Benjamin Townsend Email & Phone Number

Canterbury, Vic, Au

Seattle, Wa, Us

- Build mechanisms to improve Operational Excellence (OE) for 200+ teams across Selling Partner Support, a worldwide organization that supports Amazon’s global family of selling partners.- Lead peak readiness processes that help teams prepare for Peak Events where 450+ services support traffic spikes of 200-500% daily norms.- Manage strategic plans for OE and Peak Readiness programs of work and drive associated goals. Track goal progress for Engineering, Machine Learning and Data Science teams, reporting on a monthly basis with executive visibility. - Train and empower more than 200 Peak and OE points of contact to drive goals within their organizations, so their teams can deliver optimal Peak Readiness and OE Program outcomes.- Partner with cross functional stakeholders in business, technical and operations teams to problem solve and deliver holistic program capabilities that consider more than just technical readiness.- Influence and drive successful project outcomes, often without direct authority over participating stakeholders.

San Francisco, California, Us

- Chief of Staff to the CTO, managing programs that improve engineering quality, capacity management, scheduling and velocity.- Build mechanisms to improve product quality across all aspects of the Upwork Product Development Lifecycle, reducing production bugs by 50% and aging bugs >12 months old from 1,000+ to 0 in 6 months.- Design and implement processes and programs that improve collaboration and delivery velocity across the Research and Development organization, resulting in a 15% increase to delivery velocity YoY.- Drive roadmaps, capacity and delivery prioritization for Engineering, Machine Learning and Data Science teams across 87 scrum teams, delivering solutions to manage project allocations for 700+ software engineers and processes that formalized project prioritization and trade-off discussions. - Manage the hiring program for engineering including contracts, pay rates, recruitment, interview, promotions and job requisition approvals across 700+ FTE and Freelancers and 87 teams.

Seattle, Wa, Us

- Manage the organizational roadmap, team capacity and delivery prioritization for Engineering, Machine Learning and Data Science teams across 15 discrete workstreams with 75+ team members- Increase delivery of initiatives, YoY, by an order of magnitude, from 6 to 65 successfully completed projects launched into production. - Manage compliance programs for Data Protection, Personal Information Management and Payment Services Compliance, and drive teams to build solutions to meet legislative and legal requirements (i.e. PSD2, GDPR, CCPA, data geolocation policies) globally.- Lead/coordinate Customer Trust teams building and launching new Amazon international storefronts, leveraging economies of scale that reduced cost to launch by 42%.- Mentor/coach 3 junior program managers to develop skills and fit into the unique Amazon culture, leading to next-level promotion of all candidates.- Hire and develop the best by participating in Amazon’s recruitment processes as an interviewer of more than 100 candidates, candidate screener, and promotion reviewer for technical positions.- Partner with cross functional stakeholders in business, technical and operations teams to problem solve and deliver holistic program outcomes and solutions that address business needs.

Fortitude Valley, Qld, Au

- Lead enterprise solution design, project management, technical consulting, solution implementation, integration & data conversion services for 27 TechnologyOne education customers across Europe, Asia-Pacific and Australia.- Manage capacity, skills, engagements and allocations for the global technical consulting team (30+ team members).- Deploy the TechnologyOne Student Management enterprise solution in both SaaS and on-premise installations for 19 customers globally, leading 30 TechnologyOne staff and customer teams of 20 – 60 on implementation projects lasting 9-36 months.- Develop mechanisms and services to support data conversion, reporting, integration, authentication and technical training. - Deliver the first cloud-based implementation of TechnologyOne Student Management, using AWS technologies and managing technical workstreams including data conversion, system configuration, integration between cloud and on-premise solutions, data access, Cloud services configuration, and liaison with R&D to remediate cloud performance, integration, access & security issues. - Drive $30+ million of new global business through business cases, implementation plans, deployment strategies and solution demonstrations to potential customers globally. - Develop and deliver training/coaching for technical capabilities like data import/export, ETL, integration/API solutions and data migration.

Noble Park, Vic, Au

- Founder and CEO of boutique software engineering and consulting company (~10 employees).- Lead software architecture, solution design, coding, integration and project management on 100+ bespoke solutions for enterprise customers in education, healthcare & retail/commercial domains- Deliver solutions using SaaS and on-premise delivery methodologies. - Manage the engineering team to code solutions using a “best tool for the job” technology stack that included ASP.NET, C#, Visual Basic, ASP Classic, Java Enterprise, Cold Fusion, PHP, SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle.- Develop and deliver training/coaching to enable customers to “hit the ground running” with their new software.- Manage project teams of up 20 headcount including customer resources.- Facilitate customer facing consulting engagements in healthcare, retain and education domains. - Develop/win business opportunities in excess of $20 million.

Lawrence Township, Nj, Us

- Analyze problems and design, develop & implement bespoke software to support business operations for Bristol-Myers Squibb sites around the Asia-Pacific rim. - Hands on development of solutions using VB, ASP, C, Cold Fusion, AS400 mainframe technologies and SQL Server databases. - Manage international team of 15-25 staff across Asia-Pacific to deliver complex multi-region/multi-language projects.- Successfully deliver region-wide business benefits including operating cost & headcount reductions through high impact corporate software projects such as the regional Vista Accounting Solution, launched in Beijing, China to manage 700,000+ global invoices/month.- Deliver process modernization moving user experience from legacy AS-400 text-based UI's to modern web-based interfaces for business users across the Pacific Rim.

- Own the roadmap and product lifecycle for higher & vocational education enterprise solutions including Student Self-Service Portal, Callista Research & ePortfolio products.- Lead software development teams to successfully deliver 8 major product release cycles to 14 production education customers.- Manage 4 product workstreams with dev teams of 5-20 staff to deliver enhancements and upgrades to customers around Australia.- Coordinate customer user group and feature request backlogs, prioritizing solution enhancements and break-fix remediation (patches) using Java EE, Oracle and Microsoft technologies. - Develop $20+ million new business as part of the tender response team for Callista Student Management System with high level executive visibility.- Present to large audiences (300-600+) at Callista User Group Conferences.

- Lead the software engineering team coding Oztrak vehicle tracking software using the Microsoft tech stack, geospatial, data communications and GPS technologies. - Drive research & development activities for vehicle tracking, GPS differential correction and geospatial software solutions.- Deploy Oztrack Vehicle Tracking solution (hardware and software) in Australian and international customer locations.- Build prototype “uncrashable car” concept in collaboration with Ford Motor Company, Monash University Accident Research Centre and the Australian Federal Transport Accident Commission, incorporating hardware and software to manage forward and backwards looking radar, speed control, alcohol interlock, seatbelt pre-tensioning, haptic feedback, geolocation, GPS and vehicle telemetry technologies (long before these were standard in motor vehicles).- Manage ISO9001 compliance processes, audits and reviews for all software development activities.

- Lead NetExpress internet provider through a commercial acquisition by Primus Telecommunications, maintaining service levels while growing active customers 250% to maximize business valuation and eventual sale price for shareholders.

Burwood, Victoria, Au

- Analyst/Programmer, promoted to Senior A/P after 12 months. - Design, develop and support Computer Based Training software for organizations like CPA Australia, APESMA and Ford Motor Company.- Manage, analyze and document customer requirements.- Convert business requirements to deployable software solutions.- Release management, software mastering and gold-master disk production.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Information Technology, Computing, Data Communications And Healthcare

Bachelor Of Information Technology (1St Class Honours), Applied Information Technology, Data Communications, Artificial Intelligence, Data Mining

Bachelor Of Computing, Generalist Information Technology, Software Development, Hardware, Software And Systems