I've been fixing
this for twenty years.
Most consultants sell frameworks. I fix systems.
I'm Alex. Based in the UK. Twenty-plus years designing, building, and governing technology systems for digital and retail businesses.
Currently Head of Technology at a £50m+ UK furniture retailer — owning the full stack: Shopify Plus, a custom ERP integration layer, Airtable as the operational backbone for multiple departments, BigQuery, AWS/GCP/Cloudflare infrastructure, and a team of developers.
Before that: Lead Developer and Solution Architect at Ignition, building digital learning platforms for the automotive sector. Before that, Digital Solution Architect and Head of Digital at eXpressoPLUS — where I came up through marketing before moving into architecture, which is why I understand what the commercial side of a business actually needs from its technology, not just what the technology team finds interesting. Grew organic traffic by 134% and reduced conversion cost from £120 to £30 through disciplined campaign and platform work. And before all of that: co-founded Lovefone in London — a phone repair and eCommerce business I built from scratch to £1m+ turnover and 25,000+ monthly visitors, designing the end-to-end IT infrastructure, eCommerce platform, and CRM from the ground up.
The pattern I've seen across every role is the same. Growing businesses struggle not because of bad tools, but because no one has ever designed how everything fits together. Processes accumulate instead of being built. Systems multiply without a plan for how they talk to each other. Manual workarounds become load-bearing.
And eventually something breaks publicly that everyone knew was fragile.
Undercover Genius exists to solve that.
What working with me looks like
No jargon theatre.
I’ll explain what I’m thinking in plain terms. If I use technical language, there’s a reason for it — and I’ll tell you what it is. You shouldn’t need a translator between me and your commercial team.
Operator mindset.
I’ve been the person responsible when the system went down at the wrong moment. I design for that reality — not for elegance on a whiteboard. The question I always ask is: what happens when this goes wrong at 2am and the developer who built it isn’t available?
Honest assessment.
I’ll tell you what I see. Including the things you might not want to hear.
Small footprint.
I work with a small number of clients at any one time. You won’t be passed to a junior. You work with me.
Recent outcomes
reduction in weekly reporting time
Automated real-time reporting stack (Fivetran, BigQuery, Looker Studio)
reduction in development time
Airtable-based automations replacing fragmented manual processes
reduction in purchasing & shipping workload
Integrated applications with automated data flows
reduction in returns processing time
Redesigned returns management system with structured tracking
turnover built at Lovefone
From scratch, with 25,000+ monthly visitors at peak
increase in organic traffic
SEO strategy and platform work at eXpressoPLUS
conversion cost reduction
Disciplined campaign optimisation at eXpressoPLUS
Voluntary work
Saving Strays
Built a complete Shopify store, analytics setup, and operational automations for a UK animal rescue charity — pro bono. The same standards apply regardless of whether there's a fee. Read Case Study or visit shop.savingstrays.org.uk
The Restart Project
Technical support, industry insights, and data-driven reporting for a London-based charity focused on sustainable electronics use and repair.
Let's talk about how your
business actually runs.
No pitch deck. No discovery questionnaire. Just a conversation about what's broken and whether I can help.