that he’s a fantastic role-model, both for peers and for the teams he manages. I really benefitted professionally and personally from working with Joel.
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.
Joel ran the least dysfunctional engineering team I had ever worked in.
I also offer coaching services to accelerate the development of individuals within your organisation.
You can also find me on Twitter, on LinkedIn and on my blog.
