Education
Kaia Hadley earned her BSc in Computer Science Innovation from Lancaster University in 2014, where she collaborated on multiple EU-funded projects with prestigious university departments including the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, the Lancaster Environment Center, and the Digital Humanities Centre. Her Final Year Project, in partnership with Lancaster Energy, saw Lancaster University become the UK's first "Smart Campus", advancing the University's net-zero initiatives.
During her doctoral studies, Kaia published significant research in top-tier academic journals and conferences, including ACM Computing Surveys (Impact Factor: 23.8, ranked 1st in Computer Science Theory & Methods), the International Performance Computing and Communications Conference, and the European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks. Her research expertise centres on Linux and cloud computing.
As an educator, Kaia has taught several Computer Science courses at Lancaster University, including Programming, Digital Systems, and Distributed Systems. She had the privilege of working for a decade under one of the world's foremost computer scientists.
Professional Achievements
Since 2013, Kaia has successfully led a boutique software engineering firm specialising in datacentre automation, enterprise resource planning, and financial systems development. Under her leadership, the company achieved ISO9001 and ISO27001 accreditation, demonstrating exceptional quality management and information security standards.
Her company's innovative software solutions have been implemented by major international corporations across financial services, security, payment technology, and media sectors—organisations with annual revenues reaching billions of dollars. Employees praise the company culture on Glassdoor, describing it as a "brilliant place to work" and recognising Kaia as a "great, understanding boss."
For six years, Kaia single-handedly managed DevOps for a prominent Irish retailer, successfully scaling their infrastructure during high-traffic marketing campaigns that generated up to 4,500 concurrent visitors and 20 sales per minute.
Technical Expertise
A Linux enthusiast for over two decades, Kaia has authored and co-authored extensive software projects in PHP, C, Java, and Ruby, while maintaining a working knowledge of Python, Erlang, Lua, R, MIPS, and TeX. More recently, she achieved Chartered Engineer status, recognising her professional excellence in engineering.
Embracing a truly global work approach, Kaia operates remotely from approximately 50 countries. Coming to a WeWork near you!
Personal Interests & Advocacy
Kaia is an advocate for digital privacy, believing in the right to be left alone in an increasingly surveilled world. She supports the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and projects dedicated to fighting for online freedoms.
In her free time, Kaia enjoys snowboarding, professional blackjack, and reading political philosophy, economic theory and psychology.