Author

Christopher Aldred

Senior Software Engineer

Professional Experience

BAE Digital Intelligence | Team Lead

November 2025 - Present
  • Technical leadership of a cross-functional engineering team, setting direction and driving best practices across the codebase.
  • Architectural decision making, evaluating and defining system design to meet scalability, security and maintainability requirements.
  • Release planning and managing deployments across environments, coordinating with stakeholders to ensure smooth and reliable delivery.
  • People management responsibilities including mentoring, supporting professional development and facilitating performance reviews.
  • Containerised developer environments to simplify onboarding, standardising and improving AI-assisted delivery across the team and project.

BAE Digital Intelligence | Software Engineer

December 2022 - November 2025
  • Developed robust, scalable API services using openshift kubernetes, Node.js and Springboot.
  • Profiling and optimising backend node services to improve throughput, response times and carbon emissions.
  • Ensured accessible UI development using React, Node and TypeScript. Tested to meet AA conformance using axe, lighthouse and manual testing.
  • DevOps CICD pipeline development and optimisations using Jenkins.
  • Improved codebase quality with in-depth code reviews and appropriate testing.
  • Knowledge facilitation and training sessions to enable cross team collaboration and efficiency.
  • Demonstrated proof-of-concept applications to product owners exploring feasibility of new features and de-risking upcoming work.

Capgemini | Software Engineer

June 2017 - November 2022
  • Maintained and developed integrations for multiple clients running Oracle EBS and Oracle Cloud.
  • Winner of an internal competition exploring innovative solutions for project growth and support efficiency.
  • PL/SQL database support & development.
  • Automation Champion, driving automation progress on Cheshire Police account.
  • Communicated solutions, status updates and risk mitigation plans to cross-functional team.

About Me

With over seven years of experience as a fullstack software engineer and currently serving as a Team Lead, I bring comprehensive expertise across both backend and frontend technologies alongside technical leadership and people management.

On the backend, I'm proficient in SQL, Java, Python, TypeScript, and Node.js, with extensive experience implementing RESTful APIs and microservices in Kubernetes environments.

My frontend capabilities include React, Astro, Vite, and TypeScript, enabling me to create robust and responsive user interfaces. I also possess strong DevOps experience with Jenkins and GitHub Workflows, optimising integration and deployment processes.

As an advocate for modern development practices, I actively embrace AI tools and technologies to enhance development workflows and boost productivity, while maintaining code quality and best practices.

Beyond my professional work, I'm passionate about coding as a hobby, regularly creating personal projects and embracing new learning opportunities. I am also a keen climber and hiker, having completed difficult challenges in the Alps and across the world.

Personal Projects

Send Coach | sendcoach.org

AI climbing coach and training planner
  • A tool-calling LLM agent harness where the model reads user data through typed, validated tools and stages every change as a single proposal the user reviews before anything is saved.
  • Exposed the app to Claude and other AI assistants via an MCP server secured with OAuth 2.1, alongside voice-note transcription and an iCal calendar feed.
  • Production operations on Railway: CI deploys from GitHub, per-user AI cost budgets, zero-data-retention model routing, encrypted automated backups and account deletion / export.
  • Tested with Vitest and cross-browser Playwright suites including axe accessibility checks, plus a recorded evaluation suite for LLM behaviour.
TypeScript React PWA Express PostgreSQL Firebase Auth OpenRouter MCP Docker Playwright

GuardMail | aiguard.email

Secure email gateway for AI agents
  • Redis-queued inbound pipeline that scans every email for prompt injection, jailbreaks and toxicity (LLM Guard in a Python FastAPI service), virus-scans attachments with ClamAV and applies configurable spam filtering.
  • A TypeScript monorepo of Dockerised services: Hono REST API, SMTP server, React / Tailwind web app and an MCP server (stdio and HTTP).
  • Implemented JWT and API-key auth, Redis rate limiting, Drizzle ORM migrations, Stripe subscriptions and custom sending domains via Resend, backed by 120+ Jest tests.
    • TypeScript Hono React PostgreSQL Redis Python FastAPI MCP Docker Stripe