Curriculum vitae · updated July 2026
Full-stack developer and systems engineer. Eighteen years shipping software, eight years running my own company, and — unusually for an engineer — a day job selling enterprise technology.
I’ve been building for the web since 2008 — front-end at Trinity Mirror, lead developer at ITE Group, then tech lead at Epigeum and Oxford University Press.
In 2016 I also started my own company. For the first couple of years I ran Not Blowing Smoke alongside those tech lead roles; after that it had my full attention. Eight years of the whole thing, from stock and suppliers to the P&L — and I spent the second half automating it until it ran without me in it.
Today I’m an Account Director at Bytes, selling Microsoft, AWS, cyber security and backup. It’s an unusual place for an engineer to end up, and it has made me a considerably better one — I now spend my days on what technology costs, what it’s worth, and why projects get signed off or quietly killed.
I still build. I take on a small number of freelance projects, and I self-host everything I run, including this site — hand-written, on Debian and nginx.
Bytes Technology Group · Surrey, UK
Selling and shaping technology for mid-market and enterprise customers: Microsoft and AWS licensing, cyber security, and data backup and recovery. The engineering background is the differentiator — I can tell a customer what a proposal will actually cost them to run.
Microsoft · AWS · Cyber security · Backup & DR · Procurement
Not Blowing Smoke Ltd · Surrey, UK
Founded and ran an e-commerce and retail business for eight years — product, suppliers, stock, staff, compliance and the P&L. Built the systems it ran on rather than buying them: storefront, stock control, order fulfilment and reporting, progressively automated until the business operated without my day-to-day involvement.
This is the part of my CV that isn’t like anyone else’s. I know what it costs to keep software running, because it was my money.
E-commerce · Automation · Systems integration · P&L · Hiring
Oxford University Press · Kensington, London
Led development across academic publishing platforms, covering front-end, back-end, database administration and the data pipeline behind reporting.
JavaScript · jQuery · Angular · SASS · Flask · SQLAlchemy · MongoDB · SQL DBA · Azure · Pentaho · Grunt
Epigeum · London
Front-end lead on online course production for universities, running the build standards and the review process for a distributed team.
HTML5 · CSS3 · SASS · jQuery · Angular · JIRA · Bitbucket
ITE Group PLC · Queen’s Park, London
Led UK web development for a global events business — a large estate of event sites on a shared CMS, plus the servers they ran on.
C# · ASP.NET · Kentico CMS · REST APIs · jQuery · Sys admin · Rackspace
ITE Group PLC · Queen’s Park, London
C# · ASP.NET · Kentico CMS · HTML5 · CSS · jQuery · Sys admin
Trinity Mirror PLC · Canary Wharf, London
National news and media brands, at the scale and tempo a newsroom demands.
Photoshop · HTML5 · CSS3 · SASS · JavaScript · jQuery · JIRA · Jenkins · Maven
Flynet · Cambridge
First development role: enterprise terminal-emulation and business-intelligence products, working close to the metal on integration.
C# · ASP.NET · JavaScript · SharePoint · FlynetViewer · SAP BusinessObjects
Full-stack web applications
Core
Node.js, PHP, C#/.NET. Production systems at Oxford University Press, Epigeum and ITE Group, plus my own e-commerce platform.
Front-end engineering
Core
HTML, CSS, JavaScript across eighteen years — from newsroom scale at Trinity Mirror to the hand-written, dependency-free CSS this page is built with.
Databases
Core
SQL Server and MySQL including DBA work; MongoDB and SQLAlchemy at OUP. Schema design, tuning and migrations.
APIs & integration
Working
REST design and consumption at ITE Group; Pentaho data integration and analytics pipelines at OUP.
Linux & web servers
Core
Debian and nginx. A decade of self-hosted production, including every site and service under webdeviant.io.
Virtualisation & containers
Core
VMware and Docker, for both development environments and production workloads.
Cloud & edge
Working
Azure at OUP, Rackspace at ITE Group, AWS and Cloudflare in current use.
CI/CD & automation
Working
Jenkins and Maven at Trinity Mirror, Grunt at OUP, GitHub Actions since.
Licensing & procurement
Current
Microsoft and AWS commercial models, day to day at Bytes. What things cost, and what they should cost.
Security & resilience
Current
Cyber security posture, backup and disaster recovery for mid-market and enterprise customers.
Running a business
Eight years
Owner-director: P&L, cash flow, hiring, suppliers, compliance. I have signed the cheques as well as written the code.
Leading teams
Core
Tech lead at OUP and Epigeum, lead developer at ITE Group. Standards, review, and shipping to a date.
Debian
nginx
Docker
VMware
Cloudflare
IntelliJ
Termius
QueriousCode is read far more often than it is written, usually by someone who has never met you. Simple and boring beats clever every time.
If a task happens twice, it will happen a hundred times. I automated an entire company on that principle and it is still running.
Architecture nobody can explain is architecture nobody can maintain. Clear documentation is part of the deliverable, not an extra.
Want to talk? Email, call, or use the form — they all reach me directly.
[email protected] · +44 (0) 777 2111 733 ·
webdeviant.io · Godalming, Surrey, UK
linkedin.com/in/antbentinck · github.com/webdeviant