CTO

• Feb 2019 - Present

CTO

• Jan 2018 - Jan 2019

Swoon creates furniture for the home obsessed. It is an online retailer with the goal of creating quality designs at a fair affordable price. Joined Swoon as CTO to develop the company strategy and investment case and to transform the role of technology within the organisation to enable disruptive change within the furniture industry. Created the product and technology strategy, a core component for the upcoming Series-C investment round. Successfully delivered the… Show more Swoon creates furniture for the home obsessed. It is an online retailer with the goal of creating quality designs at a fair affordable price. Joined Swoon as CTO to develop the company strategy and investment case and to transform the role of technology within the organisation to enable disruptive change within the furniture industry. Created the product and technology strategy, a core component for the upcoming Series-C investment round. Successfully delivered the implementation of a previously failing ERP project, by re-aligning the goals and delivered the re-brand of the web site to meet the ambitious timelines. The engineering team was also key in delivering a manufacturing tendering tool which is unique within the furniture retail sector for competitive bidding for new designs amongst manufacturers. Show less Swoon creates furniture for the home obsessed. It is an online retailer with the goal of creating quality designs at a fair affordable price. Joined Swoon as CTO to develop the company strategy and investment case and to transform the role of technology within the organisation to enable disruptive change within the furniture industry. Created the product and technology strategy, a core component for the upcoming Series-C investment round. Successfully delivered the… Show more Swoon creates furniture for the home obsessed. It is an online retailer with the goal of creating quality designs at a fair affordable price. Joined Swoon as CTO to develop the company strategy and investment case and to transform the role of technology within the organisation to enable disruptive change within the furniture industry. Created the product and technology strategy, a core component for the upcoming Series-C investment round. Successfully delivered the implementation of a previously failing ERP project, by re-aligning the goals and delivered the re-brand of the web site to meet the ambitious timelines. The engineering team was also key in delivering a manufacturing tendering tool which is unique within the furniture retail sector for competitive bidding for new designs amongst manufacturers. Show less

Engineering Director

• Jul 2015 - Nov 2017

Moonpig is all about making people’s days brilliant, with cards or through an ever-expanding gift range and becoming a top three UK online flower seller for all the big occasions. Lead the web, back office and production engineering teams at Moonpig, who achieved the highest team engagement scores in the Photobox Group. A key member of both the Moonpig senior management team, responsible for setting the vision, strategy and annual goals for the business and the group technical… Show more Moonpig is all about making people’s days brilliant, with cards or through an ever-expanding gift range and becoming a top three UK online flower seller for all the big occasions. Lead the web, back office and production engineering teams at Moonpig, who achieved the highest team engagement scores in the Photobox Group. A key member of both the Moonpig senior management team, responsible for setting the vision, strategy and annual goals for the business and the group technical directors team responsible for defining technical vision and strategy for the group. Transformed ways of working through cross functional product development processes which aligned engineering, product and wider business teams to an outcome focussed goal and empowered them to define and deliver the most valuable features. In the last financial year, the team delivered >£7million annual incremental business value through product innovation. Delivered a successful programme, in parallel to the product innovation, to iteratively transform the legacy monolithic platforms to a service oriented, hybrid cloud architecture to unlock cross-platform initiatives for customers. Defined and implemented agile engineering principles and standards across multiple teams such as TDD, trunk based development, feature flagging, continuous delivery with automated testing, DevOps operations processes and Kanban development with a cycle time of 5 days. Enabled the Moonpig brand to take full ownership of its product development processes and platform by demonstrating the greater value of a fully brand aligned roadmap over group solutions to peers and C-Team members. Show less Moonpig is all about making people’s days brilliant, with cards or through an ever-expanding gift range and becoming a top three UK online flower seller for all the big occasions. Lead the web, back office and production engineering teams at Moonpig, who achieved the highest team engagement scores in the Photobox Group. A key member of both the Moonpig senior management team, responsible for setting the vision, strategy and annual goals for the business and the group technical… Show more Moonpig is all about making people’s days brilliant, with cards or through an ever-expanding gift range and becoming a top three UK online flower seller for all the big occasions. Lead the web, back office and production engineering teams at Moonpig, who achieved the highest team engagement scores in the Photobox Group. A key member of both the Moonpig senior management team, responsible for setting the vision, strategy and annual goals for the business and the group technical directors team responsible for defining technical vision and strategy for the group. Transformed ways of working through cross functional product development processes which aligned engineering, product and wider business teams to an outcome focussed goal and empowered them to define and deliver the most valuable features. In the last financial year, the team delivered >£7million annual incremental business value through product innovation. Delivered a successful programme, in parallel to the product innovation, to iteratively transform the legacy monolithic platforms to a service oriented, hybrid cloud architecture to unlock cross-platform initiatives for customers. Defined and implemented agile engineering principles and standards across multiple teams such as TDD, trunk based development, feature flagging, continuous delivery with automated testing, DevOps operations processes and Kanban development with a cycle time of 5 days. Enabled the Moonpig brand to take full ownership of its product development processes and platform by demonstrating the greater value of a fully brand aligned roadmap over group solutions to peers and C-Team members. Show less

Head of Development

• Jan 2013 - Jul 2015

Trainline International was a lean startup company, created by Trainline, to prove the commercial viability of expansion into Europe. Promoted to Head of Development of Trainline International and influential in the decision to set the new company up independently based around lean startup principles. Effectively acting as CTO, successfully built x-functional product development teams utilising lean practices, MVP, continuous delivery and DevOps. Teams were aligned to a key business… Show more Trainline International was a lean startup company, created by Trainline, to prove the commercial viability of expansion into Europe. Promoted to Head of Development of Trainline International and influential in the decision to set the new company up independently based around lean startup principles. Effectively acting as CTO, successfully built x-functional product development teams utilising lean practices, MVP, continuous delivery and DevOps. Teams were aligned to a key business objective and empowered to define and deliver the product changes required to achieve the objective. Changes were developed using a build-measure-learn cycle where the smallest valuable change (MVP) is built and delivered quickly, measured in production and the learning used to define future changes. The company successfully proved the viability of expansion into Europe and was the primary area of growth identified by the new PE investor KKR when they purchased the company in 2015. A key element was the integration and commercial partnerships with two major European rail companies, DeutscheBahn and TrenItalia. Customer volumes and related transactions grew by 175% over 6 months, with organic SEO driven traffic growing by 800% in the same period. Responsible for the design, build and operation of the www.thetrainline-europe.com responsive web site, hosted on cloud infrastructure in Rackspace and AWS. All application build, deployment and infrastructure creation was fully automated and maintained within the product teams. Show less Trainline International was a lean startup company, created by Trainline, to prove the commercial viability of expansion into Europe. Promoted to Head of Development of Trainline International and influential in the decision to set the new company up independently based around lean startup principles. Effectively acting as CTO, successfully built x-functional product development teams utilising lean practices, MVP, continuous delivery and DevOps. Teams were aligned to a key business… Show more Trainline International was a lean startup company, created by Trainline, to prove the commercial viability of expansion into Europe. Promoted to Head of Development of Trainline International and influential in the decision to set the new company up independently based around lean startup principles. Effectively acting as CTO, successfully built x-functional product development teams utilising lean practices, MVP, continuous delivery and DevOps. Teams were aligned to a key business objective and empowered to define and deliver the product changes required to achieve the objective. Changes were developed using a build-measure-learn cycle where the smallest valuable change (MVP) is built and delivered quickly, measured in production and the learning used to define future changes. The company successfully proved the viability of expansion into Europe and was the primary area of growth identified by the new PE investor KKR when they purchased the company in 2015. A key element was the integration and commercial partnerships with two major European rail companies, DeutscheBahn and TrenItalia. Customer volumes and related transactions grew by 175% over 6 months, with organic SEO driven traffic growing by 800% in the same period. Responsible for the design, build and operation of the www.thetrainline-europe.com responsive web site, hosted on cloud infrastructure in Rackspace and AWS. All application build, deployment and infrastructure creation was fully automated and maintained within the product teams. Show less

Development Manager

• Feb 2011 - Jan 2013

Trainline is the leading e-commerce provider of rail tickets in the UK. Joined Trainline as a Development Manager of one of their agile teams with a primary remit for developing changes to the retail website and white label Train Operating Company sites. Also responsible for the management of the database development team. Led the development of the project to provide real time information on train departures and arrivals to customers on the web site. The solution was based… Show more Trainline is the leading e-commerce provider of rail tickets in the UK. Joined Trainline as a Development Manager of one of their agile teams with a primary remit for developing changes to the retail website and white label Train Operating Company sites. Also responsible for the management of the database development team. Led the development of the project to provide real time information on train departures and arrivals to customers on the web site. The solution was based around a RESTful service which utilised data from National Rail and has become the cornerstone of real time data essential to the customer experience of the web site and mobile application offering. Instrumental in the change of development process used in Trainline. The existing PMO and project process has been replaced by a x-functional cluster model, with each cluster owning its own set of products and developing them based on meeting business KPIs. The clusters are also moving from regular platform release to independent continuous delivery. Show less Trainline is the leading e-commerce provider of rail tickets in the UK. Joined Trainline as a Development Manager of one of their agile teams with a primary remit for developing changes to the retail website and white label Train Operating Company sites. Also responsible for the management of the database development team. Led the development of the project to provide real time information on train departures and arrivals to customers on the web site. The solution was based… Show more Trainline is the leading e-commerce provider of rail tickets in the UK. Joined Trainline as a Development Manager of one of their agile teams with a primary remit for developing changes to the retail website and white label Train Operating Company sites. Also responsible for the management of the database development team. Led the development of the project to provide real time information on train departures and arrivals to customers on the web site. The solution was based around a RESTful service which utilised data from National Rail and has become the cornerstone of real time data essential to the customer experience of the web site and mobile application offering. Instrumental in the change of development process used in Trainline. The existing PMO and project process has been replaced by a x-functional cluster model, with each cluster owning its own set of products and developing them based on meeting business KPIs. The clusters are also moving from regular platform release to independent continuous delivery. Show less

IT Application Development and Support Manager

• Aug 2009 - Feb 2011

Rok provides construction, maintenance & improvements and urgent repairs from offices around the country. Employed by Rok to bring experience of developing and operating high availability, reliable business systems to support the company goal of delivering exemplar service through application such as COINS ERP and Microsoft CRM. Re-structured the application delivery team and implemented improvements in application support processes to achieve 99.9% uptime goal. Responsible for… Show more Rok provides construction, maintenance & improvements and urgent repairs from offices around the country. Employed by Rok to bring experience of developing and operating high availability, reliable business systems to support the company goal of delivering exemplar service through application such as COINS ERP and Microsoft CRM. Re-structured the application delivery team and implemented improvements in application support processes to achieve 99.9% uptime goal. Responsible for designing an integrated application architecture utilising a BizTalk message hub to provide coherent business system solutions for Rok. The first integration was successfully completed with the delivery of PDA based scheduling technology using Click Software, which is expected to deliver an increase in annual revenue of £8.2M. Instrumental in designing and implementing the software solution, incorporating Click scheduling, to provide a 24x7x365 emergency response service for two major new customers. This new service is expected to deliver annual revenue of upwards of £15M for Rok with an expected margin of 20%. Show less Rok provides construction, maintenance & improvements and urgent repairs from offices around the country. Employed by Rok to bring experience of developing and operating high availability, reliable business systems to support the company goal of delivering exemplar service through application such as COINS ERP and Microsoft CRM. Re-structured the application delivery team and implemented improvements in application support processes to achieve 99.9% uptime goal. Responsible for… Show more Rok provides construction, maintenance & improvements and urgent repairs from offices around the country. Employed by Rok to bring experience of developing and operating high availability, reliable business systems to support the company goal of delivering exemplar service through application such as COINS ERP and Microsoft CRM. Re-structured the application delivery team and implemented improvements in application support processes to achieve 99.9% uptime goal. Responsible for designing an integrated application architecture utilising a BizTalk message hub to provide coherent business system solutions for Rok. The first integration was successfully completed with the delivery of PDA based scheduling technology using Click Software, which is expected to deliver an increase in annual revenue of £8.2M. Instrumental in designing and implementing the software solution, incorporating Click scheduling, to provide a 24x7x365 emergency response service for two major new customers. This new service is expected to deliver annual revenue of upwards of £15M for Rok with an expected margin of 20%. Show less

Head of Technical Architecture

• Jan 2007 - Jun 2009

Sporting Index is the world leader in sports spread betting and offers a range of gambling and gaming products to its customers through internet, mobile and telephone channels. Designed and oversaw the successful development of a new internal trading system based around real time Excel models integrated directly into the main trading systems. This led to a rapid increase in the number of betting opportunities offered by Sporting Index by more than tenfold and a commensurate improvement in… Show more Sporting Index is the world leader in sports spread betting and offers a range of gambling and gaming products to its customers through internet, mobile and telephone channels. Designed and oversaw the successful development of a new internal trading system based around real time Excel models integrated directly into the main trading systems. This led to a rapid increase in the number of betting opportunities offered by Sporting Index by more than tenfold and a commensurate improvement in revenue. Extended the model trading system to push fixed-odds market data in real time to B2B customers using XML. This provided an important new revenue stream for Sporting Index and was successfully integrated with a number of customers. System designed to achieve sub-second delivery with capacity of over 4000 updates/s and linear scalability for new customers. Developed architecture of the new Sporting Index web site, based around the DotNetNuke content management system, a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and real time price updates using Ajax. This has successfully provided an improved customer experience, better marketing control of content and reduced bet failure rate due to out of date prices. Defined and successfully completed the Proof of Concept to choose the technology to under-pin the next generation of Sporting Index trading systems. Oracle Coherence and Platform Symphony were chosen, from a range of solutions including Gigaspaces XAP, Gemstone Gemfire and Data Synapse Grid Server. Work was also undertaken prior to the POC comparing caching, grid and space based architectures with message based approaches from TIBCO, IBM and Oracle. Responsible for design and architecture of all Sporting Index front office trading systems, internet and mobile channels and back office systems. Also responsible for the selection of technology and overall strategic architecture.

Systems Development Manager

• Aug 2001 - Jan 2007

Re-negotiated the ownership, support and development agreements for Marginmaker, Sporting Index’s real time trading system. The support and maintenance contract was handed over to a new external supplier to achieve a significant saving in maintenance and reduced time and cost for new development. Developed BetHiLo, the simplified, low risk version of the Sporting Index product, which successfully broadened the customer base and provided a new revenue stream. This was followed by the… Show more Re-negotiated the ownership, support and development agreements for Marginmaker, Sporting Index’s real time trading system. The support and maintenance contract was handed over to a new external supplier to achieve a significant saving in maintenance and reduced time and cost for new development. Developed BetHiLo, the simplified, low risk version of the Sporting Index product, which successfully broadened the customer base and provided a new revenue stream. This was followed by the successfully development and deployment of new channels to market: Interactive TV and Mobile in partnership with 3rd party development partners, which further increased bet numbers and ARPU. Managed the successful development and release of virtual spread betting games and integration of multi-player Poker as enhancements to the Sporting Index portfolio. These provided new, risk free, revenue channels for Sporting Index Improved the development process, which was taken from a traditional waterfall approach and moved to more agile TDD based techniques with iterative releases and continuous build processes using CruiseControl and Subversion. SCRUM techniques such as sprints and backlogs were also introduced. This has enabled more rapid development and deployment of new initiatives without compromising core system stability. Responsible for all development and support of the internal trading systems and associated web sites and interfaces, managing the internal development teams and outsource development partners. Also responsible for maintaining the global plan for all Sporting Index development projects and producing the annual capital and revenue budget for the IT department in conjunction with the Senior IT Management Team. Produced procedures for project management, application development, version control, release management and change management.

Senior Technical Manager

• Jun 1998 - Aug 2001

P&O Nedlloyd, now part of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, is a worldwide ocean-going container shipping line and logistics company. Implemented a new logistics system developed using J2EE on IBM Websphere. The system replaced a range of point solutions at multiple locations with a single system, decreasing maintenance costs and improving efficiency. Successfully completed the Y2K projects for all HQ, Assets and Trade group systems, including the upgrade of an existing legacy system… Show more P&O Nedlloyd, now part of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, is a worldwide ocean-going container shipping line and logistics company. Implemented a new logistics system developed using J2EE on IBM Websphere. The system replaced a range of point solutions at multiple locations with a single system, decreasing maintenance costs and improving efficiency. Successfully completed the Y2K projects for all HQ, Assets and Trade group systems, including the upgrade of an existing legacy system, GTS, to three-tier architecture using Oracle 8i and Developer 6i. These changes moved the group technology into line with the strategic technical standards of P&O Nedlloyd leading to cost and efficiency savings for the group. Responsible for architecture, design and technical management of the members of the HQ, Assets and Trade group. Group numbered approximately 25-30 employees of P&O Nedlloyd and offshore staff employed by third party outsourcing company TCS. Also responsible for the definition of the P&O Nedlloyd development processes and technical standards with other Technical Managers, including architecture; acceptable technologies and standards i.e. Java, CORBA, XML, Internet, Intranet and Extranet technologies. In addition to official responsibilities, provided cover and support for project managers on ongoing development projects, and cover for the Group IT Manager. Show less P&O Nedlloyd, now part of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, is a worldwide ocean-going container shipping line and logistics company. Implemented a new logistics system developed using J2EE on IBM Websphere. The system replaced a range of point solutions at multiple locations with a single system, decreasing maintenance costs and improving efficiency. Successfully completed the Y2K projects for all HQ, Assets and Trade group systems, including the upgrade of an existing legacy system… Show more P&O Nedlloyd, now part of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, is a worldwide ocean-going container shipping line and logistics company. Implemented a new logistics system developed using J2EE on IBM Websphere. The system replaced a range of point solutions at multiple locations with a single system, decreasing maintenance costs and improving efficiency. Successfully completed the Y2K projects for all HQ, Assets and Trade group systems, including the upgrade of an existing legacy system, GTS, to three-tier architecture using Oracle 8i and Developer 6i. These changes moved the group technology into line with the strategic technical standards of P&O Nedlloyd leading to cost and efficiency savings for the group. Responsible for architecture, design and technical management of the members of the HQ, Assets and Trade group. Group numbered approximately 25-30 employees of P&O Nedlloyd and offshore staff employed by third party outsourcing company TCS. Also responsible for the definition of the P&O Nedlloyd development processes and technical standards with other Technical Managers, including architecture; acceptable technologies and standards i.e. Java, CORBA, XML, Internet, Intranet and Extranet technologies. In addition to official responsibilities, provided cover and support for project managers on ongoing development projects, and cover for the Group IT Manager. Show less

Head of Development for Marketing Database Solutions

• Jun 1993 - Jun 1998

CACI is a consultancy offering an unrivalled range of marketing solutions to businesses from most industry sectors. Head of Development for Marketing Database Solutions - a new group within CACI which included the marketing database product Market*Master, responsible for requirements and functional specifications for new database solutions using in-house methodology based on SSADM and CASE. Implementation was based around an Oracle and/or Market*Master. Also responsible for the… Show more CACI is a consultancy offering an unrivalled range of marketing solutions to businesses from most industry sectors. Head of Development for Marketing Database Solutions - a new group within CACI which included the marketing database product Market*Master, responsible for requirements and functional specifications for new database solutions using in-house methodology based on SSADM and CASE. Implementation was based around an Oracle and/or Market*Master. Also responsible for the technical development of Market*Master solutions for new client needs and implementation on different platforms. This included Market*Master and Oracle installations on VAX VMS, DEC Alpha OpenVMS and Sun UNIX. Designed and led the development of 32-bit Windows Client Interface using Visual Basic V4, Visual C++ V4 DLLs and OCXs, ODBC and TCP/IP Sockets. Project Manager on a number of client implementations of Market*Master which included customisation work. Responsible for design, time-scales and delivery of systems for both bureau and in-house systems. Show less CACI is a consultancy offering an unrivalled range of marketing solutions to businesses from most industry sectors. Head of Development for Marketing Database Solutions - a new group within CACI which included the marketing database product Market*Master, responsible for requirements and functional specifications for new database solutions using in-house methodology based on SSADM and CASE. Implementation was based around an Oracle and/or Market*Master. Also responsible for the… Show more CACI is a consultancy offering an unrivalled range of marketing solutions to businesses from most industry sectors. Head of Development for Marketing Database Solutions - a new group within CACI which included the marketing database product Market*Master, responsible for requirements and functional specifications for new database solutions using in-house methodology based on SSADM and CASE. Implementation was based around an Oracle and/or Market*Master. Also responsible for the technical development of Market*Master solutions for new client needs and implementation on different platforms. This included Market*Master and Oracle installations on VAX VMS, DEC Alpha OpenVMS and Sun UNIX. Designed and led the development of 32-bit Windows Client Interface using Visual Basic V4, Visual C++ V4 DLLs and OCXs, ODBC and TCP/IP Sockets. Project Manager on a number of client implementations of Market*Master which included customisation work. Responsible for design, time-scales and delivery of systems for both bureau and in-house systems. Show less