Solutions engineer · technical sales
I’m a solutions engineer. Most days that means sitting with enterprise teams weighing up accessibility tools, running the demos and answering the awkward questions when a deal gets technical. The bit that’s a little different: I build the tools I demo, so when someone asks how it works under the hood, I know. I wrote it.
Built keyboard-first, so have a Tab through.
Most of this was built for clients, or lives behind a login, so I’ve kept the details vague on purpose. The work is real. The names just aren’t mine to give out.
Interactive models that put hard numbers on a fuzzy question: what’s the business case for accessibility, and how mature is an organisation really? I run these live in technical evaluations to turn sceptical buyers into internal champions.
A gamified, multi-role ramp app: learning paths, spaced-repetition drills, role-specific quizzes, manager dashboards, streaks. Built to turn a messy onboarding process into something a whole team actually finishes.
Record a user journey once, then automatically catch accessibility regressions on every change, for web and mobile. Shareable reports, CI-friendly, so fixes stay fixed instead of quietly breaking again.
A library of reusable AI “skills” that automate real work: research, reporting, brand-consistent content, competitive analysis. Designed to be shared across a team, not locked in one person’s head.
Guitar Hero, but for fingerspelling. Your webcam becomes the controller: real-time hand tracking reads the sign you’re making while letters fly at you in time with the beat. Built for both British and American sign alphabets, mostly for the joy of it.
Turning messy audit and usage data into clear, branded, interactive reports: the kind a non-specialist can open, understand, and act on without a translator in the room.
I don’t just build software, I build communities. I led an OpenIDEO chapter, 300+ designers using human-centred design to tackle social-impact problems, and served as President of Abilityforce, championing disability inclusion across a global workforce.
A mix of what fills my week now and what I’ve spent years getting good at.
Mechanical engineer, turned consultant, turned solutions engineer. The through-line: design thinking, and making complex things click for people.
Principal Solutions Engineer, EMEA
Technical lead on some of the biggest, most complex accessibility deals in the region, running discovery, demos, POCs and evaluations for banks, retailers and travel brands. I help enterprises shift accessibility left across web and mobile and automate their testing at scale. And off the side of my desk, I build the things that make the team quicker, ROI models, live demo environments, regression harnesses, a library of AI assistants, and help the rest of the EMEA SEs level up.
Principal Solution Engineer · President, Abilityforce UK
Led technical sales for UK aerospace & defence and championed design thinking. Ran the Agentic Innovation Lab and a run of innovation workshops for 60+ customers, all pointed at good causes: sustainable innovation, ethical AI, and technology for disability equality. Keynote speaker at Salesforce World Tour and the Farnborough Airshow, and President of Abilityforce UK, its disability-equality community.
Managing Consultant · Senior Consultant · European Large-Deals Team
Championed design thinking (and qualified as a certified coach) with IBM’s biggest clients, led service-design engagements across energy, transport and public sector, and helped win over $500m of new business. On the side, I ran a 300-strong community of design professionals.
MEng, Mechanical Engineering · University of Sheffield
Plus the formative stuff: a nuclear-waste engineering challenge, research into tennis-court physics, and the customer-facing years every good SE quietly runs on.
Certified: IAAP CPACC (accessibility) · IBM Design Thinking Practitioner · CIMA management accounting · and a bit of French & Swedish
About
I’m a principal solutions engineer, covering EMEA. Day to day I’m the technical half of enterprise deals: demos, proofs of concept, and being the person who has to make the complicated bits make sense. I got here in a fairly roundabout way.
I trained as a mechanical engineer, then fell into consulting for a decade, IBM and then Salesforce, doing design thinking and pre-sales for some very large clients. Accessibility wasn’t the plan. I first got into it, honestly, to impress a girl: I put on a day about technology and disability equality for more than 140 people, and quietly hoped she’d be watching. She was. We’re married now. It also turned into the best decision I’ve made. The people I met, the things I learned, the solutions I watched people build, I haven’t been able to leave it alone since.
So now it’s accessibility: making the web work for everyone, whether they’re on a keyboard, a screen reader or their voice. And I build, a lot. Which still surprises me, because I was dead against AI before this job (“why would I ask AI when I can do it myself?”). I was wrong. Most of what I demo now, I’ve made myself, usually the night before.
Away from work you’ll usually find me falling out of a plane, under the sea, or off the side of a mountain: skydiving, SCUBA, speedriding, mountain biking and climbing. My mother despairs.
This site’s a bit of a demo in itself: hand-built as a single file, fully keyboard operable, WCAG 2.2 AA in light and dark, and it respects your reduced-motion and colour-scheme settings. No trackers, no cookies, no build step.
Occasional thoughts on accessibility, solutions engineering, and building with AI.
Contact
If you’ve got an accessibility problem, a deal that needs a technical hand, or you just fancy talking shop, my inbox is open. I do actually reply.
hi@chriskeene.meLands straight in my inbox.