James Barker Email & Phone Number

London, England, Gb

Empowering Global Entrepeneurs and Brands to build successful online Businesses easilyLeading Product, Technology and IT Operations teams through transformative changeTechnology modernisation - monolithic application to api-first microservice architecture Building the next generation of Production-on-Demand platformsMACH and composable commerce strategy rolloutOmni-channel merchandising, Headless fulfillment / Intelligent Supply ChainBoard and Investor level presentationsUser centric designData driven decisioning

Manchester, England, Gb

As Interim Head of Product at Co-op funeralcare I was responsible for the successful launch of a new website that transformed the customer journey to bring a deeply sensitive subject online during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another key part of the role was improving the functions overall ways of working - introducing a clear prioritisation process based around value and effort to implement, governance boards where stakeholders could get clear updates and discuss priorities, improve the Engineering functions visability of the upcoming pipeline of work and introducing dual track delivery allowing the Product and UX teams adquate time to research new concepts before entering delivery.Working for a truly people first organisation was a real pleasure with a sense that everything delivered was contributing to a better community.

Bridgewater, Nj, Us

As VP of Engineering with Synchronoss, I oversaw the activity of a multi-national team and held full budgetary accountability for product owners, architecture, engineering, QA, infrastructure, DevOps, and delivery. The role encompassed conducting go-to-market strategies, including competitor analysis, marketing and sales enablement, and definition of a roadmap to support corporate planning. I also lead the end-to-end commercial SaaS platform delivery and implementation of DevOps processes and tooling, which spans digital experience management, integration, decisioning, PIM, UX, and gamification. Key achievements included doubling the size of teams based across the UK, US, India and Bulgaria to a total headcount of 85. I implemented scaled Agile processes across all corporate functions and scrum teams, and am pleased to have overseen the launch of a range of new products to market. These have included Advanced Catalog, Recommendation Manager and BDD Test Automation, as well as a backend re-architecture of a core Experience Management Platform using GraphQL.Tech Stack: Angular.js, Express.js MongoDB, GraphQL, Typescript, Node.js, Spring boot, Java, Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, AWS

Bridgewater, Nj, Us

As Platform Engineering Senior Director, I oversaw Honeybee Solutions’ successful integration into Synchronoss, ensuring the adoption of KPIs, productivity, efficiency and data-driven best practice in engineering, QA, and infrastructure. I was also accountable for directing all aspects of workforce management for a team based across multiple global locations. This included creating team mission and vision statements, departmental SMART goals and applying employee scorecards. Specific technical interventions included transforming the release velocity from large quarterly releases to continuous delivery of features prioritised by business value. This achieved more than 30 successful releases within just twelve months, utilising release trains and feature switches. I also held corporate ownership for the technical product lifecycle, including software currency and new technology assessment.

London

This role gave me the opportunity to transform operations and service management by developing environment automation, CI/CD and lean processes. I led a pivot from bespoke solutions to develop a digital experience platform that allowed customers to build their own applications, as well as managing production support and operations to maintain 24 x 7 service for global customers. I was particularly pleased to have saved over $4m p.a. through creating in-house software delivery centre in Bulgaria, based on my assessment of local competition, education and workforce culture, and in-sourcing the service management and operations function into a lean team using monitoring and alerting automation. Finally, I prepared the start-up for its successful acquisition.

Achievements in this role include directing a multi-country rollout across the UK, Germany and Canada of a tablet-based mobile phone activation platform for Apple Inc, as well as leading implementation of a needs-based analysis tool to 1200 Carphone Warehouse stores. The role also gave me the opportunity to oversee development of a product suite including mobile retailing, insurance, customer analytics, white label e-commerce, smart home and low code development platforms in multi-vendor environments across the UK, Europe, Russia, USA and South Africa.

As Head of Development, I created a new technical change team to apply development and testing best practice through the application of KPIs and operational reviews. It lay with me to lead vendor service management of off-shore organisations covering all technologies used by Carphone Warehouse. I am also pleased to have delivered a range of operational efficiencies, including streamlining delivery methodologies and introducing Agile for an online transformation programme. I oversaw automation of CPW regression testing on retail, insurance and integration systems, and verification and reporting of code quality.

Us

This role encompassed delivering SOA middleware architecture for mobile phone activation platform to support the launch of Best Buy Europe. I also directed a process to outsource application and infrastructure architecture, and created a managed service governance framework.

Leading a team of 50 multi-functional analysts, I delivered IT solutions and supporting infrastructure technologies to Carphone Warehouse. I was able to achieve ROI of ~£1M p.a. through implementing SOA strategy, and delivering a business service stack of 200 re-useable processes.

Salford, England, Gb

In this role, I led the deployment of a billing, order management and CRM platform release representing £35m.

Bonn, De

Boulder, Co, Us