John Mcbride is a Senior Solutions Architect | Tech Lead | Retail | Health | Cloud | DevOps | Serverless at Accenture. Colleagues describe them as "Been working with John one way or another for more than 10 years and can say without a shadow of hesitation that he’s a uniquely gifted individual who has an unparalleled ability to cut through layers of technical, business & people/personnel complexity/bloat to focus exactly on what’s required to deliver meaningful solutions to impactful business problems … while opening the eyes of his team members to the art of what is possible. Numerous times John helped me see and achieve, technical and project delivery goals that were initially not comprehensible to understand let alone solve. A classic example of one such problem I still remember is dealing with docker storage optimization using btrfs or working with overlay network years before these things became the norm in wider entrrprise use. John has been a master at understanding, implementing and then teaching DevOps long before it became a buzzword. But beyond technical aspects, John does this in a way that brings practical business benefits immediately. Proud and lucky to have worked with John all these years and watching John navigate these challenges certainly gave me a whole new outlook, self-belief and optimism in my own career. John’s an incredible mentor who knows when’s the right time to give people space to deal with whatever they’re dealing with and when to guide them to aspire for more. Every single time I meet John and we talk to a group of people, he’s always eager to tell others what an incredible work I did at a previous project … and see him telling similar uplifting stories for other people he’s worked with. And so for this reason alone, I believe John is a leader that the technology industry, and the world at large, will be lucky to have in the coming years." and "I reported directly to John during our year long engagement working with the NHS on the Covid-19 pandemic response referred to as Test Digital. John also performs several different roles internally within Accenture’s AWS Practice, outside of immediate client work. As our Technical Delivery Director, John was responsible for successfully leading the overall transition of several complex serverless systems residing in AWS that catered for: a) the handling of incoming test registrations for the entire country (averaging 43,000 per day). b) the logistical tracking of tests from test site through to labs. c) the dissemination of test data to downstream systems outside of Test Digital’s remit. Throughout the engagement John showcased his exceptional technical, delivery and leadership skills, ensuring our 100+ people, who were scattered geographically, were aligned on the scope of work set out and mandated by government policy that would often change very quickly. Timely delivery of requirements was extremely important given the nature of Covid-19 at the time and we were able to release upwards of 80 times successfully to production - incident free. John is extremely versatile, he can author code, architect complex solutions and lead multi-million pound engagements. I thoroughly enjoyed working for John, he’s a genuine leader who’d be an invaluable asset to any organisation, and I’d personally be more than happy to work for him again."