I've been fixing
this for twenty years.
Most consultants sell frameworks. I fix systems — because I've been the person responsible for keeping them running.
I'm Alex. Based in the UK. Twenty-plus years designing, building, and governing technology systems for digital and retail businesses.
Currently Head of Technology at a UK furniture retailer — owning the full stack: Shopify Plus, a custom ERP integration layer, Airtable as the operational backbone for multiple departments, BigQuery, AWS/GCP/Cloudflare infrastructure, and a team of developers. Before that, two decades across eCommerce, data, and systems architecture in various industries.
The pattern is always the same. Growing businesses struggle not because of bad tools, but because no one has ever designed how everything fits together. Processes accumulate instead of being built. Systems multiply without a plan for how they talk to each other. Manual workarounds become load-bearing. And eventually something breaks publicly that everyone knew was fragile.
Undercover Genius exists to solve that.
What working with me looks like
No jargon theatre
I speak business first, technology second. If I can't explain an architecture decision to a non-technical stakeholder, I haven't thought it through properly.
Operator mindset
I don't design systems I wouldn't be willing to operate myself. Every recommendation comes from real experience — what breaks first, what scales, what creates technical debt quietly.
Honest assessment
In my experience, half the value of an external advisor is saying the things internal teams already know but can't get traction on. I'll tell you what I see — including the things you might not want to hear.
Small footprint
This is a solo consultancy. You work with me directly — no account managers, no junior associates, no handoffs. That keeps it lean and keeps accountability clear.
Let's talk about how your
business actually runs.
No pitch deck. No discovery questionnaire. Just a conversation about what's broken and whether I can help.