Lee Nattress

Cloud Architect, Systems Engineer & Author

leenattress1981@gmail.comLinkedIn

Things I'm Proud of

Personal Statement

I am a Systems and Cloud Architect with a special focus on Serverless Microservice Architecture, and across my past roles I have consistently increased delivery speed and software quality. I have 25+ years of experience writing software that scales in production.

I specialize in taking huge monoliths and breaking them down into decoupled microservices, as well as writing advanced tooling and bringing engineers along on the journey to get us to value faster.

I can also take systems that have become a microservice mess and consolidate them back into workable, clean monoliths when that's the right architectural choice for the business.

Along the way to becoming an architect, I've mastered cloud and serverless platforms (AWS Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, EventBridge, SQS, SNS, Step Functions, CloudFormation, Azure), delivery and infrastructure tooling (Terraform, Docker, CI/CD pipelines, GitHub Actions, Serverless Framework, SAM, CDK), application engineering (TypeScript, Node.js, React, Next.js, Python, .NET, PostgreSQL, Redis, WebSockets, REST APIs), and architecture and quality practices (Domain-Driven Design, Event Sourcing, CQRS, Test-Driven Development, Infrastructure as Code, Observability with CloudWatch, OWASP, Bash scripting, Git, and Agile methodologies).

I am equally comfortable working hands-on as a developer or leading teams as an architect. I understand the challenges faced by both roles and can bridge the gap effectively.

I come from a technical engineering background, which means I can develop NodeJS backend applications and JavaScript frontend applications, with full test suites, unit, integration, and end-to-end from first commit to deployment to production. I can pick up any language and framework quickly.

As for leadership, I have done many talks about development and being an engineer, I write effective documentation for my teams, and I encourage them to do the same. I align teams and technology. I understand how to get the best from engineers and I encourage that process.

I write video games and love sci-fi, anything that has spaceships, robots, and laser beams. I read a lot of books; I loved The Phoenix Project, Domain-Driven Design, Modern Software Engineering, and Accelerate. I build things with Arduinos and I own far too many soldering irons.

Skills

Work History

Principal Architect - Fairstone, Newcastle

June 2024 - Current

  • 🔑 Delivery turnaround: turned software delivery around from releases weeks apart with a 100% change failure rate to daily releases with near-zero change failure rate through stronger quality initiatives, including end-to-end testing, smaller deliveries, and improving DORA metrics.
  • 🔑 Secure AI architecture: delivered Azure-based secure AI architecture to massively enhance client fact finds, with strict access controls and a DPIA-certified approach appropriate for sensitive financial data.
  • 🔑 Trunk-based flow: replaced slow PR-based delivery with trunk-based delivery and carefully crafted Azure DevOps pipelines, including gates that block poor Azure architecture and vulnerable dependencies.
  • 🔑 FCA-ready UX foundation: architected a finance-focused UX library from the ground up with zero external dependencies and custom FCA-compliant components, enabling rapid iteration and AI-assisted workflows for safe non-technical contribution.
  • Scaled and stabilized a .NET monolith on Azure while improving performance, reliability, and release confidence
  • Designed and led the consolidation of disconnected systems into a cohesive platform, introducing abstracted workflow and forms tooling to standardize delivery and improve business agility
  • Embedded regulatory-by-design delivery for financial services, including FCA-ready controls, strict customer-data isolation, private endpoints, and zero-trust network principles
  • Built layered DevSecOps guardrails with Terraform policy checks, dependency vulnerability gates, and continuous security scanning to stop unsafe changes before release
  • Strengthened operational resilience by producing audit-ready evidence, responding directly to compliance reviews, and making architecture decisions that balanced speed with security
  • Coached engineering teams to apply security from the first line of code, raising delivery quality and reducing risk across the platform

Cloud Architect - 3t Digital, Gateshead

June 2022 - 2024

  • 🔑 Delivery model shift: helped move the organization from project-based delivery to product-based delivery.
  • 🔑 Microservices transformation: influenced the wider organization to adopt true event-driven microservices.
  • 🔑 High-scale ingest pipeline: architected and built an event-driven import pipeline for high-volume customer data.
  • 🔑 Power BI data access: architected and built a parquet-based export solution for customer reporting and analytics.
  • 🔑 Monolith decomposition: led the breakup of legacy monolithic architecture using domain-driven design and event storming.
  • Trained and guided multiple teams in building decoupled, distributed systems.
  • Educated testing teams on event-driven integration tests.
  • Helped platform teams design and implement cross-cutting concerns.
  • Worked directly with clients to solve complex integrations.
  • Created a mono-repo with tooling for microservice delivery and testing.
  • Hosted talks, learning lunches, and think-tanks.

Architect - Workcast, Gateshead

December 2020 - June 2022

  • 🔑 Broadcast platform architecture: architected a serverless broadcasting and streaming platform for webinars in AWS.
  • 🔑 Client delivery tooling: created a digital stage that enabled clients to plan and deliver webinars end-to-end.
  • 🔑 In-browser media workflow: delivered a web browser-based video editor to support faster content production.
  • 🔑 Release cadence acceleration: helped move deployments from monthly releases to daily delivery.
  • Architected a serverless broadcasting and streaming system for webinars in AWS
  • Created a digital stage for planning and delivering webinars
  • Created a web browser-based video editor
  • Moved deployments from monthly to daily
  • Introduced and championed automated testing
  • Completed multiple software projects with strict goals to receive grants
  • Multiple talks at events such as Serverless North East

Senior Software Engineer - Leighton, Gateshead

March 2018 - December 2020

  • Full Stack engineer with functional, security, and penetration testing
  • Worked with teams to deliver very high-quality software
  • Built auto-scaling REST API in AWS with containers
  • Built Angular front ends for complex business logic
  • DevOps experience with pipelines and advanced BASH scripting
  • Heavy focus on automation and tooling

Various Contributing Roles

~2000 - 2018

  • Ecommerce specialist for several multi-million pound online stores
  • Paid search and social advertising expert with analytics dashboards
  • Photoshop expert with all features of Photoshop and Illustrator
  • Email marketing, conversion rate testing, and design
  • Landing page design and conversion expert with split testing
  • UI/UX design for design systems, admin portals, and SaaS applications
  • Building Intranets for internal data sharing

Recent Projects

eventdriven.tools - Think POSTMAN for AWS Events

skilly.dev - Skills assessment and career progression platform for tech teams

cultured.dev - Developer culture and professional competency certification platform

quak.dev - SQL query tool for CSV and Parquet files in the browser

Obsidian DynamoDB Plugin - Query AWS DynamoDB tables directly from your Obsidian.md documentation