Experience

Propellent

• United Kingdom
• IT Services and IT Consulting
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Managing Director

  • May 2009 - Present

  A seasoned expert with over 20 years delivering secure technical solutions around the globe for market leading organisations. Propellent delivers a secure, compliance-first path to building, protecting and optimising IT environments: Build: IT applications, infrastructure, and environments that meet your technical AND compliance requirements. Protect: your data, systems and people to meet your organisation’s information security standards. Optimise: your people… Show more A seasoned expert with over 20 years delivering secure technical solutions around the globe for market leading organisations. Propellent delivers a secure, compliance-first path to building, protecting and optimising IT environments: Build: IT applications, infrastructure, and environments that meet your technical AND compliance requirements. Protect: your data, systems and people to meet your organisation’s information security standards. Optimise: your people, process and technology by reducing complexity through standardisation, integration and automation. Our solutions balance the requirements of compliance with the realities of IT operations, to establish a clean, compliant and secure business setting. Our partners include Tenable, Kemp, Juniper, F5, Flowmon, and Rapid7 You choose the way we work together; all our solutions are available as: For you: Fully managed services run by us to your requirements With you: You run the solution, backed up with our expertise and support By you: You own the solution, we provide the licenses, training and consultancy Work with us to get an elegant, effective and sustainable approach to protecting your organisations digital estate. Show less A seasoned expert with over 20 years delivering secure technical solutions around the globe for market leading organisations. Propellent delivers a secure, compliance-first path to building, protecting and optimising IT environments: Build: IT applications, infrastructure, and environments that meet your technical AND compliance requirements. Protect: your data, systems and people to meet your organisation’s information security standards. Optimise: your people… Show more A seasoned expert with over 20 years delivering secure technical solutions around the globe for market leading organisations. Propellent delivers a secure, compliance-first path to building, protecting and optimising IT environments: Build: IT applications, infrastructure, and environments that meet your technical AND compliance requirements. Protect: your data, systems and people to meet your organisation’s information security standards. Optimise: your people, process and technology by reducing complexity through standardisation, integration and automation. Our solutions balance the requirements of compliance with the realities of IT operations, to establish a clean, compliant and secure business setting. Our partners include Tenable, Kemp, Juniper, F5, Flowmon, and Rapid7 You choose the way we work together; all our solutions are available as: For you: Fully managed services run by us to your requirements With you: You run the solution, backed up with our expertise and support By you: You own the solution, we provide the licenses, training and consultancy Work with us to get an elegant, effective and sustainable approach to protecting your organisations digital estate. Show less



Selfridges

• United Kingdom
• Retail
• 700 & Above Employee

• Consultant

  • Nov 2012 - Jun 2013

  I returned to assist Selfridges with operational and development projects. I returned to assist Selfridges with operational and development projects.



Selfridges

• United Kingdom
• Retail
• 700 & Above Employee

• Interim eCommerce Support Manager

  • Nov 2011 - Jul 2012

  Reported to head of IT/service delivery with a dotted line to the online business owner. Member of the IT senior management team. The role was a newly created Online Support Manager position based out of the prestigious Selfridges Oxford Street store. Selfridges Online is a constantly evolving, highly complex, resource constrained environment. The department was undergoing a transition to service oriented support led by Deloitte. The key focus of the role was to work closely with… Show more Reported to head of IT/service delivery with a dotted line to the online business owner. Member of the IT senior management team. The role was a newly created Online Support Manager position based out of the prestigious Selfridges Oxford Street store. Selfridges Online is a constantly evolving, highly complex, resource constrained environment. The department was undergoing a transition to service oriented support led by Deloitte. The key focus of the role was to work closely with Deliotte to assist with the implementation of department wide change. For the applications function this centred around the production of ITIL incident and problem management processes into the support team, combined with the running of team knowledge sharing and documentation activities to improve the collective knowledge, morale and cohesion of the existing team. Key deliverables also included the enhancement and automation of management reporting, and the implementation of processes to streamline the interfaces with key third party organisations. In parallel, worked closely with the Online Architecture Manager to introduce architectural improvements. Key measure of the success of the assignment was the reduction of the average ticket resolution time from 25 days to a steady 2.5 day average while ticket volumes increased by 50%. Recruited and trained my successor. Show less Reported to head of IT/service delivery with a dotted line to the online business owner. Member of the IT senior management team. The role was a newly created Online Support Manager position based out of the prestigious Selfridges Oxford Street store. Selfridges Online is a constantly evolving, highly complex, resource constrained environment. The department was undergoing a transition to service oriented support led by Deloitte. The key focus of the role was to work closely with… Show more Reported to head of IT/service delivery with a dotted line to the online business owner. Member of the IT senior management team. The role was a newly created Online Support Manager position based out of the prestigious Selfridges Oxford Street store. Selfridges Online is a constantly evolving, highly complex, resource constrained environment. The department was undergoing a transition to service oriented support led by Deloitte. The key focus of the role was to work closely with Deliotte to assist with the implementation of department wide change. For the applications function this centred around the production of ITIL incident and problem management processes into the support team, combined with the running of team knowledge sharing and documentation activities to improve the collective knowledge, morale and cohesion of the existing team. Key deliverables also included the enhancement and automation of management reporting, and the implementation of processes to streamline the interfaces with key third party organisations. In parallel, worked closely with the Online Architecture Manager to introduce architectural improvements. Key measure of the success of the assignment was the reduction of the average ticket resolution time from 25 days to a steady 2.5 day average while ticket volumes increased by 50%. Recruited and trained my successor. Show less



Cable&Wireless Worldwide

• Bracknell

• Consultant

  • Nov 2011 - Nov 2011

  Prepared a bid response for a major retail client for the provision of an applications management service. Prepared a bid response for a major retail client for the provision of an applications management service.



Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

• Consultant

  • May 2009 - Nov 2011

  The Trust was undergoing a major transformation to a service delivery culture including a full restructure of all IT functions of which applications management formed part. The applications team was responsible for the support and management of the Trusts 750+ technically diverse applications, primarily third party owned. The remit of the role was to set up an ITIL aligned Applications Management function to provide an end to end applications service for clinical applications across the… Show more The Trust was undergoing a major transformation to a service delivery culture including a full restructure of all IT functions of which applications management formed part. The applications team was responsible for the support and management of the Trusts 750+ technically diverse applications, primarily third party owned. The remit of the role was to set up an ITIL aligned Applications Management function to provide an end to end applications service for clinical applications across the Trust. Over a 2 year period this involved the recruitment and building of a team of approx. 35 staff comprising 2nd line applications support, deployment & supplier management, DBAs, clinical analysts, testing. The setting and management of business stakeholder expectations within the various clinical areas was a critical element to the success of the assignment as was the extensive management of the numerous external third parties. Key deliverables were the setting of technical direction, standards and technical mentoring for the team, working with other IT and business teams to achieve common goals, managing 3rd party suppliers, promoting ITIL best practice, SLA management and measurement. The role also involved significant involvement in the analysis and review phases of new applications requiring the development and management of transition criteria for stage gate checkpoints to move projects into live service. The operational aspects of this role included providing technical expertise not otherwise available in the Trust, application incident management, in depth root cause analysis of application issues, building an application monitoring function, transitioning projects into the live environment, writing tools for the support analysts to automate repetitive or time consuming tasks, and ownership of all Application Databases. Show less The Trust was undergoing a major transformation to a service delivery culture including a full restructure of all IT functions of which applications management formed part. The applications team was responsible for the support and management of the Trusts 750+ technically diverse applications, primarily third party owned. The remit of the role was to set up an ITIL aligned Applications Management function to provide an end to end applications service for clinical applications across the… Show more The Trust was undergoing a major transformation to a service delivery culture including a full restructure of all IT functions of which applications management formed part. The applications team was responsible for the support and management of the Trusts 750+ technically diverse applications, primarily third party owned. The remit of the role was to set up an ITIL aligned Applications Management function to provide an end to end applications service for clinical applications across the Trust. Over a 2 year period this involved the recruitment and building of a team of approx. 35 staff comprising 2nd line applications support, deployment & supplier management, DBAs, clinical analysts, testing. The setting and management of business stakeholder expectations within the various clinical areas was a critical element to the success of the assignment as was the extensive management of the numerous external third parties. Key deliverables were the setting of technical direction, standards and technical mentoring for the team, working with other IT and business teams to achieve common goals, managing 3rd party suppliers, promoting ITIL best practice, SLA management and measurement. The role also involved significant involvement in the analysis and review phases of new applications requiring the development and management of transition criteria for stage gate checkpoints to move projects into live service. The operational aspects of this role included providing technical expertise not otherwise available in the Trust, application incident management, in depth root cause analysis of application issues, building an application monitoring function, transitioning projects into the live environment, writing tools for the support analysts to automate repetitive or time consuming tasks, and ownership of all Application Databases. Show less



Validis

• United Kingdom
• Software Development
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Systems Manager

  • Dec 2006 - Feb 2009

  Lead the management, implementation and delivery of the application infrastructure for Validis, along with running all IT systems. Day to day activities : 20% strategy development, management and evaluation, 50% application support and issue investigation, 30% infrastructure support and BAU. The role was fully hands on. Responsibilities: • Ownership of all IT Operations: Design, implementation, management and supporting infrastructure for a new SaaS data mining application, data… Show more Lead the management, implementation and delivery of the application infrastructure for Validis, along with running all IT systems. Day to day activities : 20% strategy development, management and evaluation, 50% application support and issue investigation, 30% infrastructure support and BAU. The role was fully hands on. Responsibilities: • Ownership of all IT Operations: Design, implementation, management and supporting infrastructure for a new SaaS data mining application, data security and all office infrastructure. • Responsible for all IT and Infrastructure Strategy. This included application hosting and office systems, the decisions to host in-house or outsource, Budgeting and cost control, and supplier selection and management. • Designing and implementing the application architecture and infrastructure to the lowest possible cost, maximum resilience and best possible performance. • Continuous liaison with the test and engineering teams to ensure synergy between code and application infrastructure. This included a change/release management role. • Designing, recruiting and managing a technical team to manage the increasing BAU workload and deliver projects. The team eventually grew to 4 members. I was permanently on call. • Designing and implementing a fully resilient production environment designed to scale to cover Future Route’s needs for the next 12 months. • Building and running stress tests to find the limitations of the application enabling me to build a cost model for raw user pricing, and to focus the engineering team on potential future issues. Key player in Future Route striving for ISO 27001 certification. Technology used: CentOS, Apache, Postgres, JBoss, Alteon LB, Checkpoint, DELL Hardware, F5, Unicluster, Bash scripting, puppet, Hyperic, NAGIOS Show less Lead the management, implementation and delivery of the application infrastructure for Validis, along with running all IT systems. Day to day activities : 20% strategy development, management and evaluation, 50% application support and issue investigation, 30% infrastructure support and BAU. The role was fully hands on. Responsibilities: • Ownership of all IT Operations: Design, implementation, management and supporting infrastructure for a new SaaS data mining application, data… Show more Lead the management, implementation and delivery of the application infrastructure for Validis, along with running all IT systems. Day to day activities : 20% strategy development, management and evaluation, 50% application support and issue investigation, 30% infrastructure support and BAU. The role was fully hands on. Responsibilities: • Ownership of all IT Operations: Design, implementation, management and supporting infrastructure for a new SaaS data mining application, data security and all office infrastructure. • Responsible for all IT and Infrastructure Strategy. This included application hosting and office systems, the decisions to host in-house or outsource, Budgeting and cost control, and supplier selection and management. • Designing and implementing the application architecture and infrastructure to the lowest possible cost, maximum resilience and best possible performance. • Continuous liaison with the test and engineering teams to ensure synergy between code and application infrastructure. This included a change/release management role. • Designing, recruiting and managing a technical team to manage the increasing BAU workload and deliver projects. The team eventually grew to 4 members. I was permanently on call. • Designing and implementing a fully resilient production environment designed to scale to cover Future Route’s needs for the next 12 months. • Building and running stress tests to find the limitations of the application enabling me to build a cost model for raw user pricing, and to focus the engineering team on potential future issues. Key player in Future Route striving for ISO 27001 certification. Technology used: CentOS, Apache, Postgres, JBoss, Alteon LB, Checkpoint, DELL Hardware, F5, Unicluster, Bash scripting, puppet, Hyperic, NAGIOS Show less



GMAC RFC

• Application Services

  • 2002 - 2006

  GMAC RFC was a leading residential mortgage lender, trading through over 20,000 brokers via Internet portals. The business processed transactions worth £1.5+ billion/month. 2005-2006 - Following a major IT restructure, promoted to technical Services role. This entailed the analysis of issues, liaising with the relevant development teams and resolving them, and delivering architectural change to the Production Environment. Championed the now widely used multi-team web based documentation… Show more GMAC RFC was a leading residential mortgage lender, trading through over 20,000 brokers via Internet portals. The business processed transactions worth £1.5+ billion/month. 2005-2006 - Following a major IT restructure, promoted to technical Services role. This entailed the analysis of issues, liaising with the relevant development teams and resolving them, and delivering architectural change to the Production Environment. Championed the now widely used multi-team web based documentation strategy. 2004-2005 - Application Services team leader for maintaining the Production presentation and business logic layers of business-critical online services. Close liaison with platform, database, network and non production application teams. Responsibilities were the day to day running of the mortgage processing systems, application monitoring, internet security, issue escalation, investigation and problem solving, and representing team at change management forums. 2002-2004 - Team member maintaining production, test and development mortgage processing applications in a classic waterfall development environment. Supported all aspects of the presentation and application layers . Show less GMAC RFC was a leading residential mortgage lender, trading through over 20,000 brokers via Internet portals. The business processed transactions worth £1.5+ billion/month. 2005-2006 - Following a major IT restructure, promoted to technical Services role. This entailed the analysis of issues, liaising with the relevant development teams and resolving them, and delivering architectural change to the Production Environment. Championed the now widely used multi-team web based documentation… Show more GMAC RFC was a leading residential mortgage lender, trading through over 20,000 brokers via Internet portals. The business processed transactions worth £1.5+ billion/month. 2005-2006 - Following a major IT restructure, promoted to technical Services role. This entailed the analysis of issues, liaising with the relevant development teams and resolving them, and delivering architectural change to the Production Environment. Championed the now widely used multi-team web based documentation strategy. 2004-2005 - Application Services team leader for maintaining the Production presentation and business logic layers of business-critical online services. Close liaison with platform, database, network and non production application teams. Responsibilities were the day to day running of the mortgage processing systems, application monitoring, internet security, issue escalation, investigation and problem solving, and representing team at change management forums. 2002-2004 - Team member maintaining production, test and development mortgage processing applications in a classic waterfall development environment. Supported all aspects of the presentation and application layers . Show less



Commerzbank AG

• Germany
• Banking
• 700 & Above Employee

• Web Services Support Analyst

  • Jun 2001 - Nov 2001

  On sabbatical from Hard Reality. Member of team responsible for the successful day to day running of 300+ IIS servers, design and implementation of new servers. Rewrote the team knowledgebase to enhance searching and updates. On sabbatical from Hard Reality. Member of team responsible for the successful day to day running of 300+ IIS servers, design and implementation of new servers. Rewrote the team knowledgebase to enhance searching and updates.



Leo Burnett

• Infrastructure Manager

  • 1999 - 2001

  Hard Reality was a web design agency linked to Leo Burnett, a large advertising agency. Responsibilities were the ownership and management of internal systems and hosting for client sites. The role included extensive client-facing work for major companies including Kelloggs, Maytag, and Sonera Zed. Hard Reality was a web design agency linked to Leo Burnett, a large advertising agency. Responsibilities were the ownership and management of internal systems and hosting for client sites. The role included extensive client-facing work for major companies including Kelloggs, Maytag, and Sonera Zed.



pH Group

• Analyst

  • Mar 1999 - Mar 2000

  Supporting Servers and Workstations in a data-mining environment. Responsible for day to day running of the back end servers, and writing querying tools for use by other analysts

• Analyst

  • Mar 1999 - Mar 2000

  Supporting Servers and Workstations in a data-mining environment. Responsible for day to day running of the back end servers, and writing querying tools for use by other analysts



Somerset College, Somerset West, South Africa

• South Africa
• Higher Education
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Support Analyst

  • Sep 1998 - Feb 1999

  Supported office network and servers, compiled and managed an asset database.

• Support Analyst

  • Sep 1998 - Feb 1999

  Supported office network and servers, compiled and managed an asset database.