Summary
John Crickett is a veteran software engineering leader and founder with 25+ years of hands-on engineering experience and two decades of leadership from Engineering Manager to VP Engineering/CTO. He specialises in turning underperforming teams into confident, high-performing organisations, aligning technology strategy with commercial outcomes informed by an MBA and founder experience. Equally comfortable in startups and multi-billion-dollar enterprises, John has shipped AI-driven products across evolutionary algorithms, optimisation, neural nets and LLMs, and has applied LLMs to software engineering problems for several years. He combines deep technical breadth—from C++ low-latency systems and Python data engineering to AWS serverless and TypeScript—with a servant-leader coaching style, delivering training and weekly coding challenges to help engineers level up. Based in Bath, UK, he also hosts a podcast and regularly takes interim CTO roles, bringing board-level perspective to engineering decisions. A pragmatic problem-solver, he’s known for blending academic rigour and practical delivery to create measurable business impact.
10 years of coding experience
25 years of employment as a software developer
BSc (Hons), Computer Science, BSc (Hons), Computer Science at Swansea University / Prifysgol Abertawe
Giggleswick School
Rammilies Hall School
Executive Education, High Performance People Skills for Leaders, Executive Education, High Performance People Skills for Leaders at London Business School
Master of Business Administration (MBA), Business, Master of Business Administration (MBA), Business at University of Leicester