// Technology. Leadership. Security. Always learning.
Hi, I'm Brian.
I build teams, ship technology, and explore what's next.
// about
$whoami
I spent thirteen years at WANdisco - later Cirata - growing from a junior QA engineer into a Director of Engineering, leading teams across the UK, US, Europe, India, and South America.
That journey wasn't a straight line. I moved through software development, scrum mastering, project management, and engineering management before stepping into the director role. Each step taught me something the last one couldn't.
What I'm most proud of isn't a product or a metric. It's the teams. Building engineers and managers into a self-organising unit that held itself accountable, cared about quality, and brought a genuine can-do attitude to hard problems - that's the work I'm most satisfied by.
Now I'm in a new chapter. Hands-on with AI tooling, working through a structured cyber security path, and building Guardian - a security intelligence tool for remote workers. Still leading where I can. Still learning. Always figuring out what's next.
// experience
The journey
WANdisco / Cirata - 2013 to 2025
2013 - 2014
The Foundation
QA Engineer
Where it started. I joined WANdisco as a junior QA engineer and quickly found myself taking on more than the job description suggested - including early responsibility managing a remote team in Chennai, India. It set the tone for everything that followed.
2014 - 2018
The Craft
Software Developer
I moved into software development working on Java-based enterprise products, getting deep into build and release processes. I led a remote automation team across South America and later India. This is where I learned how software actually gets made - and how easily it can go wrong.
2018 - 2022
The Pivot
Project Manager / Scrum Master
The role that changed everything. I helped lead the transition from Waterfall to Agile across the organisation, introduced structured delivery practices, and helped shift release cadence from two delayed releases a year to four consistent quarterly deliveries. I found my thing - making teams work better.
2022 - 2024
The Leadership
Engineering Manager
Building and growing people became the job. Recruitment, coaching, career development, performance - and working closely with Product and Testing to improve how we delivered together. This is where I understood what leadership actually means.
2024 - 2025
The Director
Director of Engineering
Leading a global engineering organisation of thirty people across five direct reports and multiple product lines. Accountable for delivery, quality, and performance across distributed teams serving enterprise customers worldwide.
// credentials
// projects
What I'm building
// active build
Guardian
In developmentEnvironmental Security Intelligence
The office has locks on the doors, controlled access, locked down WiFi, firewalls, and protected repositories. Your home has none of that. Most people now work from home, a coffee shop, or a hotel room without giving it a second thought. But your home network might have a dozen other devices on it - laptops, phones, smart TVs, doorbells, children's tablets, smart watches. Your device might be fine, but if it trusts another device on the same network that isn't, you're exposed. Guardian uses AI to monitor your network context and give you a heads-up before you're compromised too far. I've seen it happen - it's more common than people think.
// active build
Enterprise Knowledge Assistant
In developmentPrivate LLM - Document Intelligence & Conversational AI
Most enterprise knowledge is locked away in documentation, codebases, training materials, and white papers that nobody can find when they need it. This project explores what happens when you give that content to a private, locally hosted LLM and let people ask it questions. Three use cases drive it: 1) customers getting instant accurate answers without waiting for support, 2) staff onboarding and training through conversation rather than manuals, and 3) support teams resolving issues faster with an AI that actually knows the product. The questions people ask are as valuable as the answers - every interaction is a signal about what's missing, unclear, or undocumented, feeding into product roadmaps, sales pipelines, training materials and better customer interactions.
// this site
briankilpatrick.dev
LivePersonal site and project hub
Building projects keeps you sharp. It's been a while since I had reason to look at modern hosting, current frameworks, or what GenAI-assisted development actually feels like in practice. This site gave me all of that - a reason to get hands-on with a modern stack, iterate over something until it felt right, and end up with something useful. It hosts my projects, tracks my progression, and reminded me that building things is still something I enjoy.
// in progress
Holiday Rental Platform
In progress / planningFull-stack booking platform - AWS
A deliberately different stack to everything else I'm building. The goal is a fully functional holiday rental site - calendar, booking logic, payments, photo-heavy design - but the real purpose is learning cloud infrastructure properly. AWS for hosting and storage, Lambda for booking logic, a real database - likely Postgres, Stripe for payments. Different framework, different backend, different hosting. By the end it's a genuine breadth of experience across stacks, clouds, and real-world engineering challenges.
// side quest: cyber security
The learning path
A structured path from security fundamentals through to professional certification. Currently working through TryHackMe with CISM and CISSP as the long-term goal.
SEC0
complete// completeSecurity Fundamentals
TryHackMe
SEC1
in progress// In progressSecurity Level 1
TryHackMe
SAL1
locked// nextSecurity Analyst Level 1
TryHackMe
SAL2
lockedSecurity Analyst Level 2
TryHackMe
CISM
lockedCertified Information Security Manager
ISACA
CISSP
lockedCertified Information Systems Security Professional
ISC2
// blog
From the field
I'll be using this space to share thoughts on engineering leadership, AI, cyber security, delivery, and the technology challenges shaping modern organisations. Some posts will be technical, some strategic, and some simply lessons learned along the way.
// no posts yet
First post coming soon.
// contact
Get in touch
Whether you're looking for an experienced engineering leader, want to collaborate on something interesting, or just want to connect - I'd love to hear from you.