Jon Woodforth Email & Phone Number

Belfast, Belfast, Gb

Edinburgh, Gb

Wide ranging aspects of a CTO role being very hands-on with the teams, working as part of the exec board, engaging the wider industry and very much aligned and engaged with our customers both present and future.Ownership of Product management; key focus on Roadmap methodologies to construct clear roadmaps that convey the strategic direction and deliverables for the Zonal suite of Products. Key emphasis on the engagement with R&D teams to make Roadmaps that are deliverable in a predictable manner yet still retaining scope for innovation, agility and continual improvement alongside delivery of key tactical and strategic Product enhancements.Ownership of R&D teams; working on the full SDLC process from coding through to CI/CD and all associated agile methodologies surrounding those activities. Technology transformation from coding to hosting methodologies including transition to cloud hosted microservice architectures. Resource flexibility established via key 3rd party relationships with development outsourcing and offshoring put in place.Ownership of Internal IT function; adding value to and driving forward business processes, especially with the recent shift to remote working and the ever-evolving landscape of hybrid working models.Ownership of Hosted/Managed services; physical DC management/extension/maintenance through to cloud migration. Production support models and processes, including introduction of an SRE culture that has been a key driver in the continued value of this area of the organisation.Ownership of security; an ever-evolving landscape. Building a security team to deliver the needs of the organisation through top-class individuals and key 3rd party partnerships has been critical to the continued evolution and improvement of every aspect of security including aspects such as governance (introduction of ISO27001 for example) through technical product backlogs, to real-time SOC operations via 3rd party trusted partners.

Birmingham, England, Gb

Transitioned to take on Global CTO function in July 2018. Ownership of Global Development and Architecture functions (200+ staff) along with ownership of core product technology strategy vision and roadmap for the organisation.Working with the wider C-Level team to define the company strategy and how the technology aspects of that drive future growth and success including definition and utilisation of R&D budgets.Key focus on cloud transformation journey having ownership of Cloud vendor relationships (GCP, Azure & IBM). Drive of technology transformation with initial phase focussed on lighter-weight auto-scaling IaaS solutions through to migration into micro-services based containers deployed into container orchestration platforms such as K8s/OpenShift. Driving innovation around databases (RDMBS to NoSQL), queuing methodologies/technologies, scaling etc. Pricing model definition and also internal understanding for "cost bubble" associated with many cloud transformation journeys involving migration from Physical DC deployments into the cloud.Drove the migration of Flooid to a "Product" based organisation with specific focus on Software Development organisation transformation to build a more efficient / effective dev organisation. “Pivoted" a global group of teams (on & off-shore) from generalists to specialists (domain teams created to drive architectural transformation - Conways Law), created above the line and below the line specialisms (project delivery vs. product development) and refined processes and practices in-line with modern Agile Software Development.

Birmingham, Gb

Re-joined PCMS after successful MBO and PE backing following founder exit. Initial role back in the company to get the Global Architecture function into shape focussing on both the customer-facing delivery side of Architecture (Solution/Data/Integration) and also the core-product Architecture (Software) teams. Full responsibility for Global Architecture function (including budgetary) with teams located in both the UK and US.In addition to Architecture teams I formed and took ownership of the DevOps function within PCMS with initial remit to introduce public cloud deployment capability using automation (Terraform/Ansible/Packer) to drive efficiency, reproducibility and quality into the system deployment, hosting and management functions. Ultimate aim of the DevOps team to "shift left" using Cloud Deployment capability to modernise the development processes with innovative CI/CD processes and also revolutionise the manner in which deployment teams were delivering and supporting customer solutions.

Austin, Texas, Us

Transitioned to take on the Head of Technology (/interim CTO) role working at C-level within the organisation to facilitate an organisational transformation process in readiness for Rant & Rave's next phase journey/event (PE/Trade-sale).Technology focus on delivery of Cloud Migration for the SaaS platform (into AWS) and migration of world-wide customer base over onto the new platform. Setup DevOps team in order to facilitate CI/CD workflows working with Full-Stack development team. Created Production Operations team (Monitoring/Management) along with ensuring Security stayed at the heart of technology priorities. Agile training facilitation for development teams along with Product Ownership & Management.Management of the technology department included full budgetary responsibility of both Cost of Sale and Service along with ownership of R&D investment budget in the technology platform.Worked with the wider C-level group on organisational transformation including the adoption of the Traction EOS methodology into the organisation.

Austin, Texas, Us

Joined Rant & Rave with the primary mission of both transitioning/re-architecting a physically hosted high-volume SaaS system to the cloud (Amazon Web Services) and also transforming the development processes that the teams employ to build the software.The software was primarily a Java based Enterprise system that supported high volume transactions serving half of the FTSE100; based around soliciting and acting upon real-time customer feedback with Rant & Rave being a fast growing disruptor within the CX space. The physical deployment model would not scale to keep up with the business growth therefore a decision to move the software “to the cloud” was taken and I was brought on-board to facilitate a re-architecture of the system during the transition to achieve a highly scalable cost effective platform that can grow alongside the business. Alongside the move to the cloud I also working on other initiatives that focus on topics such as a (big) data management and reporting (BI) strategy (helping our customers understand their customers better), the SaaS self-service toolkit and the Platform Operations and Security project. Integration of a diverse set of systems and alignment of customers onto a single platform was a high priority.The teams use Agile development methodologies was immature therefore an important aspect of my role was to work with them in all aspects of the software development lifecycle including: working with the business to capture requirements, enhancing the ALM toolsets that were being used (JIRA stack), improving the implementation of SCRUM (story definition, estimating, sprints, ceremonies, metrics), extending Automated Testing efforts, enhancing the code management and Continuous Integration systems and introducing Continuous Delivery (taking the single monthly release cycle down to continuous releases to live).

Birmingham, Gb

Managed and lead a team of Data, Application, Enterprise and Solution Architects and worked closely with the CTO & CPO to define the technical strategy applied throughout project deliveries and core application roadmap developments. Lead complex technology transformations including a migration of core IP into a micro-service based architecture to define the beginnings of our next generation retail platform.Along with the formal job title of Chief Software Engineer (focussing heavily on all aspects Software Development process transformation) I also performed a Lead Architecture role having Project, Departmental and “Core Product” responsibilities. I played a major role in delivering some of the largest and most successful projects PCMS have delivered both in the UK and overseas (Europe, USA, South Africa and Australia).Project responsibilities included full responsibility for Architecture from pre-sales through elaboration (via requirements workshops) and implementation (including mentoring lesser experienced architects) to support of the system in the live environment. Departmental responsibilities included working closely alongside the Software Development Manager and General Manager to review operational considerations such as departmental budgetary control and resourcing as well as strategic considerations such as process improvements and impact of technological roadmap changes on project development and delivery strategies.Core Product responsibilities include working with the CTO & CPO to define the technical strategy & roadmap for future developments and architecture of the solution going forward to meet the ever changing needs of customers within Omni-Channel retail domains.

Cincinnati, Us

Various roles from Developer (Java/JEE coding) through to Enterprise / Technical Architect working on multiple Agile projects delivering retail systems to world-wide Tier 1 customers (including Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Arcadia, Waitrose, Waterstones, Walgreens (US), Bass Pro(US), Pick n Pay (SA)). Key Projects:• Lead Architect in taking PCMS software to the next level by service enabling legacy aspects of the system to allow flexible deployment options with full support for integration into omni-channel retailing including mobile applications, eCommerce, ERP & CRM integration.- Re-factoring of complex business logic into distinct re-usable services deployed in a variety of different application formats from fat clients through to RESTful web-services.- Clustering of existing application services within a WebSphere container to provide a high performance concurrent system capable of servicing a variety of different channels.• Senior/Lead Architect leading pre-sales, elaboration and implementation phases of a project to deliver a solution to one of South Africa’s largest food retailers. - Part of the management team on the project working closely with project and programme managers internally along with senior customer stakeholders.- Delivering a virtualised clustered central application within IBM WebSphere.- Integration of central application to SAP PI/BI using IBM MQ handling large data volumes (222 tps, 9TB databases)- Architecture/Design of in-store message routing and transformation engines to feed XML data to a variety of hardware in a variety of formats.- Architecture/Design of large-scale web-service integration (SOAP) for provision of Value Added Services at the point-of-sale.

Part of a team developing a web-help system where users of a website could be connected to a call centre operator who would be empowered to help the visitor by co-browsing, white-boarding, text chat, file push & VOIP. The application was delivered client side by a Java applet connecting back to a server (both central ‘ASP’ model and client’s own) that in turn facilitated fat Swing/AWT clients connecting to service the calls. Involved with a (successful) transition to Extreme programming within the development group.