Platform Modernisation - HealthTech
Sector: Healthcare
Role: Fractional Staff Engineer / Technical Coach
Engagement Type: Embedded Leadership during Platform Transformation
From firefighting and fragile systems to safe, continuous delivery - by building trust, flow, and capability from within.
The Challenge
A national HealthTech provider was shifting from traditional health screening services toward a digital-first, data-driven model. This transformation exposed deep delivery challenges:
- Fragile, tightly coupled legacy systems
- High-risk, manual releases and daily production hotfixes
- Inconsistent quality and team practices after multiple vendor transitions
- Delivery work often overrunning by quarters
The organisation needed safer, faster delivery and a platform capable of supporting sustained product evolution.
The Starting Point
When I joined, the software delivery system was under significant strain:
- A distributed monolith across four legacy codebases
- Little-to-no functioning automated tests; regression relied on manual validation
- Frequent firefighting and reactive fixes, sometimes applied directly to live systems
- High cognitive complexity: thousands-of-lines methods, branching logic, and deep coupling
- Inconsistent team practices, with no unified architecture or quality standards
Developer stress was high. Teams were exhausted and reactive. Confidence was low. Morale was fraying. Engineering was seen as a bottleneck, not a partner.
What I Did
Technical Modernisation
- Introduced Hexagonal Architecture and Domain-Driven Design principles to reduce coupling
- Helped design an event-driven, microservice-based architecture using Kubernetes (EKS) and Kafka (MSK)
- Used Change Data Capture to decouple legacy systems and support parallel running safely
- Implemented CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code to support safe, on-demand deployment
Delivery Flow & Risk Management
- Defined feedback targets (e.g. <1 min local tests, <5 min pipeline feedback)
- Transitioned from manual testing to automated pipelines, static analysis, and feature flag strategies
- Enabled controlled rollouts through dark launches, mirrored environments, and progressive exposure
- Coached teams through the adoption of trunk-based development and releasable-by-default workflows
Leadership & Alignment
- Acted as a Staff Engineer embedded in delivery teams - pairing, reviewing, and unblocking
- Ran weekly group coaching sessions and contributed to cross-team architectural direction
- Worked closely with CTO, delivery leads, and product stakeholders to manage risk and negotiate scope
- Helped reshape team structure to align with architectural domains and reduce coordination overhead
What Changed
Delivery Flow
- We moved from firefighting to focused delivery
- New services shifted from weekly deploys to multiple deploys per day
- Legacy cadence became predictable, and scope negotiation became a trusted rhythm - not a battle
Risk & Quality
- Bugs stopped slipping through the cracks
- Hotfixes dropped dramatically, and firefighting became the exception, not the norm
- Production became a safe place to learn - not a risk to be feared - through feature flags, test automation, and observability
Developer Experience
- Developer stress eased as feedback loops shortened and delivery friction dropped
- The team felt more in control - confident, autonomous, and able to improve without burning out
Business Impact
- The business regained momentum
- They could make faster product decisions under pressure - like switching payment providers mid-cycle
- Trust returned. Engineering was no longer a bottleneck, but a partner
Reflections
Modernising delivery isn’t just about better tech - it’s about restoring flow, trust, and confidence. By embedding as a fractional leader, I helped shift the team from firefighting to forward motion, turning delivery from a liability into a source of momentum. And when they no longer needed me, I knew the work had stuck.
If you’re scaling a legacy platform or struggling to deliver safely and predictably - I can help.
Book a 20-minute discovery call