Simon Powers

I grow organisations with strategic purpose, technical innovation, and commercial success.

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With a career that spans coding the early web, architecting stock markets, and building one of the world’s most respected organisational change consultancies, I bring a rare combination of technical depth, strategic vision, and transformative leadership.

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What drives me is the fine art of aligning people with technology in a commercial context to grow profitable business. I thrive in complexity, translating business needs into elegant systems, building cultures that deliver, and now exploring how AI and emerging technologies can transform the way we work, collaborate,  think, and create.

 

I am passionate about achieving what most other people think can't be done.

I bring a sense of grounded optimism, coupled with a powerful purpose-driven narrative that inspires others to be the best that they can be. With professional coaching skills and deep technical and organisational structure knowledge, and board experience, I make sure it can be done. 

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What I am Looking For

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I'm seeking a CTO role in a commercially ambitious organisation, ideally around the 1,000-person mark, where innovation, efficiency, and technology are core to growth.

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This scale allows for strategic depth while maintaining a meaningful connection to people, purpose, and product. I’m particularly drawn to companies in finance, AI, or other forward-thinking sectors where technology isn’t just a support function but a driving force for something exceptional. ​

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I want to work alongside bright, curious minds who understand that lasting success comes from a strong culture, clear purpose, and the ability to collaborate across functions to build remarkable things.

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What I Bring to the Table

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I bring a rare combination of deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and people-first leadership. I have a genuine passion for building a work culture that inspires people, encourages whole product ownership, and technical excellence. 

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I offer a voice of  calm while we navigate uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity, and turbulence. My superpower is to surface the unspoken, tactfully naming the elephants in the room to unlock progress and growth.

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I’ve built systems at enterprise scale, led global transformations, and advised senior leaders across finance, tech, and public sectors. I’m just as comfortable architecting AI-driven solutions as I am shaping cultures that deliver. Whether I’m articulating complexity so it's understandable in simple terms, scaling teams, or aligning product, tech, and vision, I connect with authenticity and presence.

 

There is nothing more fulfilling than seeing a team of people, or an entire organisation, reach its full potential and grow through the challenges it faces.​ ​

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My Story​

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My career began in 1997 hands-on, as a developer, writing code, designing architectures, and building real systems in the early web era. That experience shaped a mindset I’ve carried into every leadership role since: that technology is an art, must be fit for purpose, and should serve real human or business needs. I worked with The Hub New Media Company where I helped put the first webcam into a racing car, worked on the first-ever ‘click and trade’ platform for retail investors over satellite to a Canadian Bank. I went on to help Argos, Sony, Fiat, Oxfam, and many other corporates and charities with their online presence, e.g. turning Oxfam’s shop from a £250k/yr business to £10M/yr in 18 months.

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Around 2006, I started learning agility and went into banking as the challenges were much bigger, impactful, and more permanent than in marketing. I ran the projects that revolutionised Goldman Sach’s backoffice and KYC throughout the banking crisis, I architected a new stock exchange for NYSE Euronext when spread betting became the next big thing, and I architected a clearing and trade management system for all of BNP Paribas large volume trading, and for Tesco’s high volume and critical path clubcard and price promise systems.

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In 2013, I realised that the limiting factor was no longer technology but people and their ability to organise and deliver software. I moved from large scale banking architecture into organisational change. I specialised in whole organisational agility with a customer and whole product operating model focus. I founded and grew one of the most influential change management consultancies and training providers in the agile space, bringing Large Scale Scrum, Training from the Back of the Room, Discilined Agile, and many other frameworks to the world. From there I created my own models that went viral and helped 1000s of businesses to define agility and how to improve their organisations. There is barely an agile training in the world now that does not include the Agile Onion which I created in 2015.

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I grew the business into a global firm with operations out of London, SE Asia (Thailand), Norway, The US (Chicago and New York), with contractors working from Europe, South Africa, and Australia. As CEO/CTO of AWA Global, I built a lean, tech-enabled business that scaled globally, delivered million-pound consulting engagements, and trained thousands of professionals in systems thinking, agile delivery, and modern organisational design. We achieved that not through heavy layers of management or process, but by embedding smart architecture, culture-first leadership, and strong principles into the heart of our operations.

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For over 10 years, I’ve worked with CTOs and CIOs inside large organisations, helping them restructure teams, define modern product delivery strategies, and build the culture needed for sustainable delivery. I understand the internal pressures that managers and teams face, the trade-offs between short-term delivery, tech debt, and long-term resilience and the requirements of audit / compliance. I ran the program across for Essence Media and MediaCom for leadership development and coaching for hundreds of their middle managers.

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At Goldman Sachs during 2008–2009, I ran the initiative to meet the KYC and other compliance obligations at a time when trust in financial institutions was at its lowest. More recently, in 2019–2020, I worked with Íslandsbanki in Iceland, engaging directly with their board of directors, including the risk and audit functions to align technology with regulatory demands.

 

In October 2023, I realised that a fundamental shift was occurring in technology once more. The areas that yield the most improvement stopped being team structures and operating models, although that still has a profound impact, but the introduction of AI into development pipelines as intelligence, content creation, and orchestration has made technology once again at the frontend of delivery.

 

In December 2024, I sold the bulk of the business as a management buyout and the company now trades under the name Distilled.

 

Over the past 18 months, I’ve been using generative AI, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and orchestration techniques to build a marketing and content engine inside my company, automating pipelines, analysing performance, and enhancing human creativity. I usually have a few pet projects where I can code proof of concepts to test out innovative ideas.
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I have real world board experience both as a CEO/CTO and as a Non-executive director for a company they grew out of my own. I am used to helping board members and senior leaders provide the right narrative and communications that build confidence, address conflict, and provide a way forward.

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The role of a CTO is a critical one, and one that requires a wide range of skills that are also deep. My capacity to get up to speed quickly, see a way forwards when others cannot, and to unite people with me, to find solutions, and build the right relationships, while at the same time having the technical skills to stay realistic, innovative, and customer-focused sets me aside from other candidates.

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Now that my company has been sold, I am looking for a new role as CTO to continue this journey of helping organisations be the best they can be, and create the best products and services possible.