Software Development
Envelope: software shaped by real businesses.
My day-to-day technical work is creating and evolving Envelope, the platform that powers Sonder Digital’s websites and an expanding range of ecommerce, communication and operational workflows.
It is a long-lived product rather than a succession of disposable builds: modernised carefully, informed by day-to-day use and designed to keep opening up better ways of working.
Platform engineering
PHP and MySQL at the core, with Entity and Manager conventions that make a broad platform easier to understand, extend and automate safely.
Cloud infrastructure
AWS-based infrastructure supports hosting, storage, email delivery, DNS and the operational tooling needed to run a multi-account platform.
Product development
The work spans architecture, admin experience, APIs, migrations, performance and the unglamorous edge cases that make software dependable.
Work with the system, not around it
I start by tracing the real behaviour: existing data, permission boundaries, rendering paths and the people relying on them.
- Prefer clear domain models over one-off fixes
- Stage risky migrations and keep rollback practical
- Use automation where it improves understanding, not just output
Modernise without losing the value
Envelope has history, and that is both a constraint and an advantage. The job is to separate accumulated friction from the knowledge encoded in a mature working platform.
Native Blocks and BlocksWidgets are a good example: a cleaner future built alongside an explicit path from the old one.
Have a platform problem worth thinking through?
I’m always interested in the point where a technical decision becomes a product or business decision.