Charlie Hickling

Charlie builds the infrastructure that keeps Fuel’s websites running.

He works primarily with WordPress, developing and maintaining the functionality that powers client sites, writing plugins and integrations that do the heavy lifting behind the scenes. He also builds and maintains APIs and backend services, working closely with the frontend team to make sure everything connects properly. Beyond the development itself, he’s responsible for keeping servers secure and up to date, monitoring infrastructure to catch issues before they become problems, and managing deployments to ensure sites stay stable and performant.

What drives him is the problem-solving side of it. There’s a particular satisfaction in wrestling with a technical issue for days and finally cracking it, but it goes deeper than that. He’s constantly looking for ways to make things faster, to strip away unnecessary complexity and optimise performance. That same thinking applies to how he approaches new projects, he likes building frameworks and systems that make future work easier and cleaner.

Experience & Expertise.

Charlie’s expertise spans the full backend stack. He’s proficient in PHP and MySQL, building database structures that are solid and efficient. He develops RESTful APIs that frontend developers can actually work with, and he handles server management and DevOps work – keeping environments secure, managing deployments, troubleshooting before things go wrong. He understands WordPress deeply enough to know when to build a custom solution versus when to use an existing plugin, and he’s meticulous about security, treating it as a foundational part of development rather than something bolted on at the end.

What sets him apart is that combination of technical depth and pragmatism. He doesn’t over-engineer things, but he also doesn’t cut corners. He thinks about how the code he writes today will affect the developers who work on it tomorrow, and he builds systems that are maintainable and sensible long-term.