When I joined Brightside Insurance Group during my final year at university, I entered an organisation reliant on legacy systems—spanning procedural PHP, VB6, and early .NET technologies. Far from being a limiting experience, it became a formative chapter in my career. It was here I first learned to blend pragmatism with ambition, navigating legacy architecture while advocating for scalable, future-ready solutions.

From the outset, I was given real responsibility. One of my first significant contributions was introducing object-oriented practices into a deeply procedural PHP codebase. This significantly improved structure and clarity, making the system easier to maintain and extend. At a time when OOP was still gaining traction in PHP, this shift gave the team new tools to tackle complexity more sustainably.

Recognising the need for modernisation, I initiated a proof of concept to migrate the front end from PHP to Microsoft’s ASP.NET MVC framework. Crucially, I didn’t push for a complete rewrite. Instead, I designed an incremental transition strategy that allowed us to phase in Razor views alongside existing PHP pages, minimising risk while demonstrating tangible improvements.

One of my proudest achievements at Brightside was redesigning the automated testing infrastructure. At the time, test execution using QTP (QuickTest Professional) was entirely serial and painfully slow. I proposed and implemented a microservice-based system to distribute test workloads across multiple machines, drastically reducing run times and introducing the team to the benefits of service-oriented architecture. This was my first exposure to microservices, laying the foundation for many of my architectural practices in future roles.

Of course, not all lessons were forward-looking. I encountered technical debt in its rawest form—most memorably in the form of a monolithic VB6 file so large it couldn’t be edited without manually trimming its contents. Experiences like this made the risks of neglecting architectural hygiene abundantly clear and instilled in me a long-standing commitment to sustainable engineering practices.

Brightside also shaped my view on career growth within the tech industry. After being passed over for an internal junior architect role—one that had clearly been pre-assigned—I made the difficult decision to move on. That moment taught me that career progression in tech is often about seeking new challenges rather than waiting for validation. It was a turning point that reaffirmed the importance of remaining adaptable and growth-focused, especially in fast-moving industries.

This early engagement gave me more than technical experience—it taught me how to think like an architect. It showed me the real-world cost of short-sighted decisions, the value of clear abstractions, and the importance of bringing others along on the journey toward change.