Experience

Head of Engineering

Heat Geek (February 2024 - Present)

  • Designed and delivered an API-first, multi-tenant system architecture for partner integration
  • Introduced into the organisation event-driven thinking, educating the team on event storming & modelling
  • Oversaw the architecture of the next generation of the Heat Geek platform, an event-sourced, CQRS-based, modular platform working in tandem with The Composable Architecture (TCA) for iOS clients
  • Led AI and process automation work for integrations with 3rd party processes
  • Introduced engineering rigour and performance optimisation to exploratory Data Science work, so it is hardened for production

Chief Technology Officer

Sliide (November 2021 - November 2023)

  • Given recognised impact in the organisation transitioned swiftly from CA with no team or budget to assume accountability for the whole of engineering outputs and operations.
  • Responsible for teams spanning from QA and Data Engineering to Devops, Mobile Apps and Platforms
  • Set technology stategy to underpin all technology roadmaps and development
  • Partner to the Chief Product Office to marry up Product Vision and Technology Vision in core organisation products & platform-as-a-product initiatives
  • Managing the largest headcount of reports in the organisation (CEO excluded)

Chief Architect

Sliide (February 2021 - November 2021)

  • Give architectural leadership, design and approval for all significant projects
  • Guide the development team with reference architectures
  • Develop technology roadmaps for the organisation
  • Assist the engineering team with optimisations of systems and processes
  • Member of the senior management team and direct liaison with senior business stakeholders

Technical Director

Digitas (July 2019 - February 2021)

  • Own the technology direction of the F1 account (flagship account for the agency and beacon for best practices, engineering and processes to flow to other accounts)
  • Responsible for managing day-to-day development operations across onshore teams (Business Analysts, Lead Technical Architects, Lead QA Engineers etc.) and offshore teams (core engineering spanning Front end, Back end, native mobile development in iOS and Android plus Data & analytics)
  • Architected and delivered new websites for F2 and F3 for the new season, by combining historical cloud investment in Azure with services from F1 in AWS and GCP, and ultimately delivering two headless driven sites, powered by Next.js utilising AWS Cloudfront and Lambda at Edge
  • Provide technical consultancy to F1 around new areas of product and support 3rd parties and other partners to work in the F1 ecosystem by delivering solution designs spanning multiple parties and vendors
  • Report jointly to the Head of Technology and the Chief Product Officer, thus in a unique position to triage incoming initiatives to the program from product, tech and delivery standpoint
  • Line manage a team of Business Analysts

Technology Principal

Idean (October 2018 - June 2019)

  • Part of the leadership team & line manager for the engineering team (including developers, QAs, service delivery managers etc.)
  • Shape technology strategy and practices & responsible for driving growth in technology
  • Analysed product roadmap and technical architecture of two products (for Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO); produced a strategy and roadmap to bring the two products together to form a white label version that could be delivered for 10s of MVNOs

Technical Director

The BIO Agency (September 2017 - October 2018)

  • Personally interviewed, recruited and led developers (front end, back end, architects & devops engineers) to form 4 agile teams to work in a replatform programme of work for a B2B online sales platform, involving ~110 people spanning BIO, the client and one other technology partner
  • Lead solution architect in this programme to redevelop the platform in a modern bespoke, Java, based platform using microservices and message based architecture using Kafka in Azure
  • The programme was run using SAFe and resulted in a new platform within 7 months

Technical Director

Possible (November 2014 - August 2017)

  • Lead architect for the redevelopment of Manchester City Football club flagship www.mancity.com
  • Technology advisor for Aston Martin,oversaw the development and roll out of the new platform for www.astonmartin.com across multiple markets
  • Led a number of internal HSBC projects around knowledge management and staff engagement, all the way from RFP to launch
  • Consultant to Small Luxury Hotels for ongoing development of their web platform and responsible for the development team supporting it
  • Responsible for hiring and line management across Technical Architecture, Service Delivery, Quality Assurance and Business Analysis disciplines

Technical Director

Radley Yeldar (April 2012 - October 2014)

  • Overseeing the delivery of all digital media projects
  • Lead the development team, ensuring digital work matches briefs, specs, timings and budget
  • Sourcing and management of third party suppliers
  • Ensure collaboration of resources, processes and systems across departments (jointly with operations production & resourcing)

Technical Architect

BBC Worldwide (April 2011 - March 2012)

  • Technical authority for B2C web sites TopGear & BBCGoodFood (.NET & Java)
  • Technical architect for a digital supply chain integration project (B2B - BizTalk based)
  • Technical consultant for a number of existing & new systems
  • Technical manager for offshore delivery teams

Technical Director (Contract)

VCCP (June 2010 - January 2011)

  • Executive point of contact for all client side technology discussions
  • Managed off-shore development and all partnerships with technical third parties
  • Responsible for line management of developers & tech leads
  • Set new processes & systems in technology; introduced cloud computing (Amazon)

Senior Technology Lead & Solutions Architect

R/GA (August 2009 - June 2010)

  • Lead Architect for a multi-country web + mobile brand platform; led technical workshops, evaluated RFPs, collaborated with 3rd parties, presented architectures and cost models to CMO and CTO
  • Architected and solely built version 0.1 of a device notification platform based on JMS and push technology for mobile devices
  • Developed a reusable business services layer (S3 & SimpleDB based) for NikeOS cutting down project costs
  • Evaluated existing architecture and codebase of running projects, identified improvements for subsequent iterations as well as enhancements to build deploy and QA processes

Technical Architect

Razorfish (January 2008 - July 2009)

  • Run a portfolio of SharePoint projects in Healthcare, Charity & FMCG verticals
  • Worked on project pitches, technical discovery & planning, migrations, deployment, security testing, architecture reviews and go live for a number of public facing sites
  • Lead a high profile Rich Internet Application project (Silverlight) supported by a AAA accessible version; working with offices in the US and China
  • Developed a number of technical spikes on search, Ad Servers, Salesforce & bespoke client systems

Integration Consultant (Contract)

London Capital Group (November 2007 - December 2007)

  • Integrated components of a spread betting system (utilising public and private Betfair API) with Excel and Swing front ends using 3rd party commercial gateways (ActiveX-COM integration)
  • Reviewed the existing architecture against new business requirements; identified limitations and put forward a proposal and design for the new generation of the system.

Business Analyst Consultant (Contract)

Morbus Consulting / Defra (January 2007 - October 2007)

  • Developed an information strategy for the National Emergency Epidemiology Group (NEEGF) to improve epidemiological datasets and information flow
  • Captured user & technical requirements, developed use cases & Liaised with delivery agents (IBM and Microsoft) to assess how SharePoint technology could be used to implement the above information strategy
  • Produced technical delivery plans and provided advice on technical risk levels (in a PRINCE2 working environment)
  • Acted as an independent technical reviewer for IS projects submitted for funding to other departments

Web Services / SOA Researcher (Contract)

City University (April 2006 - March 2007)

  • Developed a Java framework to map (via XML Binding) BPEL processes into object graphs for comparison of web service behavior models
  • Extended a graph matching algorithm (VF2) selected from scientific literature to be used for comparison of data types (defined in WSDL and XSD schemas) for services
  • Produced a registry API (Java & XQuery) capable of accepting UML models to query XML based databases (eXist) for web service models
  • Refactored significant part of the codebase of the project (e.g. a graph generator based on WSDL specifications) to produce re-usable components, cutting down development effort and costs.

Visiting Tutor (Rolling Contract)

City University (January 2005 - January 2007)

  • Tutor for a number of modules: Systems Architecture, Business Organisation, Software Design, Advanced Databases, OO programming in C++, E-Commerce (PHP web app development)
  • Supervisor for a number of teams of students developing software systems, based on selected case studies
  • Coached students through all stages of software lifecycle to ensure successful project delivery

Software Engineer (Extended Course Placement)

CERN (July 2000 - October 2001)

  • Designed and developed a system to monitor & control particle accelerators via Excel (utilising in-house middleware technologies & commercial ActiveX-Com gateways)
  • Managed and extended the in-house software configuration and deployment system
  • Researched java scripting languages & integration options with existing systems; proposed an integration roadmap and migration procedures

Systems Analyst (Contract)

Pylon-Engineering SA (August 1999 - September 1999)

  • Lead requirement engineer for a small photovoltaic energy station (its control system)
  • Captured business requirements & system design in UML
  • Advised on procurement of the required data acquisition equipment

Education

City University

MSc Business Systems Analysis & Design (2003 - 2004)

  • Graduated with Distinction
  • Thesis titled: Web Services Monitoring (Awarded prize for best computing project of the year)

Brighton University

BSc (Hons) Software Engineering (1998 - 2002)

  • Graduated with Honors (2:1) in Software Engineering (Sandwich)
  • Dissertation titled "Web Services- Which is their role in Enterprises"