Engineering Leader / Platform Architect / Maker

Peran Osborn

18 years building high-scale platforms and design systems for the world's biggest news brands. Now consulting, creating products, and exploring the frontier of AI-assisted engineering.

What I Do Get in Touch
Platforms Built For
About Me

Typography trained.
Engineering hardened.

I am a Distinguished Software Engineer and Senior Engineering Manager with a career spanning BSkyB, News UK, and Dow Jones. I have led globally distributed teams that built and shipped platforms serving The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, and over 12 global news brands, including an image management system handling over 130 million daily requests and a live coverage platform supporting millions of concurrent connections.

My formal training in typography gives me a perspective that most engineers lack: an instinct for the craft of the interface, not just the code behind it. It means I care as much about the user's experience within a CMS as I do about the reader's experience on the published page. Every system I have built, whether it is a design system, an asset manager, or a live coverage platform, is designed with the same attention to the people who will use it every day, not just the people who will see the output.

Since leaving Dow Jones in June 2025, I have been consulting, building my own products, and investing heavily in AI-assisted engineering. I use Claude as a daily engineering partner for everything from system architecture to product development, and have completed several courses on generative AI.

Images Migrated, Zero Outages
Subscriber Conversion Uplift
Years in Platform Engineering
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Working Globally
What I Do

Three Ways I Work

Consulting

Platform Engineering Advisory

I help organizations architect and build the high-scale platforms that power modern media and digital products. From content management systems and image pipelines to design systems and real-time publishing, I have hands-on experience at genuine enterprise scale. But too many engineering systems are built for the architecture diagram, not the person staring at the screen. I bring a user-centred approach to platform engineering, informed by years of building for editorial teams who use these tools under real deadline pressure.

Platform Architecture Design Systems CMS Development Content Provenance (C2PA)

Products

Building for Passionate Communities

I build digital products for communities that deserve better tooling. My current project is a community running app that puts the focus on the running community, not just the running. Built with the same care for the user experience that I brought to newsroom tools. I also build family automation systems, because the best engineering serves the people closest to you just as well as it serves a global audience.

iOS Development Product Strategy AI Integration Full-Stack Engineering

AI Engineering

Generative AI in Practice

AI reduces the technical limitations that used to sit between having a great idea and shipping it. I use Claude daily as an engineering partner, not for novelty, but because it lets me move faster from architecture to working code and spend more time on the decisions that actually matter, how the system feels to the people using it. I am actively exploring how AI transforms the practice of software engineering, with hundreds of hours of hands-on practice.

Prompt Engineering Claude / LLM Workflows AI Product Development AWS ML (SageMaker)
What I'm Doing Now

Current Chapter

Freelancing and Consulting

Helping organizations build better internal tools and engineering teams. I am particularly interested in work where I can improve the daily experience of the people using the systems, not just the throughput of the systems themselves.

Available for Engagements

Building a Community Running App

A React Native app for the running community, built with the same philosophy I apply to everything: understand the people who will use it, then build something that respects their time and makes their experience better. A focus on the running community, not just the runs.

Engineering with AI

Working with Claude daily as a collaborative engineering partner. The thing that excites me most is how it reduces the gap between having a clear vision for a system and being able to build it. It lets me spend more time on the hard problems (how should this work for the user?) and less on the mechanical ones.

Continuous Learning

Back in the UK

After years in New York, I have returned to the UK. Based in Buckinghamshire, well-connected to London, and bringing an international perspective from working across both sides of the Atlantic.

The best engineering is invisible. It just makes someone's working day easier.

Peran Osborn
Track Record

Where I've Shipped

2025 - Now
Freelance Consultant & Product Engineer
Independent / peran.me

Consulting on platform architecture, design systems, and technical product strategy. Building a community running app and personal automation tools. Daily AI-assisted engineering practice using Claude for architecture, code generation, and product development. Completed Vanderbilt University generative AI agents course.

Consulting + AI Engineering + Product Development
2020 - 2025
Distinguished Software Engineer & Senior Engineering Manager
Dow Jones & Co. (News Corp), Remote

Owned product vision and end-to-end delivery for Image Manager (130M+ daily requests, 12 brands), Live Coverage CMS, Charts platform, and the Screentone design system. Led C2PA/CAI integration for WSJ. Achieved 65% image payload optimization, 80% subscriber conversion uplift, and zero-outage migration of 82 million images.

130M+ Daily Requests / 82M Image Migration
2017 - 2020
Senior Principal Engineer
Dow Jones & Co. (News Corp), New York

Championed zero trust architecture, automated test pipelines, and TDD across the engineering organization. Re-architected newsroom tools including Live Coverage and image management across News Corp. 99% uptime.

2015 - 2017
Principal Software Engineer
Dow Jones & Co. (News Corp), New York

Relocated by News Corp to New York to transform WSJ's editorial tools. Established development standards, CI/CD strategies, disaster recovery architecture, and failover protocols.

2011 - 2015
Senior Software Engineer & Software Engineer
News UK / News Corp, London

Led digital tablet development for responsive editorial templates. Created tools enabling editors to publish custom templates, reducing time to market from months to hours and unlocking a new advertising revenue stream.

2007 - 2011
Front-end Web Developer
BSkyB (Easynet Ltd.), London

Front-end development for internal web applications and public-facing websites. Multi-language international telepresence room booking system.

Let's Talk

Get in Touch

Whether you need help building better internal tools, establishing a design system, or strengthening an engineering team, I would love to have a conversation about platform engineering, AI, and digital products, and to hear what you are working on.

peranosborn@gmail.com
LinkedIn GitHub