The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading business news organisations, recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. The FT has a record paying readership of one million, three-quarters of which are digital subscriptions. It is part of Nikkei Inc., which provides a broad range of information, news and services for the global business community.As CTO, Richard is responsible for all aspects of the technology organisation, from providing the IT tools so all people can successfully thrive in a hybrid working environment to the engineering teams responsible for the FT’s award winning digital subscription products.

Expedia Group is one of the largest and most innovative travel companies in the world with over $88 billion in annual gross travel bookings for FY 2017 and nearly $10.1 billion in revenue. Worldwide, the Expedia family of brands includes 33 Brand Expedia sites; more than 90 Hotels.com sites in 39 languages; leading online travel agency Orbitz; leading online travel agency Travelocity; the world’s leading online marketplace for the vacation rental industry HomeAway; leading online hotel search platform trivago; leading U.S. discount travel site Hotwire; Egencia, the world’s fourth largest corporate travel management company; and more. Expedia is one of the largest providers of hotel bookings in the world, delivering consumer travel demand from nearly every continent to more than 590,000 properties, 1.5 million online bookable vacation rental listings, more than 550 airlines, along with car rental companies, cruise lines, tour operators, and destination services supply partners.As a VP for technology in Hotels.com, Richard leads a global technology function of approximately 450 people, who are working at the forefront of agile product engineering, delivering one of the most successful e-commerce sites and mobile applications in the world.

Overall responsibility for Hotwire global technology organization with distributed teams in the US, India and Mexico. This includes:All the agile software engineering teams working on Hotwire website and mobile applicationsData Science and Business Intelligence teams Platform strategy, and back-end supporting applications

Hotels.com is one of the leading online accommodation sites, and a truly global e-commerce platforms. We’re passionate about travel. Every day we inspire and reach millions of travellers across more than 85 local websites in 35 plus languages. So when it comes to booking the perfect hotel, vacation rental, resort, apartment or guest house – we’re your best ally.The software that powers this site, has to work at true internet scale, both in the number of users, and numbers of properties. As a senior director and key member of the technology leadership team, I am responsible to the delivery of the key shopping component to the web site, leading multiple, high-performing agile product engineering teams spread over several worldwide locations, as well as the operational performance of these systems.

Sky is Europe’s leading entertainment company. The group serves 21 million customers across five countries: Italy, Germany, Austria, the UK and Ireland. It offers the best and broadest range of content, delivers market-leading customer service and uses innovative new technology to give customers a better TV experience, whenever and wherever they choose.The Head of Software Engineering role is responsible and accountable for the software engineering delivery and operation for a particular product set. Specifically, this has allowed me to lead the technology function behind Sky Go, the biggest IPTV service in Europe, which has won many awards including the T3 Magazine “Digital Media Service of the year” in 2012, and the Stuff Magazine “App of the year” in 2011. The service delivers over 20 million video views a week, to a variety of client devices. I have also been responsible for the client development on the new Sky Q platform.From a technical perspective, this has meant I have been involved in all aspects of the end-to-end delivery, from encoding, to encryption and DRM, through networking, to individual client developments. The key challenge in this space, technically, is creating a system that can give the best customer experience across multiple clients and environmental conditions and can cope with the peaks of a major live sporting event. This has meant ensuring the right focus has been placed on operational resilience.The role has also involved understanding the challenges of navigating through a large enterprise company to deliver effectively, and being able to influence stakeholders at many different levels.

As OTT Video was becoming more core to Sky TV’s core proposition, I was asked to lead the function delivering these services. Primarily this consisted of forming the Sky Go technology team, and delivering this initial product and its ongoing roadmap, as well as then later forming the technology team of Now TV.

My role was expanded, in 2008, when I was asked to turn around the then underperforming mobile department. I did this by introducing agile working practises that focused on quality to build a high performing engineering department. We produced and operated truly innovative and award winning applications that have been downloaded in their tens of millions and are amongst some of the most used applications in the UK. Key examples are as follows:• The world’s first direct to consumer subscription mobile TV service on the iPhone and iPad.• The revolutionary Sky News for iPad that won the Press Association and Royal TelevisionSociety awards for innovation.• A set of applications for Sky Sports, including Sky Sports for iPad that won the Stuff Magazine’s “Tablet App of the year” in 2012.• A re-platformed mobile internet solution that brought stability and performance to the service.

In May 2005, I became the Head of Engineering, for Sky’s interactive TV services. This has allowed me to be involved in all aspects of TV application development, and highlights are• Sky News Active, which has been on air continually for over 10 years, with a supporting voting system that has logged over 6 million votes.• The suite of enhanced applications that support and seamlessly integrate with Sky Sports’ acclaimed coverage of major events such as UEFA Champions League and FA Premiership Football (Football First). This now delivers a single solution to both Sky’s OpenTV boxes as well as Virgin’s Liberate and Tivo platforms.• An array of commercially and technically successful applications for Sky Bet, including peer- 2-peer Poker and other live formats, Sports betting, and fixed-odds casino and slot machines.• An innovative set of products in the Sky Games family, including a feature-rich portal, high scores and loyalty systems.• A collection of customer-focused sales and service applications for the Sky Active Portal, helping to reduce churn and call-centre reliance.

Initially hired as the senior development engineer on Sky News Active, I quickly was moved onto being the development lead for all Sky’s interactive TV services. This was primarily focused on the software client, running on the set top box, but also included involvement in the content publishing and back-end services.