~/about
About
Take it apart, understand how it works, then build it better.
Engineering has always been in my blood, whether it's mechanical, electrical or digital. I started out in electronics and moved naturally into web engineering as the web arrived. Since then I've led engineering in automotive, luxury fashion, sustainable packaging, furniture and now property: building the platforms, the teams that run them and the processes that keep them safe.
Who you'll work with
Ziggy Friedfractional CTO · London
I've spent 30 years building and running digital platforms, as CTO at Magical Mushroom Company and Head of Engineering at Harvey Nichols and The Cotswold Company. Hands-on and plain-spoken. I recommend whichever supplier fits, and tell you up front if I'd earn a referral fee.
git log --author=ziggy --oneline
- 2026feat: fractional CTO for start-ups, Rethink Commerce Co
- 2021lead: Head of Engineering, The Cotswold Company
- 2021cto: Magical Mushroom Company, running its eCommerce subsidiary
- 2013lead: Head of Engineering & Product, Harvey Nichols
- 2001init: Motortrak, leading a team of 25
rethink-commerce-co · founder
Fractional CTO and commerce consultant
My consultancy. I build, or advise on, resilient and scalable headless commerce platforms and the teams behind them: architecture and stack, security, process, hiring and SEO. That includes platform evaluations: for The Cotswold Company, before I joined it, I evaluated search and merchandising platforms and front-end hosting, wrote the proposals, then went on to implement both. I'm also a co-founder and the technical lead of a London property start-up.
Read the case studythe-cotswold-company · head of engineering
Engineering for an omnichannel furniture retailer
I led engineering, eCommerce and business systems: headless commerce, NetSuite ERP, cloud infrastructure and integrations, across customer experience, fulfilment and retail operations. I led cross-functional teams through platform modernisation and resilience work, and led AI adoption across engineering and operations, including internal apps and automation that replaced manual processes. I first joined as interim Head of Development.
magical-mushroom-company · cto
CTO, Director of eCommerce and founding investor
I ran technology for a company that grows packaging from mycelium, and set up its online business on a headless stack: BigCommerce, Next.js, Storyblok and Vercel. It ran with near-zero downtime and atomic, tested deployments, at a fraction of the cost of a comparable enterprise build, and was featured by The Headless Club. I was also the Data Protection Officer, and wrote its IT, security and disaster recovery policies.
Read the case studyharvey-nichols · head of engineering & product development
Digital transformation at a luxury retailer
I joined the senior IT leadership team to shape the in-house digital transformation: culture, team structure and agile practice. I was responsible for the UK and international eCommerce platforms, including a B2B2C marketplace and internationalisation, leading product, front-end, back-end, QA and DevOps teams. Later I led a backend transformation of the ERP, order fulfilment and data integration.
motortrak · web development manager
Front-end platforms for luxury car brands
I built front-end applications for some of the biggest luxury automotive brands, and hired, managed and mentored a web team of 25 developers, designers and testers. I set the coding standards, worked with QA on delivery and led SEO direction.
before that
From circuit boards to the early web
I began as an electronics test engineer, repairing and wiring equipment and running quality control on everything that came in and went out. Then I headed mobile phone repairs and programming, building custom looms to work on the devices. When the web arrived, the move felt natural: I designed and built sites for my own clients, then set up and led a small team building online business pages. It's what I've always done since.
tell me about your idea
Book a 30-minute call to work out what to build first.