- Designing and building custom solutions to assist Tax Functions within leading financial institutions, to improve efficiency, data collection and increasing confidence in process and data quality- Building Data Analytics solutions using Qlikview, Tableau, Sportfire, MS SQL Server, MS Access, Custom C# Excel Add-Ins

As lead QA working on multiple products, responsibilities include designing & implementing test strategies, manual and automated tests, working closely with BAs and Developers to ensure the delivery of stable Enterprise software meeting business requirements, and supporting and mentoring junior members of the QA team.Key Achievements:Internal Team Support:• Administering and maintaining the Hyper-V environment for the entire Product Development team (40+ people) using Microsoft System Centre and Powershell scripting• Created a virtualised, load balancing Terminal Services environment for use by the QA Team • Working with the latest Microsoft products from BETA giving me experience with installation and administration of all current operating systems• Developing an automated test framework in C# with the lead developer in test, and trialling it and rolling out to all the product teams• Mentoring and training off-shore workers with no tax technical background, to take over the QA responsibilities of the Corporate Tax product• Designing, documenting and training the QA team on best practices in test design, virtual machine management, Microsoft Test Manager usage and AGILE Software TestingClient interaction:• Assumed the role of Product Owner, and lead QA, on a bespoke project for Big 4 firm• Presented products at National user groups and fielded technical Q&As• First point of contact for early adopter clients, investigating and resolving issues• Performing remote and on-site client installation consultation and assistancePersonal Development:• Online training courses in TDD, ASP.NET MVC 4, SQL & C#• Working within an AGILE Development methodology• Administer, profile and query SQL server databases, giving me the skills to investigate issues at the data access layer and assist developers in debugging and fixing bugs• Creating automated tests using C# Coded UI• Working in a continuous integration environment on the latest Microsoft Technologies

Tax Computer Systems Ltd produce the leading Corporate Tax Software products for the UK and Ireland, most notably the Alphatax software suite. The role involved identifying the business needs for a new online data collection tool, working with the developers and QAs to ensure successful delivery of the software and taking the product to market. This new development role was in addition to maintaining product ownership for the existing data collection tool.Key Achievements and Experience:New Product Development and Client Delivery:• Producing technical specifications for the new product based on research and experience of the existing Excel solution• Working with the technology team of a Big 4 accounting firm to design the bespoke customisation of the new solution, and devising and implementing a live transition from old to new• Creating training documentation and training product champions at a number of top 20 accountancy firmsProduct maintenance and Client Escalation:• Prioritising and scaling back development activities to maintain a stable product whilst freeing up resource for new product development • Fixing bugs in the VBA code base, as well as reviewing the code changes of the second developer on the project• Over-coming security challenges in new Microsoft features and extending support to Excel 2010• First point of contact for client escalations, bugs and enhancement requests• Managing and co-ordinating the regression testing effort of the Excel solution across all supported versions of Microsoft Office and Windows

Progressing to become the lead VBA Developer on the Excel based data collection tool, the role included prioritising the enhancement backlog in managing one other developer as well as devising the QA team test strategy.Key Achievements and Experience:• Self-taught VBA from scratch to producing production code, not only on bug fixes but in designing and implementing new features and enhancements• Leading design discussions with the developer, BA and QAs to redesign the development processes and practices, resulting in a far more robust solution• Successfully retaining a Big 4 Accounting firm by organising a user group to understand key areas of development needed for the product. Devising an accelerated and bespoke development programme and providing monthly updates to their technology team with demonstrations of new enhancements and bug fixes• Reviewed and re-wrote the high level testing strategy, removing redundant test collateral, moving the test plans into source control and streamlining the test process resulting in significant savings in man hours during regression phases

The role involved the development and maintenance of the tax technical logic using in-house tools, resulting in the compiled rules engine behind the Alphatax products. Key Achievements and Experience:• Implemented the new rules brought in by HMRC for UK Film Tax Companies in FA ’06 in Alphatax• Identified a key inefficiency in the team’s development and bug tracing strategy realising that the process could be automated for greater accuracy and time saving. I therefore designed and developed a Windows Forms application in C#, giving the team the ability to trace back through any number of levels of the calculation engine formulas. This saved each team member on average 1-2 hours a day in debugging effort.

Generating daily, monthly and annual P&L reports for the in-house traders