Chris Northwood

Technical Leader and Author

Hello! This is the website and portfolio of Chris Northwood (I'm sometimes found online using the handle laser or a variation and I hold the radio callsigns M3NTW and 2E0NTW). I'm trans, and use the pronouns she/her.

I'm a technologist with a background in tech leadership and full-stack development, as well as campaigner for the Liberal Democrats in Manchester. I work with organisations that want to make the world a better place, most recently at Culture Shift where I built a product team that enabled the tech-for-good startup to scale from £20k to £1 million annual recurring revenue. I use my experience in strategy, architecture and leadership combined with my background as a technical practitioner to lead or advise product teams that solve problems using web technologies across the full web stack.

I tweet at @cnorthwood but I'm slowly moving over to Mastodon, where I am laser@tech.lgbt. I occasionally blog at Medium. You can also get in touch with me using the details below.

I've written a book: The Full Stack Developer, published by Apress. It's the book I wish I had when I started as a junior developer, and covers almost everything I've learnt in my career so far. You can buy it from Amazon.

What I believe

Delivery

I believe in Continuous Delivery in a cross-functional product team embracing DevOps, design and QA working together.
I believe in agile approaches to problem-solving, setting up a sustainable flow of delivery.
I'm a polyglot programmer, working across the full web stack, who believes in using the best tool for the job.

Teamwork

I work in cross-functional teams focussed on delivery: swarming on problems, rather than siloed roles and responsibilities.
I believe that software delivery should be integrated into the business, not a separate team.
I believe in enabling all members of the team to make progress.