As CTO of finTRAC I look after the design and development of the TRAC platform, the offerings and support we provide for customers and the engineers we need to do it. If you'd like to find out more about finTRAC or the TRAC platform, please get in touch!

Following acquisition of Parker Fitzgerald by Accenture, I have continued my work to design and build the next generation of data and analytics platforms for enterprise, now in the role of Head of Architecture for Accenture's UK & Ireland Risk Division.My team and I designed and built a platform for one of the UK's leading retail banks; the platform went live in time for the bank to model a number of scenarios relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing a level of flexibility and insight not previously possible which helped the board to shape their decision making. The bank is now migrating a range of use-cases onto the new technology and plan to use it for all their analytic workloads across risk and finance. The platform abstracts data and compute capabilities across the major cloud providers and legacy Hadoop stacks, providing an easy migration path and significantly reducing future complexity.Following our initial work in this area we have been taking this pattern to a number of clients across the financial industry, both by delivering new analytics capabilities and providing advice and guidance to help existing programmes.

As CTO I am working to expand technology capabilities at Parker Fitzgerald, with a particular focus on a number of current industry challenges. These include:* Data science (real world application)* Enterprise data architecture* Long term platform strategy* Large scale change delivery* Risk platformsI am also involved in developing our technology-focused propositions, recent examples include thinking on risk control and regulatory approval around the use of AI in business decisions (really interesting topic!) and coordinated long-term technology strategy for analytic functions. If you'd like to discuss either of these subjects please get in touch!As well as consulting work I am leading Parker Fitzgerald's internal R&D lab, which develops our commercial products and is also picking up some really exciting research projects - I can't say any more yet, but watch this space...

As well as our regular offering in architectural advice, risk platforms and programme delivery, this year we have a particular focus on:- Managing and mitigating technology risk in large scale enterprise- Application of data science techniques to the financial sector, particular in the area of technology risk and risk prediction- Delivering a range of micro-service utilities to financial clientsI will be continuing in a lead architect role across these different pieces of work, as well as taking responsibility for technical hiring, developing capabilities and overseeing internal use of technology.

Advising on and delivering technical architecture and design, with a focus on risk platforms and modern distributed architectures. I will be looking for ways to help our clients embrace the changes in technology and process needed to stay relevant and competitive as the technical revolution comes to the financial sector! Additionally I will be providing technical guidance and oversight for conventional projects.

Advising on, designing and leading delivery of risk and reporting platforms, primarily for Tier 1 Investment Banks, as well as some Tier 2s, insurance and commodity companies. A strong focus on regulation, as well as consolidation, cost-savings and performance. Work has included green-field pieces, integration, migration and decommission. Typically I have been involved in client relationships from pre-sales through to hand-over.Recently I sold and led a piece of work modernising the primary C++ analytics libraries in Fixed Income for a leading Tier 1 I.B. The work included updating their largest codebase to C++11 and porting a smaller library from Linux to Windows. I enjoyed the chance to do some real-world close-to-the-metal coding!I have also been involved in hiring, staff development and resourcing. In 2015 I started developing a structured approach to interviewing which proved very successful, by combining a number of approaches I had either seen or heard about to give a broad and repeatable set of indicators. I always prioritise staff development, because I believe that a capable, engaged and motivated team is the crucial for both professional success and the wellbeing of individuals.

Architecture, technical oversight and guidance for a number of projects including the migration of a large scale Equities platform for a Tier 1 client, design and build of operations and reporting tools, technical guidance for a client in the asia-pacific region around migration of simulation models for credit products. As well as being responsible for architecture and technical oversight I am intermittently involved in code-level detail across various projects, as well as sales and relationship building activities. Working with clients to develop a roadmap for delivery based on business requirements, cost/benefit and technical feasibility, either with a view to delivery or to specify requirements and designs for a third party.Aside from client commitments, I found time last year to lead development of a GPU-based aggregation and reporting tool, deployable in stand-alone, grid or cloud configuration, which was featured as a poster at nVidia's GPU conference in Spring 2013. Other projects include contributions to the OpenGamma risk platform and a personal project building a small flight simulator for a world constructed from 3-dimensional fractal patterns generated with OpenCL.

I worked on a number of risk, reporting and B.I. development projects primarily using Java and Oracle. I was also advising clients on development best practice, particularly around code repository management, environment management and testing.

Providing 3rd line support for a complex risk platform at a tier 1 investment bank. Work included discovery, analysis and documentation, increasing scalability and stability of the platform, specifying packaging and deployment standards, advising development teams and tracing and debugging issues end-to-end through the platform.