Charles Ewen

Part of the IT Leaders 100 - a list of the most influential IT leaders in the UK in 2026.

Charlie is CDIO at the Met Office and leads the implementation of cloud-based superconducting in partnership with Microsoft. He is a lifelong technologist and engineer focussing on innovation, change and transformation.

He has experience in a wide range of private and public sector senior roles and specialises in innovation, transformation and change.

Since 2019, Charlie has been leading a major £1bn project in supercomputing and learns from and reviews other major programmes within UK government.

Charlie has three grown-up children who didn't fall far from the tree: all of whom work in science and technology, and all of whom he is very proud.

What's the most exciting part of your current role?

Delivering value and developing the next generation of tech leaders.

What do you do in week one of a new project to avoid pain in month six?

Be clear about what outcomes I am trying to deliver and what skills and experience the team will need to deliver it. This short period of definition and discovery, working directly with project sponsors, is the most critical phase of any project.

What is captured in documentation is often the output that someone else thinks will deliver the outcome the sponsors intend.

What’s the part of your estate you most want to simplify in 2026?

Data.

We have built purposeful data pipelines and API endpoints on the basis that data moves through them from compute process to application in a unidirectional flow.

Many AI approaches demand access to source data directly and this demands new approaches to data architecture, access models and compute and storage infrastructure.

Excluding smartphones, what piece of technology could you not live without and why?

My pacemaker, literally!

Joking aside, advances in medical technologies have been transformational for so many peoples' lives, ranging from new approaches to drug discovery to medical imaging.

This genuine application of tech for good is an area that I can take some solace from at a time when we are seeing technology applied to conflict escalating.

What excites you most about the future of IT?

Compound innovation: the maturity and combination of a variety of technologies such as digital, cloud, big data and infrastructure, all accelerated and catalysed by AI. It feels to me like it did when I got my first Meccano set as a child and could build complex models from useful, functional and powerful components. Modern tech looks just like that, with small talented teams or even individuals being able to create real value quickly and affordably.

What talent are you quietly proud of that would never show up on LinkedIn?

That I can talk to anybody at any level and am still part of my local community that I went to school and grew up in.

Although I have lived and worked all over the world and have had some senior roles, I am still me and enjoy nothing more than getting together with people from all walks of life. When asked what I do, I say, 'Oh, I work in IT', usually enough to talk about something more interesting like farming or how nice Dartmoor is looking!

What’s your most-used keyboard shortcut or command that you wish everyone knew?

Win+Ctrl+S and Ctrl+V to put the screenshot in the chat. It would save me an hour a day with people fumbling around trying to share screen to show me a figure or a dashboard!