About
Tech lead. Data, integrations, AI-augmented building.
I'm a tech lead at Flowcase, writing Rust and building data infrastructure and integrations. Alongside that, I'm building structured processes for effective collaboration with AI that keep human experience and judgement in the loop, and writing about it as I go.
I work four days a week at Flowcase and keep a day free for consulting and other projects.
What I've Built
Data and integrations are where I've spent most of the last 25 years. Content migrations, data pipelines, search systems, APIs, web apps, mobile apps, smart-TV apps: the connective plumbing between services that nobody notices until it breaks.
More recently this has extended into production AI infrastructure which needs the same skills in orchestrating reliable connections between data and services. Building agentic systems that work reliably comes down to context, data, and integrations. These are the same problems I've been solving for years.
Before all that, I co-founded a digital music startup, built the first online platform to win Channel of the Year at the BAFTA Children's Awards, and consulted on three EU-funded research programmes exploring P2P and decentralised technologies.
I also build my own things: Music Instinct, a synth and digital music tools, and Zero Waste Tickets, an event ticketing platform.
Speaking & Community
I instigated and grew the London Creative Coding Meetup from 2014 to 2018. I'm now running the Brighton Claude Code meetup, started March 2026. I've spoken at meetups and conferences over the years, including TestCon EU 2022 and a recent lightning talk on the HDA guide.
Testimonials
"Darren is very responsive and personable; always willing to adapt to our requirements while offering his advice and experience. The quality of his work has been very high, and I have enjoyed working with him."
Zul Mullan, Editor, The Lancet Global Health
Darren has worked on Lancet website projects for many years. He most recently developed the Lancet Global Health's blog site for us. As always, his work was excellent, thorough, and to our specifications.
Justine Davies, Editor-in-Chief, The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology
Darren really knows his onions.
Paul Reeves, Senior Developer, Viacom International Media Networks