Working with a start-up developing innovative, disruptive technologies to influence corporate travel; tasked with technical direction, product development, DevOps and operational duties, as well as resourcing development by engaging with contractors and offshore service partners.I work hands-on developing and implementing the product, taking a proof-of-concept to MVP and into early BETA launch with a significant customer whilst managing a disparate offshore team using Agile/Sprint processes to create and iterate the product.I also support the business in product management and direction, working alongside the Product Manager, technical strategy, roadmaps, customer interactions alongside business development and support, as well as investors.We work with large corporates looking to enhance their travel programmes, as well as with several partners, including American Express, Dinova and Hyatt hotels to surface their data and provide deep interactions direct to the business traveller.Working across the breadth of development and operations, I am personally responsible for creating a scalable and reliable architecture to ensure peak resourcing for our customers.Maintaining a very hands-on role, I have day-to-day experience developing web and mobile products using a range of technologies including Go, AngularJS, Node.JS, MongoDB and Redis.

ctostartup offers technology and executive expertise primarily to start-up companies looking to leverage skills with MVP and Technology Development as well as Product Management and Delivery.It provides expertise and consultancy to companies in all technology areas to develop and bring their ideas and products to market.Available for short and long term contracts as interim, on-demand or advisor – ctostartup can help your ideas become a reality.Specialties• Start-ups and high-growth companies• Software and product development including product management• Executive support• Operational deployment• Platform and technology selection• Team building, management and recruitmentTechnologies• Development with .NET Framework, WCP and WPF, UWP, Go, Node.js, AngularJS, jQuery, LESS & SASS• Data stores with SQL Server, MongoDB, Redis, Couchbase, MySQL and InfoBright• Virtualization and Cloud services with Microsoft Hyper-V, Docker, Azure and AWS

As a key member of the executive leadership team, I am responsible for technology planning and setting the long term technical strategy and roadmap to ensure alignment with product direction and the business vision. Analysing and implementing the best use of technology to complement, augment and enhance the platform offering and benefit the customer experience, delivering innovative and robust digital solutions in a market-driven technology led company.Providing visible leadership for the company within the technology community across our partners and customers, executing the technology strategy for platforms, partnerships and external relationships.Covering a wide aspect of governance to ensure the challenges and growth of the business can be best met through the effective deployment and use of technology aligned with best practice of information and data management, security, compliance, and prioritisation and justification of investment into IT initiatives.Strategic planning and technology selection to transform and develop the Bango Platform alongside use of IT within the business; headed the enterprise architecture strategy and delivery that has positioned the company for significant growth.

In this role, I cultivated the development strategy across the business, maximizing the capabilities of my teams to deliver quality products and technological solutions for the market. I have successfully run and worked directly within multiple teams implementing projects with demanding timescales and limited resources. I can identify solutions as well as software development options to support and deliver on the business strategy and goals.I provided clear and visible leadership to the development team, alongside guiding, mentoring and coaching to enhance individual and team performance, as well as a maintaining a hands-on technical skillset to implement and develop solutions. I achieved high engagement by creating an environment of enthusiasm and excitement with my teams and celebrating a culture of collaboration and team-work.Responsibilities include full ownership of the product roadmap, prioritisation, resource and capacity planning and allocation, as well as project management and project delivery, working with multiple teams to manage end-to-end project lifecycle.Providing advice to the business of commercial and technical feasibilities, as well as scoping of functional and business requirements, timescales, costs and deliverables, ensuring successful delivery on time and within budget.Achieved significant team growth over a 4 year period with recruitment at a range of levels, including graduate training and developer apprenticeship scheme. Spearheaded creation of a behaviours and competencies appraisal review system, developed a training toolkit framework for developers which increased proficiencies, including adaptability, presentation and comms skills, technical writing, soft skills, leadership and mentoring, peer review, etc.Key product deliverables, including Facebook mobile credits, launched with Google Play, integrating with Google's DCB interfaces, PaymentUI hosted HTML5 payment flows leveraged by Mozilla to support Firefox Marketplace.

As Vice President of Development, I took responsibility for the entire development and engineering function, managing, nurturing and motivating a team of 12 developers. I worked closely with the previous CTO to define, implement and deliver products, sympathetic to the product promise and customer requirements.As well as fostering a relationship with BlackBerry (RIM) to launch mobile operator billing as the exclusive partner across BlackBerry App World, I also provided technical expertise for sales engagement with prospects such as Qualcomm and Amazon.Responsible for initiatives and product developments such as the new Bango Analytics product providing unified analytics for mobile and desktop devices as well as identity services leveraging our unique user identity capability to link activity across web and app.Introduced a new technology platform utilising Couchbase NoSQL to significantly increase platform capabilities and performance for event capture, processing and reporting.I implemented solutions to streamline money management and funds transfer within the Bango system; updated invoicing functionality to support automated Self Billing Invoices for customers, as well as integration with PayPal MassPay to enable automated settlement to hundreds of content providers, reducing manual overhead of weeks to a few hours.Instigated adoption of Agile software development methods and daily SCRUMs to promote collaboration in Development across cross-functional teams, reducing project delivery time from 2-3 months to 2-3 weeks per iteration; also enhanced project management and project delivery; created a rolling roadmap delivery scheduling system and arrivals board notification service to allow visibility and transparency across the business of prioritisation, effort and delivery.

Joining Bango in 2005 as a Team Leader in charge of the products and services offered to our customers and content providers.I recruited and built a team of 5 developers, delivering high quality products and feature sets, ensuring a high level of development practices around object orientated programming, n-Tier development, documentation and interoperability.

Now acting in an advisory role encompassing IT and digital solutions and services for Village People Magazines Ltd. Previously was IT Director assisting my partner create and develop a highly successful, award-winning lifestyle magazine business which now has a distribution of 50,000 issues covering Norwich, South Norfolk and Norfolk/Suffolk borders.I worked in a non-paid for capacity to design and create the magazines and brand, develop the online presence including web site creation, social media and digital publishing services, as well as act in an operational capacity managing the IT infrastructure on-site and with third party providers for print and digital media.Responsibilities included production and design of print media, including producing a bi-monthly magazine and full content development using Adobe product suite, integration and utilisation of third party solutions for CRM, marketing mail, customer engagement and social media, as well as supporting IT infrastructure procurement, provisioning of hardware and networking, implementing storage, backup strategy, software and hardware support.

As Head of Development and Deputy Head of IT, I was responsible for all aspects of IT services and functions, product development and professional services provided by Moneyfacts across the finance industry, including to virtually all UK Banks and Building Societies.Over this period, I increased the portfolio of applications and services from a single dial-up serviced application to multiple web applications, web services and data feeds providing financial information to industry, as well as internal IT infrastructure and architecture to support the addition of two further monthly publications.I provided direction and vision throughout the business, ensuring clarity and justification to high profile investments and delivery of high quality initiatives in business beneficial timescales and budgets.Instrumental in promoting creativity and diversity in technological developments in an individual and team basis; ensured best practices by creating and maintaining coding standards and championing peer review. Advanced the adoption of new technologies, services and development methodologies and patterns.I created a functional excellence team of developers, business analysts, programme and project managers to review business strategy with the Executive Chairman and Managing Director, along with senior executive team, and ensure IT alignment to meet business requirements to expand and grow the company.I established a development recruitment framework, interacting directly with recruiters and internal personnel department, to fast track recruitment by enhanced CV review, shortlisting, interviewing and technical testing of all IT staff, saving around 15% per employee hireArchitected, implemented and delivered many financial solutions including a consumer mortgage sourcing engine, an IFA focused mortgage selection service, and various data feeds for use by the industry.

As Development Team Leader, I managed, mentored and coached a small team as we expanded the online products and functionality of the digital services offered by Moneyfacts.

I joined Moneyfacts as they were growing the IT and development function; having been a traditional print based publishing company, they wanted to embrace advances in technology and the internet to provide financial data across multiple mediums.

I started with CCTA in the Best Practice Consultancy Division, providing assistance to IS/IT Management across a number of Government Agencies. At this time, they wanted to use computing to provide automated services across Government, as well as drive efficiencies across agencies.