About

I'm Luke. I'm a software engineer in Melbourne and run Archipelago Software which is a small consultancy that does end to end web platform design and build (architecture, backend, infrastructure and UI). Outside of client work we build open source tools to solve the problems we run into.

On this blog I write about whatever I'm interested in that week (engineering first and foremost, but also books, economics and philosophy).

Experience

Freelance Full-Stack Engineer, Archipelago Software (client: AudioConnect)

Jun 2026 – now
  • Sole developer and technical owner of a freelancer platform for audio credits, portfolio clips and availability. Architecture, backend, infrastructure and UI. Part-time to August, full-time since September.
  • Next.js, TypeScript, tRPC, PostgreSQL, Redis, Cloudflare R2. In early testing with selected users.
  • Agent-native workflow: scope tasks for coding agents, set their conventions, review output. Typed contracts and boundary validation keep it safe.

Engineering Sales Consultant, Interflon Australia

Apr – Sep 2026
  • Ran technical consultations with maintenance and reliability engineers: requirements, on-site root-cause diagnosis, co-designed solutions.
  • Sole owner of operations and client relationships for the two-person Australian franchise.

Software Engineer & Scrum Master, Roke, Cheltenham UK

2022 – 2025
  • High-assurance platforms for UK national security and defence. React/Redux, Java/Spring Boot, AWS.
  • Scrum Master: lifted sprint velocity 30–40%. Raised unit test coverage from 70% to 80%.
  • Led a WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility audit through to compliance. Line-managed and mentored 4–6 junior developers.
  • Led the frontend migration to Vite. Set up Prometheus and Grafana monitoring. Added Snyk scanning and pinned dependencies.

Summer Research Assistant, Nottingham Trent University

2021
  • Reinforcement-learning controllers for autonomous fruit-harvesting robots. Python, ROS/ROS2.

Education

  • MSc Computer Science, University of Nottingham 2021 – 2022
  • BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, Nottingham Trent University 2017 – 2021

Skills

Build
TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, Java, Spring Boot, Python
Data & cloud
PostgreSQL, Prisma, Redis, AWS, Cloudflare, Docker, CI/CD, Prometheus, Grafana
Quality
Code review, test strategy, WCAG 2.1 AA, Snyk, CSP/HSTS
People
Requirements elicitation, root-cause analysis, Scrum, mentoring

Elsewhere

Email · GitHub · LinkedIn

Referees available on request.

Share image: John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from Lower Marsh Close, 1820 (public domain).