I'm Nic Alpi.

I'm a technical leader with 20+ years in web development, most of that in Ruby on Rails. I co-founded CookiesHQ in 2011, grew it to a 20-person consultancy with seven-figure revenue, and saw it through an acquisition in 2021.

Currently, I'm CTO at Amba, where I lead the technical strategy for a healthcare monitoring platform. In January 2026, I'm launching fractional CTO services to help other tech leaders build sustainable systems.

The Calm CTO is where I write about what I got wrong, what eventually worked, and why I keep betting on boring technology.

What I believe

• Boring technology wins. Rails, PostgreSQL, and simple architectures ship faster than you think.
• Complexity is a choice. Most teams don't have scaling problems. They have simplicity problems.
• Burnout is a systems problem. If your company needs heroes, your systems are broken.
• AI changes the game, not the fundamentals. Context engineering is the new skill.

Outside of work

I live in Bristol with my family. Usually walking, reading, or trying to remember that not everything needs to be optimised.