Joined the Civil Service from school in 1982 working at the RAF Personal Management Centre at Innsworth in Gloucester. Early roles included Cobol programming on pay applications before joining the Small Systems Group to initially implement new desk top systems in Clipper and then later designing large Ingres applications and databases.

In 1996 moved to Germany to develop a new Oracle system before returning to the UK in 2000 to maintain Informix Air Worthiness reports for the RAF.

From 2004 until joining the Cabinet Office in 2012, I worked in the Defence Security and Assurance Services as a penetration and vulnerability test manager until 2008, when I implemented an Information Assurance Risk Case process for the department’s Senior Information Risk Officer to make informed decisions.