About Tom Stirrop-Metcalfe
I'm Tom Stirrop-Metcalfe — an engineering leader with 15 years of building teams at early-stage startups. I've worn every hat: hands-on engineer, tech lead, engineering manager, and occasional de facto CTO. I care about AI adoption, sustainable delivery, and teams that actually enjoy their work.
💡 Engineering should make life easier for everyone.
The career in brief
Fifteen years ago I started writing code. Since then I've led engineering at early-stage startups across the UK, scaling teams from a handful to dozens, introducing process without bureaucracy, and shipping products people actually use. Today I'm Engineering Leader at Amiqus, where I'm focused on AI adoption, delivery metrics, and building a team that can move fast without breaking things.
What guides my work
🧭Systems over heroes
Paved roads, clear defaults, boring tech that scales.
🤝Autonomy with alignment
Context, written decisions, honest retros.
📏Measure flow
Cycle time, deploy frequency, change fail rate.
What I bring
- Early-stage instincts: I've operated in environments where speed matters more than perfection and process needs to earn its place. I know the difference between a startup that needs more rigour and one that just needs to ship.
- AI adoption leadership: I'm actively championing Claude and LLM tooling at Amiqus — embedding AI into engineering workflows to help a small team punch above its weight.
- The multi-hat reality: At small companies the EM role bleeds into CTO, product, and sometimes individual contributor. I'm comfortable across all of it and I think that breadth makes me a better leader.
- Mentoring & growth: I focus on coaching individuals to reach their full potential, empowering them with autonomy while providing clear alignment with business goals.
- Engineering culture: I advocate for psychological safety, continuous improvement, and honest retrospectives. Culture is the system that ships software.
How I work best
- 🏝 Fully remote. I enjoy on-site sessions for kick-offs, workshops, and show-and-tells.
- 🗓 Clear purpose, agendas, and ownership. I like decisions recorded and visible.
- 🔁 Short feedback loops. Ship small, learn fast, adjust.
- 📊 Transparency over performance and delivery metrics. Tell the real story.
- ☕️ Coffee-fuelled focus and fewer meetings than you think.
What I need from a team
- Structure, transparency, and passion for the problem.
- Feedback, early and often. I will always reciprocate.
- Clear priorities and space to do the work.
Right now
- Engineering leadership at Amiqus.
- Championing Claude and AI tooling adoption across the engineering team.
- Building internal automation tooling to improve delivery workflows.
- Writing about engineering leadership, AI adoption, and the startup EM experience. Read my writing →
📚 Books
- Lord of the Rings
- The Demonata
- The Saga of Darren Shan
- Radical Candor
- Ganbatte!
- Ikigai
📺 TV
- The Walking Dead
- Lost
- Firefly
- House
- Game of Thrones
- The Leftovers
- The Last Man on Earth
🎞 Films
- The Zero Theorem
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- The Lord of the Rings (extended)
- Hook
- Anything Marvel/DC
🕹 Games
- Days Gone
- The Last of Us
- Death Stranding
- Ghost of Tsushima
- The Legend of Zelda
- The Dark Pictures Anthology
🎧 Soundtracks
I code to instrumental game and film scores. My go-to playlist is here on Spotify.