Carl Townsend Email & Phone Number

City Of Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

I ran multiple EC2 teams, including tier 1 engineering teams responsible for services underpinning the EC2 control plane for millions of external AWS customers, and a team of engineers and project managers driving a security campaign affecting 10,000 internal teams across Amazon (AWS and Retail).I made process improvements and improved operational load. For example, I identified a problem where one of my teams, with 5 engineers, was owning more security campaigns than some entire AWS orgs of ~3,000 engineers. I led the change of ownership model, improving the operational load of the team and the security posture of AWS by increasing visibility and removing resolution bottlenecks. I created components for engineers, such as a tool to identify problematic upstream dependencies for a security campaign. At the point I left, my tool was being used by over 1,500 Amazon engineers.I also achieved AWS public speaker certification, an exam only passed by ~2% of AWS managers, qualifying me to talk about AWS externally.

Johannesburg Metropolitan Area

I had a C-level role in BrandMed, a medical technology company valued at over R1 billion with industry leading investors (e.g. Cipla Pharmaceuticals) and partners (e.g. Clicks, Momentum, PPS, AstraZenica). BrandMed provides mobile apps for home monitoring and point of care, which are integrated with medical devices (e.g. blood pressure cuffs, glucometers and blood testing) and driven by cloud-based online disease management tools running in Microsoft Azure.I drove standards and quality in the development team, as well as prototyping a doctor-patient telehealth system that I built from scratch. Prior to my joining, BrandMed had spent large sums trying to build a telehealth solution without any success. My telehealth prototype led to BrandMed's largest recurring contract, with Momentum Health.I worked on company culture, creating cross-departmental standups to remove silos. I also worked with legal and sales, creating and reviewing client contracts and partner agreements. I owned the logistics across the company, creating delivery channels to pharmacies and distributors as well as managing imports such as 14 tonnes of glucometers (valued at almost R10m) from China into South Africa.

Johannesburg Area, South Africa

Ovations is primarily a consulting service provider, but I led a strategic business area creating sellable products for enterprise customers in the financial services industry and beyond. I was responsible for all aspects of sales and delivery, including creating marketing strategies, building pipeline and closing sales as well as leading the creation of the software products themselves with a diverse and highly motivated team (developers, BAs, UX designers, marketing, infrastructure and DevOps specialists etc.).Was also involved in running other areas where necessary for the business, such as building a new sales channel and closing deals for the provision of K2 consultants. Other work included leading business intelligence and AWS cloud projects for Momentum Metropolitan and the creation of an invoice payment portal for the South African Blood Service, to help recover billions of Rand in outstanding hospital payments. Under my leadership this team won the Ovations Team of the Year.

Rosebank, Johannesburg

I started Prosperity Café with the aim of providing venture technology, helping businesses with the technology and skills they need to prosper. One of these creations was a product called Venue Secure, a mobile web app used for venues and corporate event organisers to manage RSVPs, upsell accommodation and collate attendee feedback and data for marketing purposes. This remains active today.Other work included the provision of senior K2 expertise to assist K2's own services division by reimagining a mining company's multi-million Rand strategic and politically sensitive project.

Every year, more than R1.5bn of domestic and commercial insurance policies, claims and quotes are processed through Concourse IT's suite of software products. With great technology, but a standing start in terms of customer base (mostly just to sister companies), I came on board at Concourse IT with a focus on growing new customers and partnerships. This resulted in quadrupling the flagship product's revenues in two years, much of which from self-generated leads from entirely unconnected organisations (a radical departure) and into new parts of the country. In my last year at the company, the new business from such external organisations and partnerships was demonstrably dwarfing new business gained from the previous ways of doing things. In addition to the monetary growth, the company culture also evolved in that same time into a culture of delivery, pride and energy that I hope will continue to persist.

I ran K2's services division in the Africa and Middle East region - based in Johannesburg, South Africa. I was responsible for ensuring customer success with software and consulting projects; selling and negotiating consulting services deals; customer maintenance renewals; support of customers and partners; and managing the team of highly-skilled K2 professional services consultants, which I had built up myself. I also provided oversight for the local 2nd/3rd line support team. In my time in this role, annual consulting revenues and staff utilisation days grew by more than 300%.

I was responsible for leading and managing the delivery of core strategic K2 components - covering areas such as SharePoint integration and advanced security methodologies.

Consistently a globally top-performing salesperson, with unmatched figures as a BDM in South Africa before or since, I sold software and associated services to enterprise-level and multinational customers. This included deals throughout Africa and the Middle East, created both directly to customers through my own lead generation and also together with a diverse list of international and local partners.

I started in the UK in 2003 as the first K2 specialist in Europe, moving to South Africa in June 2005.

I worked as a developer in this defence software company, working with military organisations across the world such as the UK MoD, US DoD and NATO. As a company with fanatical emphasis on quality and delivery, my work at Systematic provided the foundation of the levels of delivery I strive for today in myself and those around me.