Andrew Garner

Summary

I am a product‑minded technical leader with broad experience delivering resilient systems. I am comfortable with ambiguity, owning challenging problems, and managing trade‑offs.

I enjoy continuous learning, sharing knowledge, and mentoring others. I enable teams to perform at their best by fostering collaboration and removing obstacles.

Above all, I value curiosity, empathy, and simplicity.

Skills

Industry Knowledge

  • Distributed Systems
  • Domain‑Driven Design
  • Evolutionary Architectures
  • Extreme Programming
  • Serverless Architectures
  • Systems Thinking
  • Test‑Driven Development

Platforms & Tools

Databases

Programming Languages

Runtimes & Frameworks

Experience

Cazoo

Staff Software Engineer, to
Senior Software Engineer, to
Software Engineer, to

Cazoo transformed car buying and selling in the UK and Europe with a leading brand and supply chain. Launched in December 2019, it grew rapidly, reaching a $1 billion valuation by October 2020, went public at $8 billion in 2021, but entered administration in 2024.

I contributed significantly to the rapid scaling of operations at Cazoo, building processes and technology from the ground up.

  • Created a solution to enable logistics planning and execution to be brought in‑house, ultimately scaling to support ~160K used car sales.
  • Architected services to reduce the launch time for Cazoo Customer Centres from 3 weeks to 1 hour, enabling rapid scaling from 1 to 9 locations in less than 1 month. This expansion increased vehicle handover capacity, ultimately leading to an 8% increase in the overall conversion rate.
  • Lead technical discovery in collaboration with AI specialists from Satalia to enhance the scalability and efficiency of logistics planning. This resulted in the development of a custom optimisation model solving a novel vehicle routing problem.

I also played a leading role in helping Cazoo transition to a pure‑play automotive marketplace business model.

  • Partnered with the product manager to run a series of experiments to learn how consumers might sell their car to a dealer through a Cazoo auction platform.
  • Delivered incremental improvements across the purchasing funnel, focusing on key metrics such as valuation rate, offer rate, and acceptance rate.

Tech Stack: AWS (API Gateway, DynamoDB, EventBridge, Lambda, SNS, SQS), Datadog, GitHub Actions, Next.js, Node.js, React, Terraform, TypeScript.

HSBC

Consulting Solutions Architect, to

Designed and delivered a transformational onboarding capability for HSBC’s mobile‑first business banking service, Kinetic, reducing small business account opening times from weeks to minutes.

  • Aligned C‑level stakeholders and collaborated with a global team.
  • Designed systems to capture anti‑money laundering (AML) and ‘know your customer’ (KYC) due diligence information.
  • Modelled business processes using BPMN and designed APIs using RAML.
  • Developed microservice orchestration using Activiti’s BPM framework.
  • Integrated with HSBC core banking systems, ForgeRock identity services, and Onfido for document and biometric verification.

Tech Stack: Google Cloud, Kubernetes, Java.

GOV.UK · Government Digital Service

Consulting Software Engineer, to

  • Migrated the core publishing platform to a new Content API.
  • Developed tools to support government publishers, enabling them to audit and measure the performance of published content.
  • Enhanced navigational patterns and validated a topic taxonomy, improving content discoverability.
  • Created a faceted search product specifically for Brexit content.
  • Redesigned data.gov.uk, the government’s open data platform, to help users better find, access and use public sector data.

Tech Stack: Ruby on Rails, RSpec, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, Puppet.

HM Treasury

Consulting Software Engineer, to

  • Worked in a cross‑functional team to take Pension Wise, a service offering guidance on pension options, from concept to launch.
  • Built prototypes and tested assumptions in a user research lab.
  • Set up CI/CD pipelines, configuring monitoring systems, and operational dashboards.

Tech Stack: Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Heroku, Twilio.

The Money Advice Service

Consulting Software Engineer, to

Led a team at the UK government’s Money Advice Service to research, develop, and launch a new accessible design system and responsive website, enhancing the delivery of free and impartial financial advice.

Tech Stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript.

Venntro

Senior Software Engineer, to
Software Engineer, to

Scaled White Label Dating, an online dating platform, to support 25,000 sites, achieving a new member sign‑up every 3.5 seconds and generating annual revenues exceeding £50 million.

Tech Stack: Ruby on Rails, MySQL, RabbitMQ, Redis, Puppet.

iDEA

Software Engineer, to

iDEA are workplace design specialists. I created web apps for clients including the BBC, Gensler, HP, Johnson Controls, Microsoft, and Unilever.

Tech Stack: Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, JavaScript.

Lighthouse

Software Engineer, to

Lighthouse are a small marketing and technology services agency. I worked on accounts for ASSA Abloy and Siemens Energy Services.

Tech Stack: ASP.NET, C#, HTML, CSS, JavaScript.

Qualifications