~/london$whoami

DanielGorgonia.

Director of Technology & Product. Platform & API strategy. AI-assisted engineering adoption. Building technology functions from zero.

A product-minded technology leader who builds the function as well as the software. Director of Technology & Product at Times Higher Education (BMI Global Ed), and founder of Petal Party LDN.

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FIG.01 — WHERE THE THREE MEETPRODUCT · TECHNOLOGY · PLATFORM
10+YEARS AT BMI GLOBAL ED / TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION
14SYSTEMS UNDER PLATFORM DIRECTION
60–80INTERNATIONAL FAIRS A YEAR
18COUNTRIES
01ABOUT

I'm a product-minded technology leader who builds the function as well as the software.

BASED
London, United Kingdom
ROLE
Director of Technology and Product, Times Higher Education (BMI Global Ed)
VENTURE
Founder / Technical Lead, Petal Party LDN
EDUCATION
BS, Computer Science, De La Salle University Manila

In 10+ years at BMI Global Ed, now part of Times Higher Education, I took the technology team from a single developer to a governed offshore engineering function, cutting annual engineering costs by 70%, while owning the product roadmap, the architecture and the stakeholder relationships that set both.

I hold platform direction across a 14-system estate serving 60–80 international recruitment fairs a year in 18 countries, and run a multi-domain API platform as a product.

I led the team's move from manual to AI-assisted engineering, redesigning the delivery process and retraining the team, which took delivery cycles from months to weeks.

Alongside the day job I run a small London flower business, selling through pop-ups, events and bouquet-making workshops, on an AI inventory and forecasting platform I built and operate end to end.

02IMPACT

Selected outcomes

/01−70%

Annual engineering costs, growing one developer into a governed offshore engineering function

AS HEAD OF ENGINEERING & PRODUCT
/02months→ weeks

Delivery cycles, after leading the team's move to AI-assisted engineering

AS DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY & PRODUCT
/03−50%

AWS infrastructure cost

AS DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY & PRODUCT
/04+300%

Content platform revenue, from a tiered paid-placement model with contractual delivery guarantees

AS HEAD OF ENGINEERING & PRODUCT
/052×

Total fairs revenue, 2020 to 2021, pivoting physical conferences to digital across six global regions

AS HEAD OF ENGINEERING & PRODUCT
/06+67%

Event sign-ups, through A/B testing and analytics

AS FULL-STACK ENGINEER
/07−80%

Marketing operational overhead, by building automation into the fairs platform

AS HEAD OF ENGINEERING & PRODUCT
/0860 days

From an empty repository to first App Store submission for a cross-platform lead-capture app

AS SENIOR FULL-STACK ENGINEER
03EXPERIENCE

Experience

select a role on the timeline or the list
2022 — PRESENT · LONDON, UK

Director of Technology and Product

Times Higher Education (BMI Global Ed)
  • Own product direction and platform architecture for a 14-system estate serving 60–80 international student-recruitment fairs a year across 18 countries.
  • Led the organisation's adoption of AI-assisted engineering, redesigning the delivery process and retraining the team.
  • Drove adoption of a layered GitHub Copilot governance framework, an MCP server and release-automation agents, condensing delivery timelines from months to weeks.
  • Decided and directed a three-year move of BMI Global Ed's systems onto one shared Node.js API platform of 200+ endpoints across seven modules, with the legacy PHP API retired.
  • Contributed the technology case to a winning government bid.
  • Achieved a 50% reduction in AWS infrastructure cost, and took production incident resolution from days to hours by introducing full-stack observability.
Platform strategyAI-assisted engineeringLegacy modernizationObservability
2025 — PRESENT · LONDON, UK

Founder / Technical Lead

Petal Party LDN
  • A London flower business selling through pop-ups, events and bouquet-making workshops, and the AI inventory, pricing and forecasting platform it runs on, built with Claude Code and operated end to end as sole engineer.
  • Architected the conversational AI assistant around a deterministic-arithmetic / probabilistic-creativity boundary, gating its release on a scored LLM-as-judge baseline.
  • Built a four-step structured-output failure ladder that recovered every malformed model response in the verification run (0 requests failed, against 32% before).
  • Built a statistical forecasting pipeline that runs within a zero-cost AWS free-tier budget.
FounderLLM evaluationStructured outputForecasting
2018 — 2022 · LONDON, UK

Head of Engineering and Product

BMI Global Ed / Times Higher Education
  • Grew the technology function from a single developer to a governed offshore engineering team, reducing annual engineering costs by 70%.
  • Facilitated the acquisition by Times Higher Education by leading the technical due-diligence documentation.
  • Introduced a tiered paid-placement model with contractual delivery guarantees that grew the group's content platform revenue by 300%.
  • Doubled total fairs revenue between 2020 and 2021 by pivoting physical conferences to digital across six global regions.
  • Cut marketing operational overhead by 80% by building automation into the fairs platform.
Engineering managementPricing strategyTechnology due diligence
2017 — 2018 · LONDON, UK

Senior Full-Stack Engineer

BMI Global Ed
  • Founding engineer of the company's cross-platform iOS/Android lead-capture app, taken from an empty repository to first App Store submission in 60 days.
  • Built it offline-first, so capture kept working with no connectivity at live international fairs.
  • Co-built the on-site check-in and badge-printing system.
  • Defined a new product roadmap from seven weeks of customer research in LATAM and Dubai.
Xamarin · C#Offline-firstCustomer research
2015 — 2017 · LONDON, UK

Full-Stack Engineer

BMI Global Ed
  • Authored the core architecture of the multi-country PHP fairs platform that served the physical-fairs product line for a decade across 36 domains and 8 locales.
  • Increased event sign-ups by 67% through A/B testing and analytics.
  • Migrated the organisation's systems to AWS.
  • Introduced Agile methodologies company-wide.
PHP · SQLAWSExperimentation
2012 — 2016

Early career

Where it started
Co-Founder / Full-Stack Engineer2014 — 2016Stronghold MNL
Researcher2013 — 2014Center for Human-Computer Interactions
Web & Mobile Engineer2013Community-Based Monitoring System (Non-Profit)
Mobile Engineer2012Nokia
  • Own product direction and platform architecture for a 14-system estate serving 60–80 international student-recruitment fairs a year across 18 countries.
  • Led the organisation's adoption of AI-assisted engineering, redesigning the delivery process and retraining the team.
  • Drove adoption of a layered GitHub Copilot governance framework, an MCP server and release-automation agents, condensing delivery timelines from months to weeks.
  • Decided and directed a three-year move of BMI Global Ed's systems onto one shared Node.js API platform of 200+ endpoints across seven modules, with the legacy PHP API retired.
  • Contributed the technology case to a winning government bid.
  • Achieved a 50% reduction in AWS infrastructure cost, and took production incident resolution from days to hours by introducing full-stack observability.
Platform strategyAI-assisted engineeringLegacy modernizationObservability
  • A London flower business selling through pop-ups, events and bouquet-making workshops, and the AI inventory, pricing and forecasting platform it runs on, built with Claude Code and operated end to end as sole engineer.
  • Architected the conversational AI assistant around a deterministic-arithmetic / probabilistic-creativity boundary, gating its release on a scored LLM-as-judge baseline.
  • Built a four-step structured-output failure ladder that recovered every malformed model response in the verification run (0 requests failed, against 32% before).
  • Built a statistical forecasting pipeline that runs within a zero-cost AWS free-tier budget.
FounderLLM evaluationStructured outputForecasting
  • Grew the technology function from a single developer to a governed offshore engineering team, reducing annual engineering costs by 70%.
  • Facilitated the acquisition by Times Higher Education by leading the technical due-diligence documentation.
  • Introduced a tiered paid-placement model with contractual delivery guarantees that grew the group's content platform revenue by 300%.
  • Doubled total fairs revenue between 2020 and 2021 by pivoting physical conferences to digital across six global regions.
  • Cut marketing operational overhead by 80% by building automation into the fairs platform.
Engineering managementPricing strategyTechnology due diligence
  • Founding engineer of the company's cross-platform iOS/Android lead-capture app, taken from an empty repository to first App Store submission in 60 days.
  • Built it offline-first, so capture kept working with no connectivity at live international fairs.
  • Co-built the on-site check-in and badge-printing system.
  • Defined a new product roadmap from seven weeks of customer research in LATAM and Dubai.
Xamarin · C#Offline-firstCustomer research
  • Authored the core architecture of the multi-country PHP fairs platform that served the physical-fairs product line for a decade across 36 domains and 8 locales.
  • Increased event sign-ups by 67% through A/B testing and analytics.
  • Migrated the organisation's systems to AWS.
  • Introduced Agile methodologies company-wide.
PHP · SQLAWSExperimentation
Co-Founder / Full-Stack Engineer2014 — 2016Stronghold MNL
Researcher2013 — 2014Center for Human-Computer Interactions
Web & Mobile Engineer2013Community-Based Monitoring System (Non-Profit)
Mobile Engineer2012Nokia
04PORTFOLIO

Selected work

01 / DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONBMI GLOBAL ED
  • ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
  • HANDS-ON ENGINEERING

From a business run on paper to one run on its own software

Eleven years turning a 1987 conference business into a digital one: AWS and an integrated API layer first, then department by department, then a COVID pivot the platform had already made possible.

Digital transformationPlatform strategyChange management
Read case study
BEFORE
months
AFTER
weeks
Copilot governance framework
MCP server
Release-automation agents
13 / AI-ASSISTED DELIVERYBMI GLOBAL ED
  • ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
  • ARCHITECTURE
  • TEAM LEADERSHIP

From manual to AI-assisted engineering

Led the team's move from manual to AI-assisted engineering, redesigning the delivery process and retraining the team, and drove adoption of a layered GitHub Copilot governance framework, an MCP server and release-automation agents. Delivery cycles went from months to weeks.

GitHub CopilotAI agentsSpec-driven development
Read case study
12 / CUSTOM CRMBMI GLOBAL ED
  • PRODUCT LEADERSHIP
  • ARCHITECTURE
  • TEAM LEADERSHIP

Bespoke Events CRM

A custom CRM running the exhibitor side of 60–80 fairs a year: stand, hotel and travel bookings, compliance documents, printing, shipping and online payments. Steered its rebuild, delivered in four months, with payment integrity guaranteed by design.

Next.js · TypeScriptPaymentsRole-based access
Read case study
06 / DIGITAL MAGAZINEBMI GLOBAL ED
  • PRODUCT INNOVATION
  • TEAM LEADERSHIP

Viva Mundo

Selling universities sponsored articles, not banner space, grew a study-abroad magazine's revenue by 300%. I proposed the model and directed the vendor team that rebuilt the platform around it, for readers in four languages.

Sponsored contentRevenue modelDrupal 8
Read case study
04 / MOBILE APPBMI GLOBAL ED
  • PRODUCT INNOVATION
  • ARCHITECTURE
  • HANDS-ON ENGINEERING

Conference Lead Capture App

A phone app that replaced paper lead forms at student-recruitment fairs: scan a student's badge, see what they want to study, follow up with the best leads first, and all without the venue Wi-Fi. I proposed and architected it, and coded it with one other developer.

iOS · AndroidOffline-firstBadge scanning
Read case study
15 / AI-POWERED BUSINESS PLATFORMPETAL PARTY LDN
  • FOUNDER
  • PRODUCT LEADERSHIP
  • HANDS-ON ENGINEERING

An AI assistant and forecasting platform for my own flower business

Built with Claude Code for my pop-up retail, events and workshops: its AI assistant plans arrangements from live wholesale stock while server code sets every price, and forecasts flag what won't sell.

AI assistantForecastingClaude Code
Read case study
MORE WORKTEN MORE CASE STUDIES
02 / SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE
  • ENGINEERING STRATEGY
  • ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP

The Platform Estate

Set technical direction across a 14-system, 23-repository estate, and the order of its three-year migration off a legacy API.

10 / BACKEND API
  • ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
  • TEAM LEADERSHIP

Central API Platform

Five consumer systems moved off a legacy PHP API onto a central Node.js platform of 200+ endpoints, run as a product.

03 / REPORTING DASHBOARD
  • HANDS-ON ENGINEERING
  • ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP

Fairs Reporting Hub

The reporting hub behind 60–80 fairs a year: per-fair reports and marketing lists in minutes rather than days.

05 / EVENT CHECK-IN SYSTEM
  • HANDS-ON ENGINEERING

Conference Check-in & Badge Printing

Staff scan a visitor's barcode at the door and a thermal printer produces their badge. I co-built its back end.

14 / TESTING & QA
  • TEAM LEADERSHIP
  • ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP

Specification & QA Governance

A CI-checked chain from specification to test that outlives any one engineer or vendor.

08 / SELF-SERVE WEBSITES
  • ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
  • TEAM LEADERSHIP
  • HANDS-ON ENGINEERING

Self-Serve Fair Sites

Buy vs build on WordPress: event teams publish their own fair sites in minutes.

09 / STUDENT WEB APP
  • PRODUCT LEADERSHIP
  • TEAM LEADERSHIP

Student Fairs & Webinars Hub

A landing page that works out a student's country and leads with the fairs and webinars they can join.

16 / PITCH & PROTOTYPE
  • PRODUCT INNOVATION
  • PRODUCT LEADERSHIP
  • HANDS-ON ENGINEERING

International Student Insights Dashboard

A client-side prototype dashboard for education-fair data, built in a seven-day sprint.

11 / MARKETING WEBSITES
  • ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
  • HANDS-ON ENGINEERING

International Fair Marketing Platform

Localised fair sites in 18 countries, measured from first ad click to the scan at the door.

07 / BOOKING WEBSITE
  • PRODUCT LEADERSHIP
  • HANDS-ON ENGINEERING

Corporate Website & Event Booking

The sales team's storefront for BMI's recruitment fairs: fairs by region and audience, a published schedule, and online booking.

05SKILLS

Skills

[a] LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY
Product ManagementPlatform StrategyAI StrategyAPI StrategyEnterprise ArchitectureEngineering ManagementLegacy ModernizationCloud Strategy (AWS)Stakeholder ManagementPricing StrategyTechnology Due Diligence
[b] AI ENGINEERING
Spec-Driven DevelopmentGitHub CopilotClaude CodeAI AgentsLLM EvaluationApplication Security
[c] STACK
Node.jsTypeScriptNext.jsPostgreSQL
[d] EDUCATION
BS, Computer ScienceDe La Salle University Manila
06CONTACT

Say hello.

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LINKEDINlinkedin.com/in/danielgorgonia

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LOCATIONLondon, United Kingdom
LOCAL TIME--:--