I've been busy helping to build something exciting! As Practice Lead in our Research & Innovation hub, "Explore", I've been instrumental in setting up a brand new practice within CreateFuture, with an initial focus on Generative AI. A core element of my role is enabling clients to successfully navigate their AI transformation journeys. I've spearheaded the creation of client workshops and the framework for creating and executing tailor made AI Transformation programmes, supported by… Show more I've been busy helping to build something exciting! As Practice Lead in our Research & Innovation hub, "Explore", I've been instrumental in setting up a brand new practice within CreateFuture, with an initial focus on Generative AI. A core element of my role is enabling clients to successfully navigate their AI transformation journeys. I've spearheaded the creation of client workshops and the framework for creating and executing tailor made AI Transformation programmes, supported by our 6 key AI pillars. This has also included creating the go-to-market strategy and sales materials to support these offerings.This role has allowed me to fully immerse myself in the world of AI, and I'm consistently fascinated by its potential to enhance and improve our ways of working. I firmly believe that AI is a powerful tool for enablement and augmentation, not replacement, and I'm passionate about helping people and organisations harness its capabilities to achieve their goals. Show less

Pershing provide broker-dealers, asset managers, intermediary firms, and financial institutions across Europe a comprehensive range of products, services, and solutions including retail clearing, fully disclosed institutional global clearing, broker services, and execution services.Pershing set up a brand new office in Manchester with the view of Manchester becoming a technology hub for software development. I was brought in at the start of this journey to lead the Platform team whose… Show more Pershing provide broker-dealers, asset managers, intermediary firms, and financial institutions across Europe a comprehensive range of products, services, and solutions including retail clearing, fully disclosed institutional global clearing, broker services, and execution services.Pershing set up a brand new office in Manchester with the view of Manchester becoming a technology hub for software development. I was brought in at the start of this journey to lead the Platform team whose main responsibility was to look after core frameworks and systems that underpin the Pershing estate as well as the tooling used within the wider department.Projects have included the creation of a complex event stream processor that is used for a number of strategic deliveries, a component used to send and settle trades placed in the international market and the integration with a third party Document Management System .My team is widely recognised as one of the highest performing teams in the department with a specific focus on continuous improvement and quality. We have been the early adopters and promoters of various technologies to help drive efficiency such as SpecsFor, Jenkins and Octopus Deploy. Show less

Swinton Insurance is the UK’s largest high street insurance broker with a very large internal IT department (approximately 220 people) who are responsible for developing many in house bespoke software solutions as well as supporting a number of third party systems. I started off as the team lead of the CBP Portfolio team who were responsible for the main back end financial system (Central Business Processing). After 5 months within this role I was asked to take over a failing team on a… Show more Swinton Insurance is the UK’s largest high street insurance broker with a very large internal IT department (approximately 220 people) who are responsible for developing many in house bespoke software solutions as well as supporting a number of third party systems. I started off as the team lead of the CBP Portfolio team who were responsible for the main back end financial system (Central Business Processing). After 5 months within this role I was asked to take over a failing team on a multi million pound project who were responsible for delivering the checkout functionality within this new application. This team then merged with two other teams to create one larger team for which I am responsible today.I am responsible for the day to day running of my development team consisting of 2 business analysts, 5 developers and 3 testers. We work with an advanced technology stack consisting of MVC 5, JQuery, C#, Web API, WCF, NHibernate, SQL Server 2012 and numerous design patterns used throughout the applicationsI have been responsible for setting standards within the team around analysis documentation, acceptance criteria and numerous other team processes. The general management of the team consists of running the daily stand ups and planning meetings, facilitating the bi-weekly retrospectives, setting of personal and team SMART objectives and monthly one to ones. I have been one of the key people to embed the introduction of JIRA into the business and am the lead person responsible for the configuration and administration of this system for the department.I have also had a key responsiblity for the mentoring and coaching of junior members within the team through regular task setting, monitoring of results and regular updates of their personal objectives Show less

During my short time as a senior developer with Swinton Insurance my time was mostly focused on developing an MVC application responsible for monitoring the quality of the sales calls made by Swinton sales executives. This application was written in a TDD manner using NUnit as the testing framework alongside Castle Windsor for dependency injection. I also had experience setting up an automatic deployment pipeline using MS Build/Deploy and Team City to automate the release process.

Verco is an award winning sustainability and climate change consultancy and was formerly Camco's UK advisory business. They have a 23-year track record in energy and carbon with a focus on low carbon growth, energy efficiency and clean energy development.I was brought into Verco to lead the internal development team originally consisting of 3 core developers. The team have one core product named Carbon Desktop which is primarily a web based monitoring and targeting tool written in C#… Show more Verco is an award winning sustainability and climate change consultancy and was formerly Camco's UK advisory business. They have a 23-year track record in energy and carbon with a focus on low carbon growth, energy efficiency and clean energy development.I was brought into Verco to lead the internal development team originally consisting of 3 core developers. The team have one core product named Carbon Desktop which is primarily a web based monitoring and targeting tool written in C# .NET4 web forms with a SQL Server 2008 back end. The team had very few processes in place and I was tasked with analysing the full systems life cycle and implementing policies and procedures to help the development team to grow and become more professional in all areas. I was responsible for implementing SCRUM into the business as well as Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 to replace the old source repository (Subversion). This involved working with the developers and the other key people within the business to ensure that “buy in” was obtained throughout all levels of the organisation. Other procedures and policies that have been introduced include the creation of functional and technical specifications delivered to a standard created by myself, release procedures, coding standards, branching guidelines and testing strategies. I also managed to help grow the team in a number of ways, the core development team has grown to 5 developers and we now have a dedicated test resource to lead the testing and a dedicated software support technician to deal with all 1st line support queries. I have had a vital input into the procedures implemented around both areas. Two other key areas of my role have been a heavy involvement in database design and system architecture for any new or existing projects as well as making time to always support my team whether this be help with coding or help with design / requirements. Show less

I was the only software developer on the team at Image Red and worked on a variey of projects. The company were responsible for an application called Promat which is used throughout 55% of the United Kingdom’s police forces. As well as supporting this application on a day to day basis I was also involved with updating the current functionality by integrating this application with Active Directory and moving all session data to be stored in the database. This has required a very steep… Show more I was the only software developer on the team at Image Red and worked on a variey of projects. The company were responsible for an application called Promat which is used throughout 55% of the United Kingdom’s police forces. As well as supporting this application on a day to day basis I was also involved with updating the current functionality by integrating this application with Active Directory and moving all session data to be stored in the database. This has required a very steep learning curve in order to support an application I had not had any experience with. I requested to spend a day with a police force in order to learn how the officers used this application within their working day which was well received by both ImageRed and the end client.I also worked extremely closely with the design team to deliver numerous client facing websites of varying complexities. Show less

NST Group is the market leader in providing educational and recreational tours for schools. My primary focus was to work within the development team of 4 people to ensure the successful implementation of the Tour.NET project throughout the entire project lifecycle. My main task was to help replace and improve an old tour operating system written in FoxPro with a new one written in C# with the two main areas within the application being the quotation engine and the financial system.… Show more NST Group is the market leader in providing educational and recreational tours for schools. My primary focus was to work within the development team of 4 people to ensure the successful implementation of the Tour.NET project throughout the entire project lifecycle. My main task was to help replace and improve an old tour operating system written in FoxPro with a new one written in C# with the two main areas within the application being the quotation engine and the financial system. Other technologies used here involved K2 (workflow mgmt system), Ajax, SQL and Intellidox / SharepointThe business analyst side of this role was vitally important as we were developing a number of key parts of the internal system. This involved frequent meetings with key personnel throughout the business ranging from senior members of staff to managers, culminating in the creation of use cases. I was also accountable for the training sessions surrounding this product that were given to all of the staff within the business as well as giving presentations for the end users and management Show less

LSC Group is a Technical Consulting and Information Technology company primarily focused on the Defence and Energy markets. The project I was involved in here however was for NHS 24 which was a relatively new sector for them at the time and was also one of their largest projects.My main development task here was the integration and administration of the Plumtree Content Management System (CMS). This involved creating / amending portlets and web services using C# as well as the… Show more LSC Group is a Technical Consulting and Information Technology company primarily focused on the Defence and Energy markets. The project I was involved in here however was for NHS 24 which was a relatively new sector for them at the time and was also one of their largest projects.My main development task here was the integration and administration of the Plumtree Content Management System (CMS). This involved creating / amending portlets and web services using C# as well as the development of new UI’s involving XSLT and XML manipulation.Within this role I was also responsible for a lot of different areas outside of the core development role. I integrated several ITIL methodologies into the project such as change, release and configuration management and was given the role of release manager, I was responsible for all releases into our clients system of which there were over 20 individual servers (including DR)I liaise with our clients key personnel on a regular basis and this involved numerous trips to the client’s base in order to both work on site and keep up to date with the client’s requirements and thoughts about the progress of the project. During the “Go Live” period the client requested that I was on site for the full 2 week period surrounding the implementation date for support and guidance. Show less