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Gaz Franklin

Development Manager · Hampshire, UK

Gaz Franklin

I lead a team of 17 across development, QA and AI engineering. Every pull request gets reviewed by an agent before a person sees it.

Open to Engineering Manager roles with a path to Head of Engineering.

See how the team ships
17
people in the team.
0
people have left voluntarily since 2023.
5
apps, one developer. I know what it costs to be the only person who understands something.
~3,500
bugs resolved since 2023.

Agentic development

From experiment to everyday.

I led the team's move into AI-assisted and agentic development. Not as a side project, but in the daily workflow – without giving up human oversight.

3 days

to first review on a pull request, down from about two weeks – and still coming down, month on month.

An agent reads it first.

Every pull request is reviewed by an agent before a person sees it. Every one still gets a human review – it just starts further along, because the agent has usually started the argument.

Literacy, not magic.

Building AI literacy so engineers understand and direct the tools they work with, rather than accepting whatever comes out.

A team effort, led.

Not one person's idea. I led it: managed the engineer who built it, learned it well enough to keep up, and took it into other teams. The company's only AI Engineer sits in my team.

Turnaround

A legacy codebase, turned around.

1,200+

Bugs resolved in one year alone – and ~3,500 since I took the team on.

We shipped while we fixed.

  • Off jQuery, onto Angular micro-frontends A shell, auth, a shared UI component library and the first migrated modules are live.
  • New modules, with more on the way The first already released, and the next ones close behind.
  • The mobile app, moved from Cordova to Capacitor Around 60 bugs cleared on the way, and the new modules brought to mobile.
  • A release train every two weeks Up from one monthly release with 200+ tickets riding on it.

Career

Not just talk.

I trained to teach Music Technology at the sixth form college where I'd been a student. The year I qualified, the cuts came and the department was downsized: find a job elsewhere, or take the college's AV Technician role. I took the AV job.

It put me in an office with the college's software team. I spent a year watching over their shoulders, asking questions, and building my band's website on their advice. When one of them left I asked whether they'd take me on as a junior – cheaper, and already in the building. They did, and taught me .NET and jQuery.

A decade of building followed, and then leadership – first as a deputy, then running the team.

When I talk about technical debt, review load, or what a sprint can realistically hold, I'm talking about work I've done rather than work I've watched.

I never did teach Music Technology. But someone took a chance on a junior who happened to be in the building and taught him on the job.

From junior to running the team.

  1. Nov 2013 to Jun 2016

    Software Developer

    The Sixth Form College Farnborough

    Part of a small, self-managed team building and maintaining the college's suite of Windows and web applications, and the databases behind them.

  2. Jun 2016 to Sep 2018

    Senior Developer then Deputy Development Manager

    Furlong Solutions

    Hired to convert a legacy WinForms application to .NET MVC, and promoted to deputy in January 2017, inside the first year.

  3. Sep 2018 to Jan 2023

    Senior Developer then Deputy Development Manager

    Eque2 Ltd

    Solely responsible for five hybrid iOS and Android apps in Ionic and Angular. API work in C# .NET and Ruby on Rails, an in-house Cordova plugin, and release management through App Store Connect and Google Play. Promoted to deputy in September 2022.

  4. Jan 2023 to Present

    Development Manager

    Eque2 Ltd

    Leading a team of 17: 10 developers, 6 in QA with a QA Manager reporting in, and the company's only AI Engineer. Introduced Scrum and outcome-driven planning, and led the team's move into AI-assisted and agentic development.

Hands-on with Ionic · Angular micro-frontends · C# .NET · Ruby on Rails · SQL Server · MySQL · Knockout · Polymer · Cordova · Objective-C · Java

Most of what I do now is making sure someone else gets that chance.

Leadership

Empowering teams to do their best work.

Nobody's chosen to leave. Several have been promoted.

I took the team on in 2023. Since then: hiring, onboarding, growth frameworks, full-time staff and offshore contractors, and the occasional difficult conversation.

Clear goals, room to disagree, and ownership that sits with the team, not with me.

  • Engineering in service of the user.

    Close to Product and Design, so decisions rest on user value rather than technical elegance.

  • Bridging tech and business.

    Reporting up to senior leadership in a language both sides share, so surprises are rare.

  • One team, one direction.

    Engineering, Product, Design and Support working from shared goals rather than us-vs-them.

  • Tech debt, on purpose.

    Managed deliberately, with the case made for the right investment at the right time.

  • Agile without the theatre.

    Judged by feedback loops, not ceremonies.

Contact

Always happy to talk.

A role, a project, or just a chat – get in touch.

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