Daniel Johnson

Zero Drift co-founder working across product direction, technical leadership and AI-assisted delivery, with prior CTO and digital-platform roles.

Daniel helps turn a difficult business problem into a product boundary a team can build and a sponsor can judge. He works across product direction, technical leadership and the AI-assisted specification and delivery process. At Zero Drift the important distinction is not whether a model can produce code quickly; it is whether the resulting system does the whole job, can be operated, and gives the right answer where guessing is unacceptable.

Before founding Zero Drift with Gary McLean Hall, Daniel was CTO at Validus Risk Management. His published CV records architecture due diligence, the growth of its engineering team, AWS Bedrock adoption and leadership of an ISO 27001 accreditation programme there. That is experience at Validus—not an ISO certificate held by Zero Drift.

He previously led digital platforms at Hargreaves Lansdown, a regulated investment platform, including cloud migration, data-platform work and changes to its production delivery model. Earlier roles in transit and government service operations brought together live-service accountability, modernisation and teams distributed across countries. Those histories matter here because a product has to survive the decisions a board makes, the people operating it and the users who cannot wait for a second attempt.

At Zero Drift he and Gary are equal founders. Their work crosses over; Daniel tends to lead product and CTO questions while Gary tends to lead architecture. A buyer knows who owns each decision and can draw on both where the job requires it.

Email Daniel · LinkedIn · Back to the studio · See fractional leadership