Samir Hissaund Email & Phone Number

Solihull, Gb

London

Head of Integration Technologies (internal reference Delivery & Operations Manager) for John Lewis Partnership systems.Accountable for the strategic design of integration platforms, delivery of integration change, and ongoing support and maintenance of the multiple technologies within the scope of JLP Integration - Ab>Initio, Web Methods ESB, Splunk, and Blue Prism (RPA).The initial requirement for this role was to design and implement a new team structure and approach, formalised improved ways of working, and a 3-year strategic platform plan for JLP Integration services. This translated into the following responsibilities (in addition to those of my previous role as an Application Operations Manager):• Accountability for JLP integration services and platforms; strategically, financially, and operationally.• Leading several Enterprise Architects to visualise and design the JLP hybrid-cloud Integration platform strategy.• Responsible for resourcing and technology product budgets, circa £7m pa, including budgeting, estimating, planning and objective setting to align to financial and margin forecasts (e.g. capex vs opex spend)• Accountable for vendor engagement and contract negotiation.• Leading a cross-functional team of over 100 engineers across multiple geographical locations using different team structures to suit business needs (DevOps, Agile, divisionalised).• Accountable for vendor engagement with multiple suppliers and third parties, in regards to software vendors, strategic third parties and skilled individuals. This includes strategic decision making, vendor management, and contract negotiation/management. • Responsible for building and maintaining a positive team environment, trust, and inclusivity across JLP Partners and third-party resources.

London, England

Application Operations Manager for John Lewis Integration Operations; equivalent to a Senior Service Delivery or IT Operations Manager in similar organisations.Accountable for the ongoing support and maintenance of the multiple technologies previously managed as part of my role prior - Ab>Initio, Web Methods ESB, Splunk and Apigee.• In addition to the service performance, also now financially accountable for the ongoing maintenance, support and upgrade costs for these platforms - including budgeting, estimating, planning and objective setting to align to financial and margin forecasts.• Accountable for incident, change and problem management across services, and for ensuring a methodology for managing these in alignment with the ITIL framework. In addition, providing a point of escalation and support across Operations teams with incident and change management.• Responsible for a Business Continuity plan, that is reviewed regularly and applied effectively whenever a major incident occurs.• Providing leadership for significant continuous improvements to applications and to their business use, and ensuring successful transition of new systems into operations teams.• Maintaining successful relationships with business and IT stakeholders to manage communication, escalation and conflict where necessary.• Management of multiple suppliers and third parties, in regards to software vendors, strategic third parties and skilled individuals. This includes ownership from inception to continuing support of the Cognizant managed service for Integration Operations.• Ongoing direct line management for multiple John Lewis Partners at varying skills and development levels.

London, England

Application Operations Group Lead for John Lewis Integration Operations; equivalent to a Service Delivery Manager in similar organisations. Responsible for a multi-skilled cross-functional team supporting multiple technologies that underpin the entirety of the John Lewis business from JL.com to Retail POS to monitoring of 3rd parties.The aforementioned technologies supported include Ab>Initio, Web Methods ESB, Splunk and Apigee, and the support for these is provided by a team of onshore and offshore individuals with a mix of John Lewis partners, independent contractors and a Cognizant managed service.• Accountable for the systems and hardware supporting these technologies, along with the responsibility for stakeholder management of providers and consumers of the integration platform.• Responsible for incident, change and problem management across all these services, as well as escalation and major incident callout across any John Lewis IT area.• Mentor to new graduates joining John Lewis IT as part of the graduate scheme, and facilitator for knowledge transfer and up-skilling for new and existing team members.• Direct line management for multiple John Lewis partners at various stages of technical skill and career development.

London, England

As an additional responsibility whilst operating as an Application Operations Group Lead, I took accountability for Christmas at John Lewis 2015 IT, leading to a successful trading period for JL.This required organisation across multiple technology streams for an extended period of time, engagement and management of senior stakeholders, multiple presentations to motivate and communicate across IT Operations, and ownership of risk mitigation and management in the months leading up to the peak trading period. More specifically on the key event dates of Black Friday and Christmas sales launch, activities such as rotas, checkpoint updates, building arrangements and communication channels were all part of the responsibility of the role.

Hertfordshire, England

Technology Manager for UK and International Grocery Home Shopping, responsible for service, operation and development of processing systems that present product information to customers.Accountable for systems and hardware supporting the "product induction" process; price, promotion and product data processing for publication onto the suite of Tesco.com websites across the globe.Owner of development team for both business functionality and service improvement driven changes, following an Agile methodology to deliver both independent and joint releases with other teams resulting in direct visible customer enhancements.Responsible for incident, change and problem management across the platform, engaging with business stakeholders and third-party support teams where applicable for stakeholder management and incident resolution respectively.Facilitating and providing knowledge transfers where required as part of role transitioning, to a varied audience of stakeholders across on and off shore teams.Close collaboration with other individuals and teams, requiring cross-functional development and planning in shared environments to reach both individual and common goals across teams.

Hertfordshire, England

Service Manager for International Grocery Home Shopping, responsible for service and operation of our in-country systems that support our colleagues in stores to deliver to customers.Accountable for multiple systems and hardware supporting customer order management, in-store order fulfilment and automated processing of orders through tills.Owner for service improvement of accountable systems through our pre-production and live environments to deliver a better service for our colleagues and customers.Responsible for incident management across all the systems that support the International Grocery Home Shopping platform, including those that support the customer facing website and the integration layer.Stakeholder management of international business colleagues during process and system deployments, and during management of incidents and service improvements.

Hertfordshire, England

Account and stakeholder management for domestic and international business units, encompassing engagement, service and communications.Engagement of infrastructure programmes ensuring correct design and approval processes followed, as well as providing an entry point to technical teams for non-project enquiries.Management of service and escalations to ensure service is provided within agreed OLAs.Control of communication flow in terms of updates on programmes and workstreams out to other business areas and assisting with incoming queries and requests for information/assistance from centralised resources.

Hertfordshire, England

Building on previous roles, I assisted and subsequently lead to completion a large scale project for deployment of end user devices and supporting infrastructure to over 2000 sites.This required the ability to work closely with numerous departments of an external supplier, our offshore team and individuals internally to co-ordinate the implementation and reach a target successfully, meaning that stakeholder management was a priority. Solid knowledge of process, incident management and the ability to find solutions to unforeseen problems was absolutely critical, as was a firm understanding of the financials along the deployment route. Project closure involved detailed analysis of business and financial data to ensure budgets were met and requirements fulfilled, before transitioning ongoing support to technical teams via a knowledge transfer methodology.

Hertfordshire, England

As a Technical Project Analyst I was responsible for IT project delivery, specifically in the scope of infrastructure. This required being able to translate business facing needs into technical requirements whilst matrix managing deployment across technical teams for multiple workstreams.Projects ranged in their technology from back end server and network delivery to front end telephony solutions, in retail, office and datacentre capacities.This role involved implementing Prince2 and other internal project management strategies as the underpinning key to success whilst requiring stakeholder management and communication abilities to liaise between business and technical teams.As well as focussing heavily on project delivery, a level of technical understanding was required in terms of the solutions being deployed; including server and network architecture, SAN storage, virtualisation and physical layouts of cabling and rack space.

Hertfordshire, England

A two year introductory programme involving various areas of IT infrastructure ranging from technical to business facing areas to gain experience and knowledge in project management, technical expertise and business analysis.Highlights included international experience leading a software testing programme in our offshore office and hands-on technical exposure in delivering prototype retail solutions.Working internationally gave a wealth of experience in cultural change and how to work across various barriers, and domestic roles provided an operational view into the workings of a large scale organisation at various levels whilst being able to gain valuable insight into where technology could add value across a business.

Hertfordshire, England

A half-year secondment as part of the IT Graduate programme to participate in the deployment of a significant online asset as part of a wider team. This period involved working as a key member of a deployment team to manage development environments and monitor code builds, as well as operating autonomously to develop automated test routines and accurate real-time status updates which could be provided to the internal development communityGained valuable experience in agile development and methodology, e-commerce business strategy and incident management, as well as solidifying knowledge of code deployment and website development in C# and ASP.NET utilising Visual Studio 2008.