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ALTITUDESTRATOSPHERE

Here to help

Clarity incomplexity.Purpose in growth.

Director of Technology Program Management. M&A Integration Leader. Startup founder. I partner with leaders who want human centred technology systems that last.

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Peter Hughes at Web Summit 2015

Building what matters

My work has always been about alignment of systems, people, and purpose moving together. At Optum, I lead large scale technology integrations, guiding acquired entities through the complex space where technology, culture, and strategy meet.

Beyond the corporate world, I'm a husband and a father of four, in my spare time I like to golf, swim, and tinker with technology. I believe technology should feel less like machinery and more like momentum, something that quietly helps people do what they came here to do.

17+
Years at Optum
4
Wonderful Children
Cups of Tea
Ventures & Innovation

Building quietly

Former Director • Adventure Tourism

Blue Green Yonder

Former Director at Blue Green Yonder on Castle Island, Enniskillen. Supported the shift toward a year round experience across outdoors, water, and heritage.

Visit Castle Island
Experimental • Data Encoding

Colour Glyphs

What if machine-readable codes could be expressive? Colour Glyphs encodes data using coloured blocks.

Read the story
Product • Contact Management

Poncdash

A dynamic contact management platform, replacing static address books with something more human. Currently back in active build.

Active development
iOS App • Personal Finance

BalanceDay

An iOS app for personal finances. Built as an experiment in AI-assisted development.

Read the journey
Managing Director • IT Services

Hughes Performance Systems

My first company. IT support, network design, and data centre hosting for commercial clients.

2005 – 2008
What I Do

Services & Expertise

01

M&A Integration Leadership

End-to-end IT integration for acquired businesses, managing multimillion-dollar budgets.

02

Digital & AI Transformation

Guiding organisations through AI adoption and cloud-native architectures.

03

Platform & Startup Building

From concept to scale — designing architectures, building MVPs.

04

Advisory & Mentorship

Listen first, simplify what's complex, leave things better structured.

“Good systems don’t demand attention. They create space for people to do their best work, and get out of the way.”
— On Building Quietly
Writing & Reflection

Recent thoughts

September 2025

From Green IT to Sustainable Cloud

Back in 2007 I was writing about energy impact of office IT. The context has shifted but the fundamentals remain...

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September 2025

ColGlyphCode: A New Approach to Offline Data

What if the content wasn't somewhere else, but right there in the image itself?

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June 2025

AI and the Digital Cottage Industry

We may be witnessing a reversal of the Industrial Revolution. We're not watching the end of work...

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Beyond Work

Life at altitude

Aviation

From flight simulation since 1998 to real flight in 2018. It started with a Cessna 180 flight in Manitoba, Canada. There's nothing quite like the clarity from altitude.

Family

Twenty years married to Jacqueline. Four wonderful children. Home in Co. Fermanagh near Lough Erne.

Interests

Football coaching, golf at Lough Erne, cooking (yes, I was a chef!), and esports veteran.

Let's build
something together

Reach out at peter@hughes.team

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