Mark Durrand
CTO (fractional) at Reds10
Based in United Kingdom
Summary
I'm a CTO with 20+ years experience in CTO/CPTO and tech leadership positions.
About
Experienced CTO with 20+ years of experience building and leading teams of tech folks and building products from early stage and through start-up/scale-up phases.
I've worked with teams ranging in size from half a dozen engineers up to 40+ and I've grown teams along that scale on more than one occasion. Typically I've taken responsibility for all aspects of technology in my roles - software engineering, infrastructure and cloud, internal IT, infosec, data & BI and sometimes the product function. I've managed each of those roles/functions directly and I've managed managers (e.g. engineering mangers, head of IT ops, head of product).
In my roles, I've typically thought of the range of responsibilities, simplistically, in three main areas:
People: the team. Hiring, developing people, organisational structure, creation of new teams or functions, the roles.
Process: Essentially, how we get work done. Call it methodology, if you like, but I prefer to keep it simple. The objective, the goal is that we will release to production multiple times per day across a number of cross-functional squads. Our job is to work out how we do that safely, effectively and to high quality. So we introduce the correct practices - transparency, pull-requests/code-reviews, testing, CI/CD, monitoring and alerting, canary releases, multi-variant testing. I could go on. I prefer lean/agile approaches but exactly what that looks like tends to be determined by the nature of the work, the structure of the team and so on.
Platform: It's common for tech people to consider this the most important area. I don't believe it is, with some caveats. Don't choose incredibly esoteric tech and don't try to invent things yourself if you can buy them. Most businesses don't need to solve tech problems that have never previously been solved. Choose things - languages, frameworks, tools - that will make hiring easier. That typically means they're reasonably popular, there exists a community around them, engineers want to work in the stack and have it on their CV, they're actively updated. All of this will make your life easier and more fun. Finally, do not be afraid to make changes to your stack and seek to do this incrementally. It's ensure your engineers remain engaged and are learning and it's help to avoid a huge, painful re-platforming exercise in a few years time because things were neglected.
Outside of the internal, pure tech stuff, I've worked in a number of PE backed businesses, taking two to exits. I've got involved at board and investor level, as well as with fellow execs.
Skills
Software Architecture, Cloud & Infrastructure, M&A / Due Diligence, Cybersecurity, Engineering Leadership, Vendor Management, DevOps, Governance & Risk, Data & AI
Regions covered
Industry experience
Fintech, Professional Services, Manufacturing, Retail, SaaS, Healthcare
At a glance
Mark brings hands-on experience across Software Architecture, Cloud & Infrastructure, M&A / Due Diligence, Cybersecurity, Engineering Leadership, Vendor Management and 3 other areas. Available for engagements across Europe. Industry experience includes Fintech, Professional Services, Manufacturing, Retail, SaaS and 1 more.
How fractional CTO engagements with Mark work
Mark works on a fractional basis — typically one to three days a week for an agreed engagement length — so you get senior technical leadership without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire. Engagements commonly include technical due diligence, board reporting, engineering team leadership, technology strategy, architecture reviews, hiring support, and stepping in as interim CTO during a transition.