John Wards

John Wards Email and Phone Number

Head of Engineering @ Abatable
London, GB
John Wards's Location
London, England, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
John Wards's Contact Details

John Wards personal email

John Wards phone numbers

About John Wards

With over 20 years of experience in web development and engineering leadership, I am a product-minded and customer-focused technologist who is passionate about building high-performing teams and delivering scalable solutions. I am currently the Chief Technology Officer at Colateral, a company that helps brands and retailers create, manage, and distribute marketing materials across physical and digital channels.In my previous roles, I have successfully led the engineering teams for some of the biggest brands in the UK, such as The Body Coach, The Economist, and Elsevier, and delivered projects ranging from rebuilding websites and mobile apps, to migrating to new platforms and improving performance and reliability. I have also developed a deep understanding of the software development life cycle, DevOps culture, agile delivery, and cross-functional collaboration. As a manager, I build teams based on trust, empowerment, and continuous learning, and communicate effectively with stakeholders at all levels.

John Wards's Current Company Details
Abatable

Abatable

View
Head of Engineering
London, GB
Website:
abatable.com
Employees:
46
John Wards Work Experience Details
  • Abatable
    Head Of Engineering
    Abatable
    London, Gb
  • Colateral
    Chief Technology Officer
    Colateral Mar 2023 - Present
    Truro, England, Gb
  • The Body Coach
    Head Of Engineering/Cto
    The Body Coach Dec 2021 - Feb 2023
    Richmond, England, Gb
    Built the internal technology team for The Body Coach, making the world fit and healthy.Most senior technical person in the company, reporting to the CEO and on the senior leadership team.Responsible for all technology in the company.Successes include* Building an internal product engineering team to handle all product improvements* Smooth handover from an external agency to an internal team* Building out our data engineering capabilities* Designing career framework for engineering* Reducing infrastructure costs by 50%
  • The Economist
    Head Of Software Engineering
    The Economist Apr 2019 - Dec 2021
    London, London, Gb
    Responsible for the output and health of 12+ different teams, directly managing managers with a total team of over 80 people.Moved from a majority outsourced engineering team to a majority insourced teamTeams successfully delivered projects such as * Rebuilding Economist.com* Migrating to an entirely new subscription platform* Rolling out a new CMS for the newspaper* Rebuilding our flagship mobile app* Rebuilding the syndication platform* Increasing reliability and improving the performance of our content platform* Designing and rolling out an engineering career framework
  • Elsevier
    Software Engineering Manager
    Elsevier Apr 2017 - Mar 2019
    Amsterdam, North Holland, Nl
    Responsible for the output and health of 5 teams within Elsevier, and managing a team of 30, containing graduate software engineers through to technical squad leads taking their first steps into people management.Responsible for the majority of B2C eCommerce transactions within Elsevier and building our next generation of B2B eCommerce and self serve platform for our biggest customers.Working closely with Director level business stakeholders to collaboratively solve our customers problems and needs, and building a world class engineering team to deliver the solutions.
  • Elsevier
    Ecommerce Development Team Lead
    Elsevier Nov 2015 - Apr 2017
    Amsterdam, North Holland, Nl
    Leading a team of up to 12 engineers to build a from scratch eCommerce platform, powering Elsevier's global B2C eCommerce business.Introduced a DevOps approach to the team, empowering engineers to take ownership of features from inception to production.Working within a complex traditional IT department and stakeholders used to outsourcing, moving to a more agile approach and selling the benefits of continuous delivery and the engineering team taking responsibility for quality.
  • Tripadvisor
    Development Manager
    Tripadvisor Oct 2014 - Oct 2015
    Needham, Ma, Us
    Leading a team of engineers adding new features to established product, laying the groundwork for the first green field project at TripAdvisor for a number of years. Following a lean, user focused approach to adding features. Working closely with product, operations and management to meet business objectives.Hands on role, including helping design the approach to the new microservice architecture, performance improvements to legacy application, automation using tools such as Ansible and Jenkins, building high performance fulltext indexers in Java backed by SolrCloud.
  • White October
    Technical Director
    White October Jan 2012 - Oct 2014
    Brixton, London, Gb
    Leading and building a team of 15 developers, implementing solutions built on PHP, Ruby and HTML/Native Mobile Apps. Part of the management team, responsible for aligning business requirements with technology choices.Responsible for large scale architecture, security policies, development best practices, technical project scope and delivery, and implementing Agile best practices in the technical teams. Moving the team to continuous delivery and integration techniques.
  • White October
    Web Developer
    White October Jun 2007 - Dec 2011
    Brixton, London, Gb
    Responsible for our move into the Symfony framework, technical specifications and build for large and small systems and configuring/sourcing Linux servers. Managing a growing team of 5 developers.Implemented a change in recruitment procedure, lead on implementing SCRUM across projects, TDD and BDD across projects, and within development teams.Lead role in evaluating, testing and implementing new technologies used internally and for client work. Involved in writing pitches, attending client meetings and liaising with suppliers and 3rd parties such as external design agencies and SEO agencies.
  • White October Events
    Director
    White October Events Jul 2011 - Oct 2014
    London, London, Gb
    Host, and Curator of jQuery UK and All Your Base Conferences. Developed format for The Lead Developer Conference. Was responsible for budgets and selling sponsorships, conference format, organisation, and speaker curation.
  • Durham Associates Group Limited
    Business/Website Developer
    Durham Associates Group Limited Mar 2002 - Jun 2007
    Evolved the SportNetwork.net platform, powered by custom PHP and early Zend Framework. Responsible for the operations side of the application, configuring and maintaining the Linux servers.Built the revenue for the platform, making it the most profitable arm of Durham Associates at the time of leaving.

John Wards Skills

Php Jquery Mysql Javascript Linux Agile Methodologies Symfony Web Development Css Programming Html 5 Lamp Devops Apache Web Applications Ansible Ubuntu Server Management International Conferences Backbone.js Nginx Java Python Jenkins

John Wards Education Details

  • Robert Gordon University
    Robert Gordon University
    Computers And Information

Frequently Asked Questions about John Wards

What company does John Wards work for?

John Wards works for Abatable

What is John Wards's role at the current company?

John Wards's current role is Head of Engineering.

What is John Wards's email address?

John Wards's email address is jo****@****ail.com

What is John Wards's direct phone number?

John Wards's direct phone number is (074)-782*****

What schools did John Wards attend?

John Wards attended Robert Gordon University.

What are some of John Wards's interests?

John Wards has interest in Xslt, Zend Framework, Science And Technology, Php, Liunx, Symfony, Doctrine, Mac.

What skills is John Wards known for?

John Wards has skills like Php, Jquery, Mysql, Javascript, Linux, Agile Methodologies, Symfony, Web Development, Css, Programming, Html 5, Lamp.

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