Richard Shawley

Richard is a principal-level platform and solution architect with more than fifteen years of experience building web, desktop and mobile software. His work spans application and platform architecture, cloud infrastructure and the supporting systems that help teams develop, deploy and operate services with confidence.

At the UK Hydrographic Office, Richard has helped shape cloud-native platform and integration capabilities, including Kubernetes foundations, infrastructure as code, GitOps, security, observability and operational readiness. His focus is on reusable services and developer self-service that improve resilience, governance and delivery across engineering teams.

Richard has also led software and platform teams through distributed, event-driven and domain-driven design challenges. He works closely with stakeholders and delivery teams to connect architecture decisions with practical outcomes, and regularly supports engineers through technical workshops, mentoring and modern engineering practice.

More recently, his engineering enablement work has included practical AI-assisted development, Microsoft Copilot, prompt engineering and the design of Copilot agents. He approaches new tooling as part of a wider delivery system: clear standards, capable teams and platforms that remain supportable in production.