Curriculum vitae

MICHAEL
THOMSON

VP Engineering / Head of Engineering
AI-first SDLC, PE scale-up & M&A integration

Twelve years building, scaling, and exiting high-volume SaaS, from early-stage startup through private equity and a trade sale. Fifth hire at CloudTrade. Head of Engineering through the Calculus Capital investment, a ~4× acquisition by Advanced, and post-merger integration of a ~30-person engineering organisation. Co-founded Cloud Connect Software in 2025 and took it to ~£600k ARR on an AI-native SDLC — Claude Code and Grok Build, CLI-first services, and delivery tooling that replaced Jira.

North Tyneside · fully remote · michael@tyneside.software · WhatsApp +44 7411 949215 · LinkedIn · Cloud Connect · Download PDF · Working history

Core competencies

AI-first SDLC & engineering

Hands-on agentic development with Claude Code and Grok Build. CLI-first architecture so agents can run and test the system. Custom AI-native work tracking and documentation. Hybrid agentic AI, LLM rules models, and deterministic engines.

Cloud & technical stack

Ten years of Azure-first microservices and containerised SaaS. C# / .NET, Python, Prolog, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. High-volume data pipelines. ERP integrations for SAP, Oracle, Sage, and Dynamics.

Leadership & scaling

Teams from 2 to about 30 engineers, led through team leads and principal engineers. Autonomous squads of about five. Project-to-product transformation. Extreme Programming and mentoring.

Private equity, M&A & governance

PE value creation and a ~4× exit. Sell-side technical due diligence on the CloudTrade sale. Post-merger integration. ISO/IEC 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus.

Experience

CTO & Co-Founder

Cloud Connect Software

March 2025 – present

  • Pioneered an end-to-end AI-first SDLC. Builds personally, and leads the team, with Claude Code and Grok Build — how the function writes, tests, and ships production software.
  • AI-ready codebase from day one. A CLI on every component and service, so coding agents get direct, deterministic execution and automated testability across the stack.
  • Moved engineering off Jira onto a bespoke internal platform for work tracking and living documentation. AI sits in specification, planning, and delivery.
  • Scaled a fully containerised Azure SaaS (C#, Python, Prolog, JavaScript) to ~£600k ARR. Human-assisted agentic AI, LLM rules models, and deterministic extraction, processing 900,000+ documents at character-level accuracy.
  • Bi-directional ERP integrations for SAP, Oracle, Sage, and Microsoft Dynamics. Enterprise customers at 50,000+ invoices a year. Led the team to ISO/IEC 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus.

Head of Engineering (CloudTrade business unit)

Advanced (OneAdvanced)

October 2021 – February 2025

  • Directed CloudTrade engineering after the acquisition by PE-backed Advanced. Grew the department from about 12 to about 30 developers, through 2 team leads and 2 principal engineers.
  • Restructured two oversized legacy teams into autonomous product-led squads of about 5 engineers. Clearer ownership, faster deploys, and better cross-functional alignment.
  • Led technical and operational integration onto Advanced’s Azure stack, bringing 10+ years of Azure microservices into corporate governance, security, and portfolio standards.
  • Sell-side technical due diligence during the sale. Then PE ownership, leadership changes, portfolio reviews, and product wind-down, while delivery commitments and the team held.

Head of Engineering

CloudTrade Technologies

2018 – October 2021

  • Formalised as Head of Engineering after the 2018 Calculus Capital investment. Technical strategy and execution through scale-up to the trade sale to Advanced (~4× return).
  • Took engineering from early bespoke customer work to a repeatable Azure microservice product organisation of about 12 developers.
  • Owned architecture and delivery of Gramatica, a patented deterministic rules engine. Near-100% accuracy on complex invoices, orders, and logistics documents into ERP and accounts payable.
  • Moved the engineering organisation to fully remote during COVID-19. Mission-critical delivery continued under key-worker status for NHS and UK government document processing.

Software Engineer, then Technical Lead

CloudTrade Technologies

July 2013 – 2018

  • Joined as the fifth employee and one of two engineers. Built the Azure capture platform (C#, Prolog, Python, and web) that turns unstructured PDFs into structured enterprise data.
  • Co-developed the extraction technology behind patents in Europe, the United States, and Australia.
  • Technical Lead. Extreme Programming, automated testing, and continuous delivery, plus people management and mentoring as the team grew.

Education

BSc Computer Science

Newcastle University

2010 – 2013

A-levels — Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Biology

St Aidan’s RC

Speaking & mentoring

Good Engineers Can Be Good Managers: Never Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise — Talks with Tech Leaders, May 2025.

Technical mentor on Thursday evenings. University students and family, five or six hours a week, in commercial software engineering (tyneside.software).

Longer account: working history. PDF: Michael_Thomson_CV.pdf.

Contact

WhatsApp first.

WhatsApp · +44 7411 949215

Message on WhatsApp — that’s where I pay most attention.
Email is fine too, but I’m much slower: michael@tyneside.software

Tyneside Software · About · Working history · Download PDF · Cloud Connect · LinkedIn