Steven Watson

Steven Watson Email and Phone Number

Chief Technology Officer | AXA XL @
Steven Watson's Location
Hartford, Connecticut, United States, United States
Steven Watson's Contact Details
About Steven Watson

Driven data & technology professional with over eighteen years of experience in increasingly responsible positions, focused on delivering business value, driving strategic change, taking initiative, and a creative approach to solving problems. Led large, globally distributed teams for enterprise-wide transformation programs, architected modern data & digital solutions on premise and in the public cloud, implemented enterprise master data management, reengineered team processes, and built composite n-tier applications. Simplify complex concepts for executive audiences, share strategic vision with those who need to execute it, mentor and develop staff, empower team members to make decisions, and hold teams accountable.

Steven Watson's Current Company Details
AXA XL, a division of AXA

Axa Xl, A Division Of Axa

Chief Technology Officer | AXA XL
Steven Watson Work Experience Details
  • Axa Xl, A Division Of Axa
    Chief Technology Officer
    Axa Xl, A Division Of Axa Oct 2022 - Present
  • Axa Xl, A Division Of Axa
    Vp, Head Of Data & Digital Architecture
    Axa Xl, A Division Of Axa Nov 2019 - Oct 2022
    • Help shape and refine the organizations data strategy and vision, define the technology roadmap for data, and ensure that IT initiatives are aligned with the data strategy • Progress digital transformation strategy by enabling the build of digital platform and architecture• Member of both the Chief Data & Analytics Officer leadership team and Chief Technology Officer leadership team• Communicate with AXA XL C-suite and executive level management, AXA Group, impacted stakeholders, and broader community of architects regarding potential benefits, costs, and risks of new IT projects, technologies, and architectures• Built a data architecture capability to support all of AXA XL, averaging approximately 20 concurrent initiatives of various sizes• Accountable for a global team of architects that span four countries and cover data architecture, solution architecture, cloud architecture, and enterprise architecture for problems in the data domain• Run the AXA XL Data Design & Implementation Authority• Guide and support Move to the Cloud (MttC) transformation program targeting to move entirely out of the legacy on premise data centers and member of MttC Leadership Council • Support multiple data science and machine learning initiatives including leveraging unstructured data• Maintain awareness of emerging technologies, patterns and trends and how they may impact the data, technology, or insurance landscape
  • Axa Xl, A Division Of Axa
    Vp, Senior Coe Lead - Data Architecture Solutions | Enterprise Data Solutions
    Axa Xl, A Division Of Axa Sep 2018 - Nov 2019
    • Managed the Center of Excellence (CoE) for Data Architecture in the newly formed enterprise data organization at XL Catlin• Accountable for all architecture and design for $75 million enterprise data program which drove foundational, strategic, and disruptive solutions, and was comprised of 18+ workstreams supporting all functional areas across the insurance value chain• Design of strategic data and analytics platform that encompassed BI & Analytics, Data Integration, Master Data Management, and Metadata Management that provides a single source of truth for data with reusable data assets, data transparency, and multiple ways of interacting with the data to enable consistent data across use cases, better data insights that lead to better decisions, and a lower total cost to the organization• Integration of XL Catlin with AXA CS and AXA Art to provide combined data for new company
  • Xl Group Plc
    Vp, Senior Coe Lead - Data Architecture Solutions | Enterprise Data Solutions
    Xl Group Plc Aug 2017 - Sep 2018
    • Proposed and stood up the Center of Excellence (CoE) for Data Architecture in the newly formed enterprise data organization at XL Catlin• Accountable for all architecture and design for $75 million enterprise data program which drove foundational, strategic and disruptive solutions, and was comprised of 18+ workstreams supporting all functional areas across the insurance value chain• Design of strategic data and analytics platform that encompassed BI & Analytics, Data Integration, Master Data Management, and Metadata Management that provides a single source of truth for data with reusable data assets, data transparency, and multiple ways of interacting with the data to enable consistent data across use cases, better data insights that lead to better decisions, and a lower total cost to the organization• Led the selection of public cloud provider and the first public cloud deployment at XL Catlin• Enable a competitive advantage by having a platform that is compliant by nature, not constrained by compliance, with the flexibility to evolve over time
  • Xl Group Plc
    Vp, It Manager - Master Data Management, Enterprise Data Warehouse | Enterprise Enablement
    Xl Group Plc Apr 2013 - Aug 2017
    • IT manager accountable for the Data Pillar of the Enterprise Financial Architecture (EFA) program - an enterprise-wide, multi-year, $100 million investment to standardize the financial processing of XL Group, increase confidence in the reported financials and reduce the time to close the books• Develop budget for the IT Data Pillar of the EFA program and manage execution within that budget• Consolidated reference data and master data management initiatives and formed a Master Data Management (MDM) Center of Excellence that built and supported the multi-domain MDM at the center of the Enterprise Data Warehouse and Enterprise Financial Architecture• Integration of XL Group with Catlin Insurance to provide combined data for new company
  • Xl Group Plc
    Avp, Team Lead - Architecture | Enterprise Enablement
    Xl Group Plc Sep 2012 - Mar 2013
  • Xl Group Plc
    Avp, Center Of Excellence Lead - Data Management | Enterprise Management Information
    Xl Group Plc Aug 2011 - Sep 2012
    The Enterprise Management Information (EMI) program was an enterprise-wide, multi-year, $100 million investment designed to provide leading management information capabilities for analytics, distribution, risk/capital management, and management reporting. Under my direction, Data Management implemented all data architecture, data modeling, semantic modeling, master data management and cube services.• Recruited, interviewed, and onboarded resources to support 3 concurrent projects. • Developed deliverable dependency diagram and RACI with architecture review checkpoints.• Established standards documentation for data architecture, modeling, and cubes.• Established MDM principles and architecture, and supported the expansion of MDM into an enterprise solution integrated with governance and remediation processes.• Performed MDM vendor tool selection. Leveraged existing in-house tools and licenses (Microsoft MDS, IBM MDM, Oracle DRM) with a custom built hub, resulting in considerable cost savings.• Purchased and implemented vendor data model for the enterprise data warehouse with extensions and modifications for XL specific data requirements.• Incorporated data quality, data cleansing, and data conforming layers into the data architecture.• Assisted in mapping data from source systems through all layers of the enterprise data warehouse.• Implementation of data marts and SSAS cubes for Distribution and Business Unit dashboards.• Implemented Data Model Change Request system within SharePoint.
  • Xl Group Plc
    Avp, Technical Team Lead - Technical Refresh | Insurance Data Warehouse
    Xl Group Plc Jan 2010 - Aug 2011
    I was tasked with managing a team of 30+ developers and working with 25+ technicians, in 9 locations across 5 time zones, to solve one of XL Insurance's most difficult and challenging problems: overhauling the Insurance Data Warehouse (IDW) and consolidate its data centers.• Decommissioned 55 servers & 60 TB of storage in vendor data center in Switzerland and moved the IDW and dependent financial processing applications to a different vendor data center in the US.• Researched and acquired the infrastructure required to support performance and growth objectives.• Reduced server footprint in data center by better leveraging virtual servers.• Upgraded all database platforms from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2008, re-wrote all DTS data flows in SSIS, and upgraded Informatica 8.6.1 from 32 bit to 64 bit. • Re-architected the environment layout and data flow.• Implemented SSIS job restart capability and operational reporting on data load progress.• Successfully migrated and tested 6 web applications, 4 report tools with over 400 managed reports, 46 SQL Server databases, over 5,700 AutoSys jobs, and over 2,000 MS Access databases per environment (x3 environments).• Performed extensive knowledge transfer to onshore and offshore production support staff.• Improved data load performance, report performance, system monitoring, and system stability.o Average report performance improved by over 80%.o IDW SSIS data load jobs improved 78%. o IDW Informatica data load jobs improved 66%.o Longest running data load went from 90 hours to 16 hourso Nightly downtime on reporting database server went from nearly 12 hours to 3 hours.• Delivered a $6 million project on time and budget. Senior management considered a huge success.
  • Xl Group Plc
    Technical Team Lead - Management Information | Insurance Data Warehouse
    Xl Group Plc Feb 2009 - Mar 2010
    The Insurance Data Warehouse (IDW) was the source of management and operational reporting of conformed and enriched data across a multitude of XL Insurance’s transactional systems. • Determined the technical project approach, staffing, roles, and schedule.• Mentored the technical team in design, process, solutions, and procedures/standards.• Cataloged existing reports, identified report owners, and established SLA's with the business.• Put in place source control, and created an environment for multi-team concurrent development.• Motivated team members and facilitated the creation of a high performance team.• Participated in the IDW Change Control Board and closed un-prioritized back-door work efforts.• Delivered planned activity on time and within budget while accommodating appropriately prioritized unplanned activity.• Conducted operational and production readiness reviews.• Transitioned low value functions to offshore vendors to achieve company cost saving targets.
  • Xl Group Plc
    Technical Team Lead - Underwriting Workstation & Roundtable | Insurance Applications
    Xl Group Plc Apr 2008 - Mar 2009
    The Underwriting WorkStation (300 users) and Roundtable (200 users) were both composite, n-tier applications with custom built .Net front end and web service layers and a SQL Server back end that integrated with vendor products that included: 2 different legacy AS400 systems, a screen scraping tool, a web based rating product, and MS Excel (for business generated custom pricing models).• Managed a team of 6 resources using agile techniques. • Conducted design and code reviews, and operational and production readiness reviews.• 12 functional, non-bug-fix releases per year.• Communicated project statuses and ensured milestones were met.• Transitioned low value functions to offshore vendors to achieve company cost saving targets.• Led the interview process to bring on all consultants. Reviewed resumes, phone screened candidates, held in person interviews, and gauged technical skill and team fit. Converted one of the consultants to a full time employee.• Created an anonymous survey to enable the developers to rate my performance and identify areas for improvement once per quarter. Created an atmosphere of consistent improvement on the team.
  • Xl Group Plc
    Subject Matter Expert & Technical Architect | Operational Transformation
    Xl Group Plc Sep 2007 - Apr 2008
    Assisted in the second phase of the company wide Operational Transformation program. I worked in a group of subject matter experts from XL, Accenture, and Microsoft to take the current state assessment and target operating model information from the first phase of the program and create a road map for XL. • My time was split between the Hartford, Zurich, and London offices. • Estimated rough order of magnitude person day efforts. • Guided architecture and technology decisions. • Participated in the vendor selection process for the core underwriting application.
  • Xl Group Plc
    Lead Software Engineer & Release Manager - Underwriting Workstation | Insurance Applications
    Xl Group Plc Jul 2006 - Sep 2007
    • Designed and built a tool that enabled the automated build, deployment, and unit testing of the Underwriting WorkStation via NAnt and NUnit with TFS integration. This tool also allowed application services technicians to perform one-click deployments of the application to the QA and Production environments with a full audit trail. • Wrote coding standards, namespace standards, and workflow/process standards that were in use by all XL developers• Managed a small team of developers to add enterprise exception handling to the XL Framework. As a project lead I was responsible for clearly communicating project objectives, assigning tasks, gathering statuses and ensuring that milestones were met.• Coordinated the work of two software engineering interns. I met with and advised each intern on a regular basis and reported their progress back to management.• Interviewed software engineer candidates to assess their technical abilities and determine if the candidates would be a good team fit.
  • Xl Group Plc
    Software Engineer - Underwriting Workstation | Insurance Applications
    Xl Group Plc Aug 2004 - Jul 2006
    • Worked with a small team of employees and consultants on several major releases of the Underwriting WorkStation. As one of the primary developers I was responsible for making design decisions, coding new functionality, analyzing and improving application performance and stability, and debugging issues found in testing. I also traveled to New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and California to assist in the successful deployment of the application. During my involvement, the application grew from a quoting system with a user base of 30 to a lifecycle system with a user base of over 250, including external brokers.• Designed and built Director's Chair, a management console for developer/administrative tools utilizing Microsoft.Net technologies. A Director's Chair utility, called a plug-in, could be created by implementing a simple interface and the Director's Chair would load the plug-in using reflection. This tool provided developers access to custom built utilities and an easy way to deploy and manage their own utilities. • Organized and documented the XL Framework, the building blocks from which internal XL applications were constructed. This documentation was used to train all new developers on the XL Framework. I also automated the XL Framework build process. This enabled developers to create and push out builds in as little as four minutes, a task that previously could take in excess of four hours to do.• Ran the weekly global developer technical meeting with developers from our primary development offices in Hartford, London, and Zurich. I was responsible for coordinating topics and arranging speakers for each meeting.
  • University Of Connecticut
    Resident Assistant For Deparment Of Residential Life
    University Of Connecticut Jan 2002 - May 2004
    Storrs, Ct, Us
    • Counseled students regarding personal and academic concerns.• Worked effectively with a diverse staff of students and professionals.• Trained in peer counseling, leadership, interviewing and mediation skills.• Organized cultural, fitness and well being, educational, and social programming.• Presented a lecture titled, “The Internet: Your Tool for Building a Better Community,” at the 2002 Connecticut State University System and University of Connecticut Resident Assistant Conference.
    View
  • Xl Group Plc
    Software Engineering Intern
    Xl Group Plc May 2003 - Aug 2003
    Hamilton, Bermuda, Bm
    • Designed and built a standards compliant XL Professional brochure website utilizing Microsoft.Net technologies. XL Professional was a 1 Billion dollar specialty lines insurance company. • Assisted in the development and deployment of the XL Marine Cargo website utilizing Microsoft.Net technologies. This website generated binding insurance certificates for the customers of XL Marine Cargo.• Presented these websites to senior management and wrote marketing and technical design specification documents, and performed stress tests utilizing Microsoft Application Center Test.
    View

Steven Watson Skills

Data Warehousing Business Intelligence Sharepoint Microsoft Sql Server Sdlc Databases Agile Methodologies Solution Architecture Sql Web Services Master Data Management Data Warehouse Architecture Team Leadership Software Development .net Informatica Team Management Technical Leadership Vb.net Xml Business Process Communication Process Automation Asp.net Tfs C# Soa Multi Site Team Management Off Shore Team Management Application Architecture People Development Mentoring Release Management Metadata Management Composite Applications Winforms N Tier Sql Server Visual Studio Visio Microsoft Office Ms Project Erwin Dotnetnuke Html Css C++ Java Nant Nunit

Steven Watson Education Details

  • University Of Connecticut School Of Business
    University Of Connecticut School Of Business
    Executive Program
  • Leadership Greater Hartford
    Leadership Greater Hartford
  • University Of Connecticut
    University Of Connecticut
    Computer Science

Frequently Asked Questions about Steven Watson

What company does Steven Watson work for?

Steven Watson works for Axa Xl, A Division Of Axa

What is Steven Watson's role at the current company?

Steven Watson's current role is Chief Technology Officer | AXA XL.

What is Steven Watson's email address?

Steven Watson's email address is st****@****oup.com

What is Steven Watson's direct phone number?

Steven Watson's direct phone number is +186090*****

What schools did Steven Watson attend?

Steven Watson attended University Of Connecticut School Of Business, Leadership Greater Hartford, University Of Connecticut.

What skills is Steven Watson known for?

Steven Watson has skills like Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, Sharepoint, Microsoft Sql Server, Sdlc, Databases, Agile Methodologies, Solution Architecture, Sql, Web Services, Master Data Management, Data Warehouse Architecture.

Free Chrome Extension

Find emails, phones & company data instantly

Find verified emails from LinkedIn profiles
Get direct phone numbers & mobile contacts
Access company data & employee information
Works directly on LinkedIn - no copy/paste needed
Get Chrome Extension - Free

Aero Online

Your AI prospecting assistant

Download 750 million emails and 100 million phone numbers

Access emails and phone numbers of over 750 million business users. Instantly download verified profiles using 20+ filters, including location, job title, company, function, and industry.