I build cloud platforms that engineers can use without needing to understand everything underneath them.
I’m Thomas Thornton, a technical leader at Kainos working across Microsoft Azure, platform engineering, Terraform, GitHub, Azure DevOps and AI.
Most of my work sits between architecture and delivery. I set technical direction, work through difficult platform decisions with engineering teams and stay close enough to the implementation to know whether the design holds up in production.
11 years at Kainos
From infrastructure engineering through to platform architecture and technical leadership.
Technical leadership
Across architecture, engineering delivery, platform operations and service improvement.
1.3m+ blog views
Practical technical writing read by engineers around the world.
The work
I lead platform work for large public services. That covers the architecture, engineering and operation of shared Azure capabilities used by many delivery teams.
The useful part is not the size of the technology estate. It is making the platform easier to consume while keeping security, reliability and governance intact. My work has included self-service infrastructure, reusable Terraform modules, GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps workflows, Kubernetes platforms, API management, identity, networking, observability and production operations.
I am currently spending more time on governed AI platforms and AI-assisted and AI-native engineering. My interest is practical: where AI improves an engineering workflow, how teams can measure that improvement and which controls belong in the platform rather than in every application.
How I approach it
Start with the route to production
A platform should shorten the path from an idea to a safe production change. If the approved route is harder than working around it, the design is not finished.
Keep the controls visible
Security and governance need clear ownership, useful feedback and sensible defaults. Hidden approval chains do not create good engineering outcomes.
Community
I have been recognised as a Microsoft MVP seven times and a GitHub Star three times. I was also a HashiCorp Ambassador from 2023 to 2025.
I share implementation detail because that is usually the missing part. The blog covers the choices, configuration and trade-offs behind Azure, Terraform, GitHub, Kubernetes, platform engineering and AI. Where possible, the examples are backed by code on GitHub.
What I write about
Azure and platforms
Architecture, networking, identity, AKS, API Management, reliability and operating cloud services.
Terraform, GitHub and Azure DevOps
Reusable infrastructure, CI/CD, delivery workflows and the controls needed at scale.
AI engineering
AI gateways, guardrails, agent skills, Copilot and measuring whether AI-assisted and AI-native work is useful.
Contact
For speaking, community work or a professional enquiry, use the contact page or email thomas@thomasthornton.cloud.