David joined Greater Manchester Fire Service in 1989 and served at Gorton for 9 years before moving to West Sussex.

He was posted to Horley as a firefighter and gained promotion to leading firefighting working at Crawley and then back at Horley. In 2001 he was promoted to Sub Officer and worked at Shoreham before moving back to Horley. In 2008 David joined the training department where he was responsible for joint recruit training along with colleagues from East Sussex and then specialised in incident command training at all levels of command.

In 2013 David took on his current role as Station Commander for Crawley and as part of this role took on the position of Gatwick liaison officer for the service. He is also the lead National Interagency Liaison Officer (NILO), forward commander for Marauding Terrorist Firearms Attack (MTFA) and subject matter advisor for CBRNe.