When I joined Lyons Davidson Solicitors as a C# Developer, I stepped into a codebase that was a patchwork of legacy VB6, Silverlight, WPF, and ASP.NET MVC. Rather than being daunted by the complexity, I saw it as an opportunity to start shaping the way I approached software, both in how it was architected and how it served the people building it.

One of my first observations was how often logic—particularly authorisation—was being duplicated across Silverlight components. I began developing shared packages to centralise this logic, improving maintainability and consistency across the system. This was my first authentic taste of framework development. I didn’t just want to remove repetition; I tried to make our development experience smoother and more robust.

I also implemented a reflection-based database access framework that significantly reduced boilerplate code. In some areas, I reduced class size by as much as 70%. This work taught me how to abstract just enough to simplify development without sacrificing clarity or control.

But the most impactful lesson I took from Lyons Davidson wasn’t technical—it was about communication and alignment. I once changed a static class to a singleton, thinking I was improving state management. What I hadn’t realised was how deeply others relied on its statelessness. That misstep disrupted their workflows and taught me a lasting lesson: always understand how something is used before modifying its functionality.

Perhaps most importantly, this role helped me see systems in terms of components. Silverlight’s modularity sparked a mindset that has influenced everything I’ve built since—from microservices and domain-driven design to developer tooling and internal platforms.

Looking back, Lyons Davidson was where I transitioned from a developer who wrote code to one who thought deeply about how code fits into systems—and how those systems serve the people using them. It was the beginning of my journey into architectural thinking, and many of the principles I now bring to leadership and strategy were formed there.