About Robbie

Hello 👋 I’m one of those people who crosses the streams between technology and business leadership. Clutton Associates is how I apply that experience independently — opinionated, driven, and (I’m told) enjoyable to work with.

I completed my degree in Software Engineering in 2005 and started my career at BT, then The Guardian, building content systems and digital experiences. In 2014 I moved to New York with Pivotal Labs — a software consultancy now known as VMware Tanzu Labs — and began down the management path on what I’d describe as an on-the-job MBA.

Career

Over nine years with Pivotal I grew alongside the company. It expanded across Europe, and that aligned with my own growth into new roles: from supporting an office — first New York, then London — to running the UK practice, and finally leading the EMEA consultancy practice.

• I grew the UK business from 15 to 50 people.
• I led the EMEA business at a peak of around 120 people — engineers, designers, product managers, data scientists, programme managers and country leaders across the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Benelux and France.
• I recruited externally and promoted internally a diverse leadership team, and worked hard to run great client engagements and build a highly productive, psychologically safe workplace.

Across those years my teams built first-version MVPs, modernised applications more than 20 years old, and much in between.

In 2021 I joined Snyk, a hyper-growth scale-up, as VP of Engineering — growing my organisation from 15 to roughly 60–70 engineers, architects, managers and directors. I led engineering for the Product-Led Growth group, supporting self-serve and expansion capabilities, developer experience, and new products.

A few questions I’m often asked

You’ve always been technical, but you moved into management without difficulty. Why?

I actually resisted the management path for a long time. It wasn’t until Pivotal Labs — where managers still spent most of their time coding — that I took my first step, telling myself I could always go back to engineering. I enjoyed talking with clients, learning about their challenges and facilitating workshops, and that grew into leadership roles. Nine years later, I’m still on that path.

Are you happy to dig into the technical detail — devops, architecture, QA?

Big picture and process, absolutely. I haven’t written code in anger for several years, so for deep implementation detail I’m honest that I may not be the right fit — and I’ll say so rather than pretend otherwise.

What’s been a win you’re proud of?

Saving a team several months of work simply by asking a careful series of questions about a required dependency change — which surfaced a backwards-compatibility mode that meant the rework wasn’t needed at all. And, more lastingly, high retention and promotion from within at Pivotal: people growing into managerial and leadership roles.

Writing & speaking

Latest from the blog

• 5 Apr 2026On reverse engineering using AI

  Leveraging reverse Ralph loops to understand legacy codebases

• 10 Mar 2025On developing using an AI coding assistant

  Experiments with a side project, using AI developer tools.

• 9 Sep 2024On pay philosophy

  Structuring compensation in modern organisations

• 4 Sep 2024On taking a month off

  Being independent gave me an opportunity I didn't think I'd otherwise have.

• 8 Jul 2024On job applications

  I have reviewed probably thousands of job applicants.

Read everything at blog.robbieclutton.com.

Talks & elsewhere

• The New Stack · 2023Making career decisions during a time of tech layoffs and AI
• Talk · 2016A brief history of agile
• Talk · 2013Startup architecture: sustainable small architecture

And one thing most people don’t know

I was a ballboy at Arsenal for the 1997/98 season, and attended every game. I still have the shirt I had the players sign.