Meet the RS Divers Ltd. team
Our team is made up of some of the finest diving and engineering talent in the industry, supported by a land-based team of professionals.
Ruben Stephenson
Founder and Co-Owner.
Ruben’s distinguished career started as a dive guide in the Red Sea. He went on to take his considerable diving skills into commercial diving projects, such as wind farms and inshore civil engineering contracts. As his career progressed, his attention was brought to a significant gap in the commercial diving market. In 2005, Ruben launched RS Divers in Portsmouth with the aim of becoming the best commercial diving company in the South.
The rest, as they say, is history. Today, Ruben plays a role across the whole of the business, meeting with potential customers to promote the value that RS Divers can add to their operations. As well as managing our key client relationships, he continues to enjoy getting wet and doing the actual dive work. In his spare time, Ruben is still drawn to the water and enjoys fly fishing.
Alistair Kew
Co-owner
Ali Kew joined RS Divers back in 2014 and grew his expertise in diving and running a business over the first 6 years of his diving career. In 2020 he bought Medway Divers, changed its name to Kew Diving Services, and steadily built his business. In early 2024, RS Divers and Kew Diving Services merged, retaining the two brands, to leverage the reach of both businesses and enable the business to grow.
Land-based Team
Mike Mackenzie and Sheila Hill are at the heart of our diving operations. Working at our HQ on the quayside in Portsmouth, they run a very tight ship, if you’ll pardon the pun. Following a disciplined and robust set of processes, they deliver a highly efficient service to our clients, who hold them in very high regard.
Mike Mackenzie
Managing Director
Mike spent 20 years in the Royal Navy Submarine Service, backed up by 20 years in commerce building companies.
Sheila Hill
Finance Manager
Sheila is a seasoned professional with an extensive career in business and marketing in the consumer goods sector.
Tyler Small
Technical Manager
Tyler joined the team in 2023, taking over the role of RS Divers’ Technician.
Olumide Fakanlu
Technical Director and Engineering Adviser
Olumide is a qualified civil engineer with over 25 years of experience.
A typical example would be an engagement where our client knows what they need but requires support in both defining a solution and the method to execute it.
On a recent salvage project, the simple task of diving and stropping the vessel in question actually presented some very challenging diving conditions with massive fluctuations in tidal stream and very short dive windows. The team understood what was needed and liaised with the client and two other service providers to ensure the right resources and expertise were in the right place at the right time.
DIVE TEAMS
Our dive teams are made up primarily of offshore divers who come ashore to work with us. With backgrounds in both the military and commercial sectors, they are at home in and under the water and have a range of qualifications and civil engineering experience that allows RS Divers to tackle any task.
RS Divers actively recruits young and novice divers and takes them through a comprehensive programme of training and work experience as well as supporting them in obtaining their diving qualifications.
Are you an experienced diver or marine civil engineer?
We always welcome experienced commercial divers and civil engineers to contact us. We employ diving supervisors with ADC qualifications and staff divers with a minimum of HSE Surface Supplied qualification (the old part three). Any vacancies we have will be advertised on this page, but feel free to drop us a line with your CV in the meantime.