Currently Open to - Non-exec, Chair and advisory roles.

After nearly two decades building hedgehog lab, I stepped down as CEO at the end of 2025. I am now taking a breath, exploring new horizons and rediscovering who I am beyond the singular identity of founder.

When you build something for twenty years, it becomes hard to know where the company ends and you begin. Stepping away has meant rediscovering the edges of my own identity. It is uncomfortable and quietly exciting in equal measure.

What I built at hedgehog lab still matters to me. We grew from two people with laptops and borrowed furniture in a warehouse unit to a global digital product consultancy working across the UK, US and Europe. 

Along the way we raised nearly £10m across three PE transactions, navigated two major turnarounds including Covid and the 2023 market crash, acquired a company, and built a culture that consistently earned recognition as a great place to work. I am proud of what we created and the people who made it possible.

Today I serve as a Non Executive Director at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, where I focus on digital transformation and governance. I also chair Health Call, a digital health company building products that improve care across the NHS. 

Both roles reflect something I have believed for a long time: technology is most meaningful when it serves people.

I continue to mentor founders and leaders navigating the messy reality of building and scaling businesses. I am also open to advisory and non executive roles, and curious about what else lies beyond the horizon.

If any of that resonates, I would love to connect.

Sarat Pediredla

📢 Some BIG news from me to begin 2026! 

After almost nineteen years at hedgehog lab, I have reached the moment where it feels right to step aside and make space for the next chapter of leadership. 

This company has shaped almost every part of my adult life. It has stretched me, grounded me, humbled me and given me more purpose than I ever expected when we started with two laptops, some broken furniture and a warehouse unit that rattled in the wind.

The journey has been full of moments I will never forget. The early scrappy wins that convinced us we might actually make it. The years of learning how to lead while building a culture that felt human. The surreal milestones where we found ourselves working with global brands or opening new offices. The tough seasons too, from painful restructures to the burnout I walked through in 2023 and 2024. Each high and low shaped me in ways I am still processing.

What stands out most as I look back is the people. There are far too many to thank in a single post, and I am not going to spam your feed with a long list, but please know this. I will reach out to each of you, because none of this would have existed without the countless hands, minds and hearts that helped build what started as a twenty five year old’s pipe dream.

I believe now is the right time to hand over the reins. I am proud of the Executive team we have built. They bring clarity, energy and a renewed sense of direction and I have complete confidence that they will take the company further than I ever could. I will step down as CEO immediately and support the business as an Advisor for the next twelve months.

As for what comes next, I am going to slow down. My family has carried the weight of my ambition and identity for many years and they deserve more of me now. 

After some rest, I will take my time exploring where I want to spend the next 20 years of my professional life. In the short term, I am open to advisory and non executive roles, so if you feel my experience could help, I would love to talk.

I leave with immense gratitude, pride and joy. Titles change. Chapters close. But once you learn to be the hedgehog, you never quite stop. 

#foreverahedgehog

Sarat Pediredla 

CEO & Founder in Consulting w/ PE experience | NED & Chair | Scaling digital companies through culture, growth, turnarounds & transformation | 🏆 AI 100 UK | 🏆 BIMA 100

💡 Excited and nervous to share this finally! I've had this idea for 10 years. I'm finally building it.

If you've spent the last three years running a consultancy or agency, you know how hard it's been. I've watched friends make redundancies they never thought they'd have to make. Studios closed. Founders burn out or sell for less than they deserved.

And through all of it, the tools that were supposed to help? Most of us see them as a necessary evil at best.

I'm building something different. A thinking partner for consultancy leaders, not another database to administer.

It's called thredspan. Professional Services Intelligence.

We've got 3 early pioneers helping shape what this becomes. I'm looking for 7 more to complete a founding cohort of 10.

I wrote about why in this article. If you run a consultancy or agency, I'd love to know if it resonates.

#thredspan #seearoundcorners #focusongreatwork

For 19 years I ran hedgehog lab, a digital product consultancy. And for most of those years, I wrestled with a problem I couldn't solve. It wasn't the

Open article: thredspan - Building Professional Services Intelligence by Sarat Pediredla • 3 min read

thredspan - Building Professional Services Intelligence

Accenture acquiring Faculty for billion dollars (or so) is one of those deals that tells you more about where the market is heading than about either company individually.

Faculty has spent a decade building something genuinely AI-native. Not AI bolted onto existing services, but AI as the foundation. Their work with the NHS during COVID, their safety work with OpenAI and Anthropic, their decision intelligence product. This is what it looks like when AI is the starting point rather than the add-on.

The signal here is clear. There is no separate “AI market” anymore. AI is simply how technology gets built now. Every digital product, every software platform, every consultancy engagement will be AI-native or it will be irrelevant. The days of AI as a distinct service line are ending. It’s becoming the water, not the fish.

Marc Warner becoming CTO of the entire company is the tell. This isn’t a tuck-in acquisition. This is Accenture admitting they need to rewire how they think about technology from the top.

The question is whether Faculty’s culture and approach can survive inside a 784,000-person organisation built around a very different model. Specialist acquisitions by large consultancies have a mixed track record. The thing that made them special often gets absorbed into the machine.

What I find most interesting is what this signals for the market. If Accenture needs to acquire AI-native capability rather than build it, that says something about the opportunity for consultancies that are AI-native from the ground up. 

Plenty to still play for. Feels like the mid 90s with the Internet. Exciting times!

For most of my early years at hedgehog lab, I was the primary commercial driver. 
 
When I co-founded the company in 2007, I did not think of myself as a salesperson. I was a technologist who happened to start a business. But the work needed to come from somewhere, and for most of the journey, that responsibility sat with me.
 
I originated most of our key accounts. I led the pitches. I built the relationships that turned into long-term clients. For a long time, I thought this was just what founders did.
 
Over 18 years, I learned a few things that might be useful if you are in a similar position.
 
𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. The best opportunities I ever won came from understanding what the client actually needed, not from presenting what we wanted to sell. I used to walk into pitches with a deck full of capabilities. The wins came when I put the deck down and asked better questions. What is the real problem you are trying to solve? What does success look like for you personally, not just the business? What have you tried before that did not work?
 
𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝘀. Some of our biggest clients came from connections I made five or ten years earlier. Not because I was strategically nurturing them, but because I stayed curious about people and kept showing up. Consultancy sales is a long game. The founders who treat it as transactional tend to struggle.
 
𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲. We spent years chasing new logos before I understood that the clients who already trusted us were the real growth engine. Referrals and repeat business built most of what we became. The energy I put into new business would have been better spent making existing clients genuinely successful.
 
𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳. This was the hardest lesson. I was comfortable being the commercial engine. It felt safe. But it also meant the business depended on me in ways that were not sustainable. I started building broader commercial capability later than I should have. If you are the founder and you are also the primary seller, that is fine for a while. It is not a permanent strategy.
 
If you run a consultancy and you recognise yourself in this, you are not alone. Most founders I mentor carry the same weight.
 
The path to distributing commercial responsibility is not obvious. But I think it starts with being honest about the dependency.

💞 Empowering and amplifying the voices of women in tech one day at a time 💞

I joined G.Digital because I absolutely love our mission... To reduce the gender gap in technology 
Oh and we also run some UNREAL events for our G&T (Girls & Tech) community 👀 

Think events hosting over 3.500 women/ allies, picked up by the BBC & Channel 4, with so much fun, love and support in the room 💗


I could shout about G.Digital / G&T from the rooftops but here's a snapshot...
💪 Female founded 
✔️ 11k+ women & allies in our G&T (Girls & Tech) community
💗 85% female placement rate
⭐ 70% of candidates are inbound
💫 Senior only recruitment team (7+ years avg)
👧 Supporting grassroots talent via our G&TT (Girls & Tech of Tomorrow) network


Yes we want to empower women BUT we absolutely DON'T positively discriminate, we're hiring the right person for the gig no matter who you are!
That means guys, we still want to show you all the love 💞


Soooooo, if you want some support when it comes to....
✔️ Attracting/ retaining diverse talent
✔️ Your DEI initiates
✔️ Overall hiring process 
✔️ And even your benefits
Lets grab a coffee ☕(or G&T) and have a chat


If you’re struggling to scale and/or retain incredible guys & gals in your tech teams in general, we can still 100% help!


✨ My email's k.smith@g-digital.co.uk ✨


When I don't have my recruiting hat on you can find me... 
👯‍♀️ Throwing people in the air at cheer (sometimes in Popworld on a Saturday afternoon 😂)
🍷 Drinking wine 
📔 Reading my kindle 
🎮 Getting beaten by kids on Fortnite

Katie Smith

First G&T of the year!! 
🤘 Frontend Engineer | React/ Typescript | £55k 🤘

This gal's a Frontend Engineer who's happy to stay as a mid buttttt is 100% ready and raring to step up into a senior position 📈

⭐ Her tech stack includes: React, TypeScript, Node.js and AWS (Lambda, CDK, CloudWatch) ⭐
 

✔️ She's built and maintained distributed, customer-facing applications which includes automated content integrations and backend API work.

☝️ Key platform migrations are something she's led on, including a website move from Shopify to a Next.js micro-frontend architecture

💕 Accessibility is also something she's a huge champion of - With this, she's built semantic and performant UIs, delivering full front-end rebuilds. 

👯 This community member's also a huge contributor to the engineering culture through mentoring, running Women in Tech programmes, leading training sessions and supporting junior engineers. 


Looking for an absolute worldie of a dev... I've gotcha! 

Drop me a message or email to k.smith@g-digital.co.uk if you're looking to scale your frontend teams and think a skillset like this could add value 📫📲

G.Digital | G&T (girls and tech!)

Product/ Change & Transformation Recruiter ⭐ G.Digital | G&T (Girls & Tech) ⭐ 85% female placement rate

We have been ALL steam ahead here at G.Digital - So many of our incredible clients are scaling and though it means we're incredibly busy, we absolutely love seeing them succeed 🙌


BUTTTTTTT we did manage to take some time out to celebrate 2 of our favourite humans Paige Rainford & Emma Walker 💙🩷

Time has flown and cannot wait to meet the next no.1 G&T (girls and tech!) cheerleader 😉


We'll make sure we don't set anything on fire in those few weeks without you 👀


G.Digital | G&T (girls and tech!)

🤖 2nd Line Support | Hybrid: York | Salary up to £35k 🤖
Full-time OR part-time considered

Have I got any 2nd Line peeps looking join a growing business focused on helping small businesses with their technology needs?

I'm supporting a young, dynamic organisation who focus on providing high-quality and approachable IT support to bring in an IT Support Engineer (2nd Line).

The team prides themselves on being responsive, having deep technical knowledge and adding a personal touch.


What you'll be doing 
✔️Providing 2nd line support
✔️ Mentoring and supporting an apprentice
✔️ Taking ownership of tickets and resolving issues efficiently
✔️ Supporting Microsoft 365 and Windows 11 environments
✔️ Providing desktop support across Windows and some macOS
✔️ Creating and maintaining internal documentation and process guides


They're looking for someone capable of handling day-to-day support with confidence and has a passion for mentoring.
This role is such a good fit for someone who enjoys variety and wants to be part of a small, tight knit team!


If you're looking to join a growing business at an exciting stage in its journey with an opportunity to shape processes and help mature the business culture, apply today!

📫 Share an updated CV to k.smith@g-digital.co.uk 📫


G.Digital | G&T (girls and tech!)

👎 In 2025, over women represent just 25% of the STEM workforce

😭 In high-growth fields (like Engineering and Development) women hold only 23% of jobs

📉 Nearly 80% of women have considered leaving tech due to a lack of recognition and career growth


Do you know what 100% of women we spoke to in 2025 said is a major factor to improving this though.... Male allyship 📣💪

THIS is why we partner with organisations that have incredible cheerleaders in the business!!


Here are what some of them had to say about the importance of allyship 🙌


Big thanks again to our speakers Jamie Haydock, Liam Booth, Will Cook... Keep flying the flat for diversity & inclusion 💞


G.Digital | G&T (girls and tech!)

🚀 Software Engineer | Java | Hybrid: Yorkshire | Salary up to £70k 🚀
Backend Devs... Where you at?


Are you ready to join a development team that designs and delivers high-performance software that underpins automated execution strategies and provides powerful tools for data visibility and activity monitoring.

They build technology that is fast, resilient, and built to scale!


What you'll be doing
✔️ Designing, developing and maintaining services (primarily in Java)
✔️ Developing innovative portals
✔️ Solving complex integration challenges
✔️ Maintaining and evolving their data architecture


They're looking for someone who can write high-quality code, test it well and contribute to design decisions/ documentation 👏

You'll be owning software end-to-end, from initial design through to deployment, then monitoring and in-life support!


Benefits 
💰 Bonus scheme
⚕️ Private medical insurance
📈 3 days per year for personal growth, learning or volunteering
💖 £250 annual personal (non-professional) development budget
🏃 £100 monthly wellbeing budget
💪 Onsite gym
☑️ Life insurance (4x salary)
✅ Income protection (75% of salary to state pension age)


If you're looking to support the operational needs of a fast-paced, growing business then send me over an updated CV! 
📪 k.smith@g-digital.co.uk 📪


G.Digital | G&T (girls and tech!)

🙌 Lead Service Designer 🙌

🏘️ Remote first: West Yorkshire
💰 Salary up to £85k + bonus


I'm on the hunt for a Service Design Lead with strong GDS and public sector experience to join a high-performing User-Centred Design (UCD) team working on complex, meaningful service!

This is a hands-on role for someone who enjoys getting stuck in, shaping services end to end and working closely with smart, motivated people who genuinely care about doing the right thing for users!


If you thrive in collaborative environments, bring positive energy to your work and enjoy influencing without ego, you’ll feel right at home here 💞


What you’ll be doing...
✨ Leading end-to-end service design
✨ Be a trusted design leader
✨ Driving collaboration and delivery
✨ Raising the bar for UCD


Why you’ll love working here
👍 A Great Place to Work certified organisation, recognised for a high-trust, inclusive and supportive culture

🫂 A genuinely collaborative environment that values diversity, inclusion and different perspectives

📈 Strong investment in learning, development and career progression, with opportunities to grow your skills and influence

🧠 A clear focus on well-being, with support for mental health, balance and sustainable ways of working

💪 The chance to work on high-impact public sector programmes, designing services that affect millions of people

✔️ A flexible, remote-first working culture that trusts you to do your best work


Want to use your service design skills to deliver meaningful change, while working with a supportive, high-performing team that genuinely values quality and collaboration? 

📫 Drop me an email with your updated CV to k.smith@g-digital.co.uk 📫


G.Digital | G&T (girls and tech!)

Lead User Researchers... Where you at 📲

I'm looking for a Lead User Researcher to join a growing and ambitious User-Centred Design (UCD) practice!!

You’ll be leading impactful user research across complex programmes in the public and private sectors, working in agile, multidisciplinary teams and collaborating closely with clients and delivery partners.

As a senior practitioner, you’ll play an active role in shaping UCD strategy and supporting the growth of the research community whilst remaining hands-on in delivery!


What you'll be doing...
✨ Choosing the right research for the job
✨ Turning insight into impact
✨ Supporting teams end to end
✨ Being a trusted research voice
✨ Contributing to winning work
✨ Shaping the practice
✨ Growing the community


What you'll bring
✔️ Proven experience delivering user research in the real world
✔️ Strong command of user research methods
✔️ You’re familiar with GDS and/or NHS Service Standards, with experience running Discoveries and Alphas and supporting teams through assessments.


🏡 Remote-first: West Yorkshire (once a month)
💰 £550
📅 3 months (likely extension)
✔️ Outside IR35


If you’re passionate about user research and want to work in a supportive, high-performing UCD team, I'd loveeeee to chat! 

📫 Send me over an updated CV to k.smith@g-digital.co.uk 📫

G.Digital | G&T (girls and tech!)

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The Battle

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