Richard Willis Email & Phone Number

Toronto, Canada Area

Senior Program Manager, Proofpoint 2017-2024Was part of the Archiving Division within Proofpoint, where we developed and maintained software and tools for email archiving, legal discovery and email supervision.Customer Success Program Manager – 2017-2021Proofpoint Archiving implementations were often very large, and we often had to develop new features in order to land deals. I managed the process of delivering major new features to customers. For example, worked with a large US Financial Services company to prove out that our Supervision system (monitoring emails for fraud etc.) caught issues at the same or better rate than the system we were replacing. Kept upper management up to date with project status. Later, took on a team of four engineers helping large enterprise customers get on-boarded, and with issues found in the implementation. For example, worked to help on-board a very large US Bank as they imported legacy Supervision data. Engineering Program Manager, 2022-2024Transitioned to a Program Manager for our core engineering projects. Was the overall release manager responsible for making sure we hit our release targets, both major (7-week delivery cycle) and minor. We had two release tracks – legacy, and our new AWS version, where I was responsible for defining the revised release process. Also ran project status calls for management. In addition, had individual teams I was responsible for, where I tracked and followed up on risks and dependencies, facilitated meetings, tracked actions, and ensured agile practices were followed.• Also volunteered as one of the inaugural leads on the Proofpoint LGBTQIA+ Employee Inclusion group for 2 years.

Toronto, Canada Area

Joined EPAM, one of North America's fastest growing tech companies, as a Senior Project Manager, Agile Scrum master and Agile coach. Many of my engagements were with a major Canadian retailer, working as project manager and scrum master for a variety of projects, including:• Project Manager and Scrum Master for a number of releases for the company's Mobile App, such as a release to enable an in-App shopping cart, and a Digital Catalog with augmented reality features. Projects include on-shore and off-shore teams. Technology stack is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, Cordova, on all major mobile devices. The customer looked to me to drive the Agile process for the combined team of internal and consulting team members (onshore and offshore), and to ensure we always had a well-groomed backlog, an established cadence of sprint velocity, and track record of keeping our story point commitments. As well, I led the scrum ceremonies, including stand-ups and retrospectives.Other projects where I acted as project manager and scrum master included: • Adding features to a tablet app for in-store credit card applications, using Android. Managed an off-shore team of developers and QA. • Replacement of a legacy system with a Web-based portal application built on Liferay and Java technologies. Was responsible for overall schedule, Agile process, and budget.

Toronto, Canada Area

Took on a variety of roles in EMC's Enterprise Content Management division, specializing in Rich Media.Team sizes: 5-10, Revenue: 15-20 mil.Agile Scrum Master:• As Agile scrum master for one of 8 work-streams involved in a major multi-team and multi-site project delivering a case management solution platform, developed the infrastructure and components for media features.• Worked with Product Management to mitigate technical risks from the use cases, led the work to plan constriction iterations, and ensured we met the project milestones and quality goals for code and automated test coverage.• Led multi-site team in adopting a new Agile process and VersionOne, and in consistently closing 90-100% of our stories each iteration.Mobile Project Manager• As Project Manager for EMC's content management mobile releases, planned the overall engineering schedule, guiding the team through the correct process for all Agile phases.• Scheduled, organized and ran project meetings, tracked issues and actions, and coordinated efforts between the various teams: user experience, engineering, QA, product management, tech pubs, localization etc.• Took the lead in managing the product release process, ensuring tight deadlines were met and delivering EMC's first ECM mobile app in time for a major trade show.Engineering Manager• As Senior Manager of Documentum's Rich Media and Compliance client applications, led and coached a team of two in-house managers and one dotted-line manager from India, for a suite of 6 client products.• Managed the entire product lifecycle from adding features to sustaining engineering, ensuring all project deadlines and quality and performance release criteria were met.• Directly managed the Toronto Media WorkSpace (Rich Media content management) engineers as well as the detailed scoping and scheduling of all engineering activities for a multi-site team (Toronto and India) throughout the release cycle.

Toronto, Canada Area

As engineering manager, guided employees and products as privately held start-up Bulldog was acquired by Documentum and in turn by EMC.• Managed all releases of EMC Documentum's Digital Asset Manager client, an industry leader in Enterprise Content Management for all types of digital media (image, document, video, and audio). • Planned and managed all aspects of project from requirements gathering, design, development, builds/source control, QA, fulfillment, documentation, and on-going maintenance. • Managed distributed, object-oriented enterprise software supported on a wide array of platforms (Windows, Unix, Mac, variety of databases, variety of App servers).• Led, coached and supported QA team, managing the QA of all major and patch releases for our full suite of Rich Media and Compliance products. • Managed the installer and build team, providing guidance through major improvements such as integration with continuous integration tools. • Managed the patch process, ensuring the process ran smoothly with minimum escalation, working with our vendors when issues were traced to a third party to ensure quick resolution, and with customers to ensure their issues were appropriately addressed.• Met regularly with team members on a one-on-one basis, ensuring they were on track with tasks and quarterly objectives, and dealing promptly and effectively with performance and other personnel issues to build a strong and effective team. • Performed annual employee performance appraisals, and provided mentorship to new managers.

Toronto, Canada Area

• Joined Bulldog, a Toronto start-up and leader in the Digital Asset Management software industry, as a developer building Java and Web components for our Digital Asset Manager client.• Led teams developing customized rich media applications for major broadcast, entertainment and retail clients, which involved some on-site travel to New York and L.A.

Toronto, Canada Area

Netron Inc. provides software and consulting services in North America, Europe, and Australia.• Led teams working with clients in many industries, including banking, retail and government, in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Consulting work involved working on site with clients to analyze systems, then design and develop solutions using Netron’s tools. This often involved overcoming resistance to a new technology and methodology. • Largest project was leading a software reuse initiative for a large scale re-engineering effort at the biggest credit card acquiring bank in the U.K.