Product leadership for software whose output someone has to stake their name on.
Five years running a £30M B2B software P&L inside a 162-year-old classification society. Before that, fifteen years as the engineer on the other side of the screen.
DNV Digital Solutions, 2021 to 2026
Deep-domain technical software is built by people who understand the physics and sold by people who do not, and the gap between the two is where the revenue dies. When an engineer signs off a safety-critical design against the output, credibility is the product: being wrong is not a bug report, it is a business-ending event for whoever put their name to it. That rules out most of the usual product playbook, because you cannot ship fast and apologise.
I spent five years running product in exactly that position, in about the most conservative setting there is, and the numbers moved. A classification society exists because its stamp means something: wrong output, wrong stamp, no business. Nobody imposed that correctness bar from outside. It was existential to the parent, with 162 years behind it. I had been an engineer first, so I could argue with the constraints rather than simply inherit them.
DNV published in September 2026 that 81% of offshore wind projects entering operation in 2025 involved a Sesam customer. Bladed, when I ran it, held around 75% of the wind turbine design market. That is software where being wrong is expensive by definition.
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Into production
Time to first customer value fell from 15 months to 3, in an organisation whose stamp underwrites other people’s reputations. The floating wind work had been planned as one release at fifteen months; the first alpha customers could build on arrived in three. Anyone can go faster at a consumer app. Going faster where the output feeds a certification decision is a judgement call: knowing which constraints are real and which are institutional habit wearing a safety jacket.
The lever was focus. Sesam had been building for several use cases in parallel, with every team carrying more work than it could finish and a lot of time lost to handovers. We chose one customer persona with the market behind it, floating offshore wind, gave each team one goal at a time, put visuals, alphas and betas in front of customers early, and let scope follow customer evidence rather than stakeholder assumptions. We counted success in what customers did, not in what we released.
The structural change, which a team a layer below me worked out and ran first, was to stop treating each application as the product. Offshore wind engineers get their answer from several specialised tools used together, so at the coordination level a cross-functional team took ownership of that whole workflow, and the application teams underneath it stayed specialist on purpose.
Customer contact used to reach the developers second-hand, relayed by senior stakeholders or sales. For the first time a development team had its own direct stream of it, and it grew to more than 300 customer research conversations a year. Annual feature planning gave way to outcome OKRs on a four-month cadence. Most of this was adopted by teams I had no line authority over, so it was done by agreement rather than instruction.
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Into growth
Revenue grew from £20M to £30M. Bladed rose from £5.4M in 2020 to £10M in 2025, with two years of 40 to 50% growth along the way.
WindFarmer and SolarFarmer had both stalled as bespoke desktop tools. We re-platformed them behind an enterprise API, built a third-party partnership strategy around it, and then folded them into a larger product’s go-to-market, which reached customers they could not have funded reaching alone.
I won £2.5M a year at board level to merge two products that customers commonly bought together into one coherent product, making the Bladed solver driveable from Sesam so offshore wind customers can simulate turbine and structure together. The organisation was then restructured to mirror the product, so the teams that had to work together sat together.
We also closed a three-year £2M renewal at a 15% discount, against a historic 35%, which rebuilt commercial credibility with a flagship account.
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Into profitability
- Revenue
- £20M to £30M
- EBIT
- Break-even to 15%21% before restructuring costs
The FY2025 plan was 10% EBIT, and the business beat it. Offshore wind grew over the period, and some of the revenue line belongs to the market. The margin and the shift to recurring revenue came from how the business worked, not from the market.
The Renewables and Ocean Structures business was 120 people across 20 countries, with 35% of revenue from China, and I reported to the Business Area CEO. Team engagement held at 7.5 out of 10, on over 90% participation, through a restructuring.
What I have not done
The trust I stewarded was not trust I created. DNV’s name was 162 years old when I arrived, and I have not built technical credibility from zero with a first enterprise customer. What I have done is operate inside the institution whose entire business is that credibility, so I know precisely what earns it with an engineering buyer and what destroys it. The partner channel for WindFarmer and SolarFarmer was built on that credibility, not inherited with it.
Colleagues
In November 2025 a 360 review by eight colleagues, from ELT peers to a front-line engineer, rated my leadership 9.3 out of 10 on whether they would choose to work with me again on a critical initiative.
“What you have done for ROS has not just changed the way we work; it has changed our culture and the way we think and learn, and this has set us up for success for years to come.”
“The energy, clarity of vision, and drive you’ve brought has had a lasting impact on the direction we’ve taken over the past few years.”
“You create trust, psychological safety, and bring out the best in people, always with a thoughtful perspective and a touch of humor. With your competence and integrity, I’m certain you’ll succeed in whatever comes next.”
The engineering half
I hold an EngD from the University of Southampton, co-funded by Lloyd’s Register and the Ministry of Defence, and an MEng in Aerospace Engineering from the same place. At Frazer-Nash Consultancy and Reaction Engines I worked across offshore oil and gas, offshore renewables, maritime, defence and aerospace, to expert level in loads and thermal and to working familiarity in strength and fatigue, using CAE, FEA and CFD. I would not claim to be current on solver internals, but I can tell you whether a validation study is honest.
At the moment I am taking a deliberate break to build a small AI product before my next role: Prumo, a privacy-first assistant in private alpha on iOS, which I am building on my own.