In December 2023 Redkite was acquired by Accenture. Post integration I have remained as an Market Development Director (EMEA) within Data & AI.

Redkite makes data clear, simple and human. We work in close partnership with senior business leaders to provide end-to-end, full-stack data expertise from strategy to design to build. Our team consists of product managers, analysts, data architects, data engineers, operations experts, data governance specialists and developers. We help high-potential organisations to set up their data to enable better, faster decision-making and accelerated performance.

Providing Microsoft Data Platform & DevOps Consultancy services.Helping teams build better data platforms, either in practice through:• Data Engineering • DevOps Principles • Automated testing and deploymentOr technically:• Azure Data Platform• Data Lake• Spark/Databricks/Python• SQL ServerClients include:• Worldpay• Hiscox• Blinkbox• Ordnance Survey• Rank Group• Evolve Analytics• Comic Relief• Atrium Underwriters• Scottish Exhibition Centre• Vioamo• Redstock Applications• AdNet Billboards

WinTech hired me to manage a team of developers working on high concurrency OLTP systems and a large scale data warehouse. My role was to scale the existing systems and improve the working processes of the team.I had three developers dedicated to the BI side. The goal here was to stabilise existing systems that worked well but were manually maintained. We implemented a number of automated processes to ensure data flowed smoothly from the OLTP into the warehouse and cubes. Using CDC with SSIS packages to create and process partitions as needed. This created a fast and reliable reporting system.The warehouse was designed around Kimball standards making it able to adjust to new requirements easily.The existing databases contained large amounts of business logic which were process intensive. I worked with the team to streamline these processes by moving to set based operations, removing triggers and scaling the applications to handle many x times the load.Service broker was implemented to move financial transactions between databases in high volumes, sub second and in order. CDC and change tracking was used to synchronise data. Batch processes were improved by consolidating similar processes.I implemented many processes on the team who had historically managed code manually. We used Visual Studio database projects (later SSDT) with TFS to manage code and create stable code releases.The team worked in an Agile environment (via TFS) and used Continuous Integration (CI) to ensure a stable code base. With unit tests and multiple development and test environments we succeeded in implementing reliable and on time deployments.

Database design (new projects) for an online portal targeted at teachers (www.tes.co.uk).Performance and stability improvements for existing systems including scaling and HA.Mentoring onshore and offshore developments teams on best practices for database development along with peer reviews of code.Designing processes and security models to meet ISO27001 accreditation.

I managed a small team of SQL Developers primarily responsible for all BI and Revenue systems. Using multi-terabyte databases and cubes with Reporting Services and propriety front end applications, users have been provided with a robust and fast reporting system available to internal users and external customers.I have been involved end to end in the design and development of the revenue and billing systems used within the organisation. Taking statistics from the reporting databases and calculating revenue to bill with invoices (PDF documents generated using SSRS) and calculating revenue earned by partners – including self-billing invoices in Europe. These systems have a C# web application as the front end and automatically post the resulting transactions to Microsoft Great Plains. All of these process and applications I have heavily documented in preparation of Sox compliancy. These systems have been externally audited and have been praised heavily for their processes and accountability. Using T-SQL I have developed many very complex procedures to perform batch tasks for the Ad Serving platform and user applications. Some of these use CLR’s to invoke external processes such as web services or SSIS packages. I’m very confident in all aspects of the core SQL engine and T-SQL development. I have used many of the newer features such as MERGE, TRY/CATCH, table partitioning, common table expressions and SEND/RECEIVE with SQL Service Broker. I have also implemented a number of processes to import and parse XML from external sources.

MIVA was a medium sized pay per click advertising company. Running SQL Server 2000 as the database engine for searching for adverts to display. This resulted in several thousand searches per second happening on each SQL install. Advertisers placed bids on keywords, many of which used automated bidding systems to maximise their yield. The transaction volumes were some of the biggest I’ve ever seen in production, this made for a particularly challenging environment to support and develop on.A large amount of this work was tuning queries and ensuring that indexes were correct and kept in near perfect condition at all times. Search queries were expected to return within a tenth of a second. I gained much experience with how SQL locking and caching works for data and query plans. As well as how SQL interfaces with Windows and SAN’s. I developed a number of DTS packages to import data and pass data to external providers. I also implemented a custom log shipping method using 3rd party backup software which could compress the logs. This allowed log shipping to a DR site overseas. During my time with eSpotting we completed several data centres migrations as well as hardware upgrades. I was trained on EMC Clariion administration and spent significant time performance testing various hardware and software setups.I became very knowledgeable on SQL Replication. We mainly used transactional replication and I developed custom rollout scripts to automate the addition and removal of search nodes with a single request as performing this manually was a significant burden on the DBA team.

Heathmill is a small business focusing on providing business solutions, primarily Contact Centres, but also including fulfilment, subscription, e-commerce, and marketing services. I managed a number of MS SQL Servers running versions 6.5, 7.0 & 2000 spread over multiple sites that were required 24/7.Experienced with replication, DTS packages, backups & performance tuning. I also gained a great knowledge of hardware planning and implementing, primarily on Dell PowerEdge & PowerVault systems. The role involved the planning and testing of disaster recovery scenarios, as well as implementing a robust backup & recovery strategy.Much of this work was customer facing as I would often be used as sales support and requested to work with clients on specifications.I gained very good knowledge of Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory integration. I also spent much time resolving DNS, WINS and routing issues across the WAN.

At RBS my role was to work with merchants to implement Streamline credit card processing. The bulk of these implementations involved dealing with networking and protocols for interfacing with the banking systems. Though I was recruited to specialise on smaller companies using implementations with SQL Server for storing credit card details. At the time a number of high profile security breaches occurred mainly from online retailers where customer’s credit card details were stolen and posted on the Internet. This was also not long after the SQL Slammer worm had breached many systems. I advised customers on how to store credit cards details using various encryption methods and how to protect the databases from external attacks such as SQL injection. The bank reserved the right to audit merchant systems for flaws – I was often involved in the testing of this.The majority of this role was customer facing at client sites. Whilst my primary focus SQL related I had heavily involvement in network implementations using TCP/IP and X.25. As well a performance planning for some of the largest retail customers in the UK. Online credit card processing has very high standards in terms of authorisation time and guaranteeing transaction delivery which often left very complex problems requiring robust and redundant systems.During my time with RBS I undertook basic training for administering Oracle 9i.

See above, I worked for HMM twice.

Running a small of team of accounts payables clerks.