Sep 2017 – Sep 2018 · 1 yr · London, United Kingdom

• Managing IT operations and engineering for over two thousand users across twenty-nine European sites. The operations team is made up of eleven UK based resources, plus a collaboration with near and offshore teams.
• Created a request for proposals (RFP) and scope of works (SOW) for a redesign of the EMEA network to drive costs savings and to support the cloud transformation agenda by leveraging SD-WAN technologies, AWS Direct Connect and Microsoft ExpressRoute.
• Focusing on a cloud-first approach reviewing the current services provided by IT operations to cloud services providers, to free up operational resources to focus on IT transformation projects.
• Working with the legal team and Head of IT security to ensure IT operations can support GDPR technology projects and that the IT service desk procedures are compliant with the new legislation.
• Championing our transformation program to transition services away from traditional datacentre hosted in Rackspace to Amazon Web services using Cloud formation and a Dev-Ops approach.
• AWS Cloud formation review of the entire estate with a focus on ensuring all current and future platforms are built following security by design and the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

Jan 2015 – Sep 2017 · 2 yrs 8 mos · Canary Wharf, London

• Previously UK Hosting Operations Manager for Easynet before acquisition September 2015.
• Managing an agile team of eleven highly skilled SC cleared engineers and managers focused on the delivery and operations of customer’s critical line of business applications and systems hosted on the public, community, or private cloud platforms.
• I was engaged with a public, private partnership lead by a sizeable multinational credit agency to provide a SaaS debt management system to the UK government. My team worked with developers, security experts, and DBAs to deploy the underlying infrastructure required to support this new SaaS product which is in use by most departments of the UK government and me. Total contract value £6 million, including a bonus for early delivery.
• Ensuring data hygiene tasks were executed for managed services customers by ISO2700, PCI DSS and vendor best practice.
• Provide and assist pre-sales with enterprise, government and secure customer bids.
• Management of the Secure Hosting Operation Centre (SHOC) which are entirely “off-net” operations centres accredited to GCHQ standards to provide secure encrypted access to sensitive client infrastructure.
• Management of all hosting and cloud platforms & processes, challenging the team to automate using a DevOps and agile first strategy.
• Platform validation and build of new cloud environments, be they public, community or private.
• Project Management oversite of new or migrated customers on boarding to the new platform.
• Presales validation, conferring with solution consultants to ensure that their designs will work on existing cloud platforms, or to recommend bespoke options.
• Due to sufficient new business had to increase the team size to support newly won business over six months by using a trusted panel of recruiters were able to fill the positions in three months and below budget.
• Day to day operational escalation, leadership, capacity & process management.

Sep 2013 – Jan 2015 · 1 yr 4 mos · Harbour Exchange, Canary Wharf

• I managed a highly skilled team of IT infrastructure engineers, providing a national pool of resources and expertise for an internal client team operating in the private and public sector. My team were also responsible for the operation of Agilisys secure and PSN compliant Cloud IaaS platform. As a hands-on manager, I was active in the technical day to day operations and associated systems.
• I was the infrastructure operational lead in achieving ISO 27001 certification for the platform and team, in conjunction with our security team and the security steering committee.
• Provided platform support to the Agilisys Digital development team to provide the “My Account” software product as a SaaS product now used by many local governments to allow citizens to pay council tax and access other services online. Customers include Hammersmith and Fulham, Ealing and Bolton and Wigan Councils. This platform provided multi-million pound saving for the end clients and in turn, a highly profitable sticky service for the business.
• Restructured the team to provide escalation and back fill resources for UNIX, Oracle and infrastructure support company-wide to agreed organisation level agreements and allow customer teams to focus on digital transformation.
• Provided technical and service management assistance to project managers to ensure smooth migrations from customer’s legacy infrastructure to the Agilisys IaaS platform.
• Provided continual management and professional development of the team, which included differing technical abilities and skills sets from experienced UNIX and Oracle admins to junior cloud engineers.
• Was asked to help a local team to transform and reduce costs, we achieved this by reviewing the current end-user support team. Then in actioned a restructure to reduce and rehire the team making greater use of apprentices. These changes brought fresh talent into the team, which achieved the targeted costs reduction and end-user first-time fix and stratification rates.

Jul 2011 – Sep 2013 · 2 yrs 2 mos · Bond Street, London, United Kingdom

• Eze Castle is a fast-paced multinational IT company in the professional investment sector, dealing predominantly with Hedge Funds and other Financial Institutions. My role was primarily focused on leading a team of six engineers and providing best in class IT solutions by working with the client relationship management team. My role also involved: -
• Day to day management of a team of highly talented and experienced IT engineers, working in the high pressure financial and trading sector.
• Performance Reviews and mentoring of my team including professional development, in both their technical and non-technical competencies.
• Identifying areas to improve clients’ technical environment and partners with CRMs to make recommendations to the clients.
• Providing support to many new funds and spin-outs to plan and build low latency network’s and infrastructure to support trading systems such as Eze OMS, Sophis, Calypso and Charles River.
• Working with the project management team to help design, build and deploy new systems.
• Infrastructure support of trading systems including Bloomberg, Sophis, Reuters and Eze OMS.
• Day to day senior escalation point for engineers to work through and fix technical problems remotely or on-site.
• Supporting, architecting public and private cloud solutions using the latest solutions from Cisco, VMware, Netapp, Riverbed, Citrix and Microsoft.
• I am working closely with technology and market vendor application providers to create tailor-made technology solutions.

Aug 2006 – Jul 2011 · 4 yrs 11 mos · London, United Kingdom

• I was invited to the board of directors to enhance my role in this small business, taking further responsibility, leading the client retention initiative and supporting new business growth. As a support desk manager, I was responsible for a support team of ten engineers with clients ranging from individuals to SME’s and large corporations. The ongoing company-wide team strategy was to provide an effective, timely response to IT problems and queries in a professional and friendly manner. The role included line management for all client-facing members of staff.
• Oversight and management of the service assurance team, including service desk; subsequently becoming the final escalation point for all technical and operational escalations.
• Further development and implementation of robust company-wide processes to ensure that a high-quality service was provided to all clients.
• Implementing methodologies to improve first-time fix resolution for all technical and customer service-related matters.
• Ensuring that regular training and appraisals were provided to staff to ensure that each member of the team could provide the best level of customer support.
• Accountable for the management, mentoring and career development of all help desk and customer-facing staff.
• I was managing a dedicated team providing remote, telephone, and on-site support at all levels.
• Day to day management of the team, including line management responsibilities, booking leave and staff performance reviews.
• Designed and introduced ITIL aligned processes and working instructions to enable the service desk to provide a structured level of service to all clients.

Aug 2005 – Jul 2006 · 11 mos · St Albans, United Kingdom

• Provided Level 1 & 2 support for the company’s fixed asset management software. Clients range from large and global corporations.
• Team strategy was to provide dedicated support for the AssetWare products and services.
• Provided first-line telephone support to over two thousand clients.
• On-site software and SQL server setup and installations.
• Webmaster and author of the AssetWare company website.
• Maintained and managed the Helpdesk and call logging system. Queried operators opened requests and made sure they were closed in a timely fashion.
• Managed and performed financial software data migrations between old and new products, which - involved a precise and detailed reconciliation process.
• Produced support literature and fixes for the client and internal use.
• Trained clients on product usage, primarily in SQL and report writing.

Jan 1999 – Jan 2005 · 6 yrs

• Customer & Trading Support (Equivalent to Assistant Manager) – Customer Services (Part Time)