Tom Allason

Founder & CEO

Tom caught the entrepreneur bug in his teens making fake IDs however that didn’t end so well…  His courier infatuation began while working at his only real job as a trainee ship-broker. After a courier mis-delivered some tickets, Tom decided there was a gap in the market for a courier firm that made customers happy.

With the backing of his employers, friends, family, angels and eventually a VC, eCourier.co.uk developed some nifty technology, garish van livery and set about changing the (courier) world.  eCourier reached #6 on Deloitte’s list of UK’s fastest growing technology businesses with 5,000+% growth since ‘04.

Tom left eCourier.co.uk with the intention of finding a way to use his courier experience to solve delivery for e-commerce.  Today Tom prides himself on being Shutl’s no. 1 customer! He atones for his many sins by serving as a Trustee at Foundation Stone, making seed donations to start-up charities.

David Batey

Lead Developer

David came to Shutl from Accenture where he specialised in SAP PI/XI integration and worked on some of the most complex SAP landscapes in the UK for clients including Thomas Cook and Unilever.

David had so much excitement in his life, he didn’t know what to do! In spite of this, he decided to satiate his desire to be working with disruptive web technologies…. today he is seconds away from becoming a 7th Dan RoR black belt.

David has a Masters in Computer Science from Oxford University but is way more proud of being Shutl’s squash champ.

Kajetan Bojko

Software Engineer

Kajetan came to London six years ago after completing his Masters inSoftware Engineering at Bialystok University of Technology. After a couple of years getting his head round London life – including a stint as a bicycle courier – he finally decided to follow in the footsteps of his father and become a software developer. Kai joined the Shutl crew from property developer RIngley out of keenness to experience the joys of Test Driven Development.

Outside work, Kai spends 2 hours a day cycling to and from the office. He can often be found carving wooden spoons or knife handles and working in the garden always fuelled by his all-consuming Haribo addiction.

Mark Burns

Senior Ruby-on-Rails Developer

Mark’s three main interests are creating music, writing good quality, well tested code and Japanese. After becoming an unsuccessful musician of no acclaim, he decided to earn a living through programming and managed to combine two of his passions by creating the game emGol for the iPhone. As a child, Mark started programming in BASIC and assembler on an Amstrad CPC 664. Later, he was attracted to the zen-like simplicity of the Japanese-created programming language Ruby and then on to the shiny delights of the web through Ruby-on-Rails. He loves working with the calibre of people that are involved in the Ruby community and has a particular interest in agile, behaviour and test-driven development.

Mark joined Shutl after a 4 month trip to Osaka to improve his Japanese and try and pick up some Osaka dialect. He was previously at Sharp and at Headshift, where he worked for clients including Collect+.

Fraser Deans

Web Designer

So keen was Fraser to get stuck in to working life that he joined Logica straight out of sixth form whilst at the same time studying for a degree in Business Management at the University of Winchester. When we met this guy we knew we needed to have him on our side.

Fraser is due to complete his degree next year and in the meantime squeezes his studies around the design of beautiful, intuitive web apps for Shutl. In his spare time he enjoys watching F1, skiing and going to gigs. He is also Shutl’s reigning poker king.

Tom Jobbins

Head of Systems

Tom is a self-confessed systems junkie who will describe at great length the fundamental beauty of the UNIX architecture to anyone who will listen – and, more frequently than not, to those who won’t.

Tom joined Shutl from Flytxt, a pioneer in mobile marketing, where he built scalable systems capable of handling thousands of transactions per second from multi-billion row databases. He loves nothing more than fully automated, self-healing, auto-scaling UNIX platforms that efficiently achieve the maximum for the minimum possible cost. Although focusing on systems, he loves to have a “finger in every pie”, working in parallel as a database administrator, coder and tester. He has also built and manages a range of affiliate websites. Giving up the chance to drink and watch daytime TV for three years, Tom declined an offer from Durham University and has worked full time since the age of 17 – much to the annoyance of his A-level teachers!

Steven Kemp

Head of Service

A keen photographer, Steven sees work as a reflection of his hobby- it tests his patience, attention to detail and his ability to find areas of improvement within his own work.

Directly responsible for ensuring that each of our customers receives an excellent service every time they shutl, steve draws upon his experience running customer service operations for the likes of Aviva, AIG , MMC & Royal Sun Alliance. He also helped eCourier.co.uk deliver happiness by setting up and running their client relationship and customer service teams.

An intrepid explorer,Steven likes to travel the hard way and has recently dragged his family ‘on holiday’ to Iceland and the Pyrenees in their Land Rover Defender. Ouch.

Dana Maxwell

Customer Services Advisor

Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Dana came to London to seek her fortune… and study science at the University of East London. Tiring quickly of Pot Noodles, Dana put student life behind her and joined the working world. After a few years helping students find accommodation, she joined Shutl where she is tasked with spreading cheer and happiness.

When not solving whatever problems our customers and carriers throw at her, Dana spends her time out and about, extending her already unparalleled knowledge of London nightspots. When recovering behind closed doors, she watches back-to-back episodes of Desperate Housewives with her dog Bison.

Steve Romney

CTO

Nothing would get in the way of Steve and becoming Shutl’s top techie. Not even the daunting task of persuading his Texan wife and daughter to sell the family home in Austin and up sticks to London… Thankfully for Shutl, Steve’s sales skills are second only to his technical ability!

Prior to the move, Steve had spent his last 8 years architecting, implementing, and deploying mission critical applications in financial services (Provenir) and retail (The Home Depot). He also holds the award for holding the most degrees of any member, with a BA in Economics with Computer Science minor from Dartmouth College, a Masters of Software Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Masters of Business Administration from the McCombs School of Business.

When not focused on scaling code, adding whizz bang features and arguing merits of the various object-oriented programming languages with David & Mark, Steve likes to spend time with his family discovering Europe.

Ed Tinsley

Business Development Executive

Fresh out of Trinity College Dublin, Ed describes himself as ‘the world’s most experienced intern’ having spent his summers from the tender age of 15 working everywhere from the Copa Libertadores in Brazil to Coca-Cola in the USA.

Taking the plunge into full time employment, Ed converted his internship into the role of ‘Business Development Executive’. This is the fancy way of saying that he makes Shutl tick by doing everything; from conducting market research and crunching financial models to designing keynotes and of course keeping@shutldog in peak physical condition.

Outside of Shutl he is most likely to be found gliding around a football pitch or relaxing with his family on the west coast of Ireland.

Guy Westlake

Head of Marketing

Beyond his family, Guy has two all-consuming ambitions: to cook and eat the perfect meal and to beat David Batey at squash. Sadly, to date, he has not managed to achieve either… though he likes to think he has come close.

At Shutl, Guy is responsible for communicating the full extent of our awesomeness to shoppers and retailers. Having cut his teeth in product marketing roles at both Vignette (now Open Text) and Canon, he has a fair bit of experience creating and launching complex value propositions within the retail space at both SME and enterprise level.

Our resident linguist, Guy has a joint honours BA in Spanish and Italian from the University of Bristol and a Masters in European Business from ESCP-EAP in Paris. At the weekend he juggles nappies.