About
I’m Richard Cooper — a Solution Architect and certified technical trainer with a 30-year track record designing and delivering .NET enterprise software for major international companies. This is my corner of the web for writing up the things I learn along the way.
What I do
I design systems end to end — application, network, and infrastructure — with a particular focus on:
- .NET — extensive experience across .NET 8/9 and the older .NET Framework, in C#.
- Cloud architecture on Azure — serverless, microservices, and CQRS, certified as an Azure Solutions Architect Expert and Azure DevOps Engineer Expert.
- Web services old and new — from SOAP, WCF, XML/XSD/XSLT to modern REST and GraphQL, across both Windows and Linux.
- Front-end — React and Next.js when the architecture calls for it.
Most of my career has been spent in insurance and point-of-sale systems, where correctness, auditability, and uptime matter as much as elegant design.
A bit of background
I spent ten years (2015–2025) as Solution Architect at Bennetts Insurance, reporting directly to the Technical Director, with sole responsibility for application, network, and infrastructure architecture. There I led a multi-discipline team building greenfield, microservice-based sales and policy administration systems — and, among other things, moved our entire infrastructure between providers in under six months with less than two hours of trading downtime.
Before that I held architecture roles at BGL Group, SSP, and EMR Insurance Services, working on policy administration, payments and PCI DSS, document production, and the migration of legacy systems to modern .NET stacks. My route into software was an unusual one: I started out as a customer service engineer for Canon, installing and servicing semiconductor lithography equipment across Europe, before moving into development and, eventually, architecture.
I hold a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from UMIST, am a Member of the British Computer Society (MBCS), and have held Microsoft and CompTIA Certified Technical Trainer qualifications.
Away from the keyboard
I have a long-standing interest in photography — enough to have set up a darkroom at home — and an enduring soft spot for early science fiction, with a paperback collection of 300-plus novels spanning E. E. “Doc” Smith through to Arthur C. Clarke.
Get in touch
The best way to reach me is via the links in the footer. If you spot something I’ve got wrong, or want to talk architecture, I’d be glad to hear from you.