Technical Director/Consultant for Apps and AI for GOV.UKTechnology Strategy work for GDS and GOV.UK's Growth Strategy

Founder/CTO of KM Digital Solutions offering a range of services including:- Fractional and/or Interim CTO/VPE services- Technology Advisor- NED- Tech Leadership for teams within startups & scale-ups- Technical Due Diligence- Technical Leadership Training (1/2/3 days)

Head of Product, Core Services.

class.ef.com

Leading the development for the mobile client architecture area of work. This covers the internal architecture, the design language and open source hub framework products for the mobile core experiences on iOS and Android.

This was both a people and technical management position which involves leading multiple teams of experienced, super smart engineers delivering BBC Sport online for web and native app platforms.The role involved leading multiple teams building software services and applications, tackling reliability, availability and performance as we scaled product ambitions for business as usual (e.g. Football) and major sporting events (e.g. Summer and Winter Olympic Games/FIFA World Cups). Focussed on optimising how to deliver applications and services into a highly available large scale service across multiple platforms.- Good organisational and planning skills with the ability to manage multiple projects, set priorities and meet strict/hard deadlines.- Developing people and cultivating our culture to ensure it remains a great place to work- Provide technical direction for product roadmaps and experience of managing the activities of multiple sub-teams responsible for building cross-platform native (iOS, Android and Windows) and web platforms.- Responsible for the ongoing training and development needs of a large technical team.- Responsible for identifying long term opportunities, defining strategy and communication team a technical/engineering vision. Experience with balancing short term tactics with long term strategy.- Comfortable in a fast-paced, ever changing and unpredictable environment. Good at context switching, juggling multiple priorities without losing sight of the big picture.

As technical development lead, I had responsibility for the technical delivery of BBC Sport on mobile. A challenging role which focusses on the technical leadership and management of a multi-disciplinary team of software engineers, developers and testers for m.bbc.co.uk/sport and the BBC Sport native apps for iOS (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bbc-sport/id377388936) and Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.bbc.android.sportdomestic).

As technical development lead I had responsibility for the technical delivery of the BBC's London 2012 Olympics proposition on mobile. A demanding and highly rewarding role which focussed on the technical leadership and management of a multi-disciplinary team of software engineers, developers and testers delivering the mobile Sport Olympic Service (www.bbc.co.uk/sport/mobile/olympics/2012) and mobile 2012 portal (m.bbc.co.uk/2012).

Co-founded 21media innovations ltd which specialised in the development of interactive systems and applications for Digital and Internet based Television Systems (IPTV). 21media's portfolio included a suite of software services which offered personalised TV recommendations via a browser based interactive web application. Real-time usage and social network analytics data was used to power the recommendation services. The solution was targeted at education and hospitality managed network environments.

My primary role involved co-ordinating Lancaster University’s involvement in the €19Million EU funded P2P-Next project. Specifically, I led the technical delivery of the Living Lab trials work package that established a series of pan-European live test infrastructures. P2P-Next focussed on developing an open source, scalable peer-to-peer based live streaming and video on-demand service for PC/Web and digital set-top-box platforms. The final production service provided a flexible platform for experimentation with new and emerging areas within IPTV web, mobile and STB platforms.

I was responsible for project managing the applications development strand of work for Lancaster’s Mobile IPv6 Systems Research Lab (MSRL) which developed novel and innovative applications for people working and living in the area. This venture was carried out in close collaboration with Cisco Systems, Microsoft Research and Orange between 2002 and 2005. The primary objective was to deploy and evaluate Mobile IPv6 based applications and services over wireless overlay infrastructures including wifi and cellular networks. The most successful application was a mobile, multi-player location based game for children, called Real Tournament. The project involved modifying Super Soaker Water Cannons and augmenting them with sensors, wifi and PDAs with push to talk audio in order to create a device which allowed children to hunt and collect virtual monsters within the city’s main park. The gaming environment we established allowed physical actions (e.g. movement) to be translated and injected into a live virtual world in order to move game characters. The game was demonstrated at Electronic Arts in California during the NetGames conference in 2003.

During this period I was chief architect of Lancaster’s GUIDE System, a unique research project which successfully deployed a metropolitan area wireless network, prototype mobile tourist application and provided a live environment for developing and evaluating real-world mobile applications and services (1997 – 2001). The GUIDE system presented city visitors with tourist information and real-time interactive services reflecting both their personal and environmental contexts. The GUIDE prototype was evaluated through a series of user field trials which were published at CHI and MobiCom. In 1999 a short film describing the system was broadcast by BBC Tomorrow’s World. This research as part of this project formed the backbone for my PhD thesis.