Overall lead for Excelpoint’s technical team and responsible for company technical strategy, reporting to the CEO, initially as Head of Product Development and later as Chief Technology Officer. During this time I’ve successfully overseen three major revisions and many smaller iterations of our software, which is a comprehensive no-code platform capable of building almost any business system via a configuration only approach.

Technical Director and joint owner of a UK Training Course Portal focussing on simplicity and ease of use, and including travel industry style last minute and early booking deals.

Actuance was a solo freelance venture, providing software development, project management and technical consulting services. One key project during this time delivered mapping capabilities to councils in Cumbria to assist with flood response and other localised peaks in demand for services. Towards the end of this period, Excelpoint became a regular client.During this time I started a joint venture with a local training provider to create a web portal aimed at two things: 1) helping candidates find the right training and 2) filling spare places on scheduled courses. I developed and launched the initial prototype then built a small local team financed by subscription services and advertising revenue. At its peak we had hundreds of local and national training organisations using the service, with tens of thousands of visitors per day finding courses. Eventually the market became more saturated and we learned the hard way that enormous marketing budgets from big players can trump a well implemented product. However the experience was a hugely useful learning opportunity which I very much value.

I was recruited as a direct report to CGI’s UK Director for Software Solutions at a time when they were launching a government focussed operation in the UK. I was given responsibility for the detailed technical direction of that part of the operation, including solution design, technical recruitment, and sales support including technical bid writing. Over the next four years we tripled the size of the delivery team, covering our own costs with contracts won and building a strong reputation as a ‘safe pair of hands’ for increasingly high value projects.

I joined British Airways on their graduate IT training programme and over 11 years worked my way up through team lead roles to become Application Architect for the post booking (choose your seat and meal) section of ba.com. Highlights include:- Early in my career taking a lead technical role on software accompanying the introduction of the 777 fleet, winning a rare ‘Award for Excellence’ for my input.- Successfully leading a very tight timescales Y2K project to replace a system supplying flight schedule information.- Designing and leading the delivery of a new web based system to modernise the handling of urgent cargo.- Architect for post booking on ba.com at a time when allowing customers to check in online and choose their seat and meal was ground breaking and unproven.