Meet Mike Myers, Lead Solution Architect

Profile: Mike Myers, Lead Solution Architect

Mike Myers took an unconventional route into enterprise architecture. He began his career in animation, working on productions like the film Asterix in America and the TV series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. At Universal Pictures, he was part of the team that worked at Steven Spielberg’s Amblimation studio in Acton on productions like We’re Back! A Dinosaur Story. Having started out in animation when it was still largely a traditional 2D analogue industry, he saw the sector turn towards computerisation with technology advancing the production values and abilities of film. During his time at Amblimation he experienced this transition to computerisation, with the studio heavily using technology extensively.

This shift from an analogue world to a digital one anticipated the future direction of Mike’s career. Returning to a longstanding passion for computers, and inspired by what he’d already seen of their transformative potential, Mike returned to college to lay the foundations for a new career in software development. This would subsequently take him into the realms of systems architecture, cloud engineering, enterprise systems, and major public and private sector transformation projects.

Mike worked across a wide range of organisations before joining DOCOsoft, including Gateway 2000, Fujitsu and Microsoft. At Gateway, he architected and led the development of the company’s European e-commerce platform and multiple in-house development projects, moving into a key architect role. For Mike, this experience reinforced the importance of building systems that are both technically precise and commercially attuned.

During his long tenure with Fujitsu, in the course of an 11-year period working as a senior architect, Mike worked on a number of key technical solutions for customers, including Ireland’s An Garda Siachoana’ Fixed Charge Points System (FCPS), a penalty points system that is still in use to this day. Also, during his time with Fujitsu, Mike developed a tool that improved the development effort and architecture of solutions built on a new cloud platform called Azure. This tool started Mike’s cloud journey with Microsoft Azure in 2010, working with it in beta, and would see him move into Cloud Architecture.

Moving on from Fujitsu, Mike took up a position at Microsoft where he worked there over a 13-year period in a variety of cloud and solution architect roles. Working with many of Ireland’s top Microsoft Enterprise customers, including banks, public sector departments and many enterprises, Mike has helped many customers shape and architecture their Microsoft Azure Cloud solutions to Microsoft Best Practices. From full-blown PaaS or full infrastructure IaaS solutions, Mike has helped customers get the best out of their architectures.

So, why leave Microsoft?

After years advising and supporting major enterprise customers, Mike began to feel what he describes as itchy feet. The work was important and the organisations he was working with were impressive, but the rhythm was starting to feel just a bit too predictable. Microsoft, he says, is an extraordinary company, but it’s also a vast sales-driven machine, where you’re often at several removes from the real engineering action.

‘I left Microsoft not because I was dissatisfied, but because my career has reached a point where I wanted deeper end‑to‑end ownership and accountability for architectural outcomes. Microsoft has been an exceptional place to develop strategic thinking, work at global scale, and influence complex designs – but my motivation has now shifted toward directly owning architecture from strategy through build and operation – making decisions, feeling their impact, and being accountable for availability, performance, security and cost in production environments.’

Having first encountered DOCOsoft from the outside, in a consulting role with Microsoft, Mike felt the business stood out from the crowd for being genuinely driven by a shared commitment to engineering excellence. ‘DOCOsoft’s architectural choices were very conscious and deliberate,’ he notes. ‘The design patterns were sound, and the engineering thinking was clear.’ In a sector where confidence doesn’t always equal competence, Mike was struck by the depth of expertise and capability within the team.

‘When I saw what DOCOsoft were building,’ he says, it really piqued my interest. I could see that they were using the right patterns, the right frameworks and the right design principles. And when I spoke to the team about joining DOCOsoft, that combination of strong engineering fundamentals and a focused product mission made the decision to get on board a really easy one.’

Building for resilience at scale

As Lead Solution Architect, Mike sits at the centre of DOCOsoft’s enterprise architecture. His main focus is on the SaaS platform DOCOsoft Vew, but his remit extends right across the broader product landscape, including DOCOsoft’s core CMS and all its related modules. ‘If you build security or architecture for one product in isolation, you’re missing the bigger picture,’ he explains. ‘Everything needs to sit within a coherent enterprise architecture.’

Much of Mike’s work at DOCOsoft is focused on operational excellence, an area that isn’t always visible to end-users but which is critical to the long-term success of users and providers alike. Security, resilience, observability, scalability and cost control all fall under his remit.

When it comes to cloud architecture, Mike says, the things you need to keep a particularly tight grip on include the risks of both downtime and uncontrolled growth in cost or complexity. He ensures products and features align with the broader architectural vision, that failover between cloud regions is automated, and that encryption and compliance standards are embedded by design, not tacked on retrospectively. ‘It’s easy to think the job is done when the code is written,’ he says. ‘In reality, that’s just the start of the journey.’

A fresh perspective

Before joining DOCOsoft, Mike had had limited exposure to the specialised world of P&C insurance and reinsurance. But that outsider perspective has already proved invaluable. What he quickly observed in the specialty insurance market was fragmentation, with multiple systems, disconnected processes, and a lack of unified oversight. ‘That’s where DOCOsoft Vew really has a role to play,’ he says, ’as an enterprise system that brings all these processes and procedures together and streamlines the whole process. When you’re in front of customers and they see that, you can literally see eyes lighting up.’

Mike’s role often puts him at the interface between engineering and customers, particularly in client scoping discussions. His role entails both explaining what the technology can do and making sure new client requirements remain aligned with DOCOsoft’s architectural integrity. This means balancing responsiveness to special requirements with the need to maintain a coherent scalable core product.

Growing the DOCOsoft team is also very much on Mike’s agenda. But he’s adamant about hiring only the strongest candidates. ‘We have a really strong technical team here,’ he says. ‘And we’re not planning to start lowering the bar. I think that’s where a lot of tech businesses start losing their way.’

A crucial phase

Mike views the current period of growth at DOCOsoft as foundational for what’s to come. Much of his work is about putting the right operational and architectural structures in place for the new SaaS product DOCOsoft Vew, including observability, security frameworks, and business continuity. Crucial work in these areas over the coming months will mean that onboarding future clients becomes smoother and less resource intensive.

Key to this is ensuring a mature resilient architecture, where the core product is stable, scalable and secure, enabling the business and its clients to grow without friction. ‘We’re building the groundwork for future growth now,’ he explains. ‘Once that’s firmly in place, scaling becomes much more straightforward.’

The journey so far

Going from hand-drawn animated dinosaurs to the nuances of cloud architectures may not sound like the most predictable of career paths. But if there’s one consistent thread in everything that’s brought Mike to DOCOsoft, it’s about doing things the right way and not compromising on quality.

In DOCOsoft, Mike saw an irresistible opportunity to get involved in building on something genuinely exceptional. And that’s exactly what he’s doing now as a key member of a team that combines deep

insider knowledge of the specialty insurance market with uncompromising engineering discipline and vision.

DOCOsoft’s unique blend of specialist expertise and technical excellence, Mike argues, is what enables its carrier clients to outperform their competitors, operate more efficiently and effectively, and, ultimately, support their own customers better when it matters most.