Mark Howells Email & Phone Number

Wilmslow, Gb

Manchester, United Kingdom

Software engineer with UK based consultancy BJSS. With offices across the UK and North America, BJSS are the UK's largest privately-owned software consultancy. Delivering agile solutions for major clients, using the latest cloud technology.

San Francisco Bay Area

Software project manager for StormGeo, a global provider of weather data and services. Located in Silicon Valley California, Applied Weather Technology is the world leader in maritime weather forecasting and routing services for the shipping industry.Achievements and Responsibilities• Managing the company’s largest software development project, to introduce a new system to support AWT’s operational experts.• Coordination of an internationally dispersed development team located in Lithuania and California.• Introduced an agile scrum methodology, with development sprints, product owner acceptance, regular release cycles, reporting and team retrospectives.• Continuous forward planning to ensure that requirements, UX design, and prototype are ready in advance of each project phase.• Working together with system product owner, domain experts and technical advisors to ensure that project goals are met.• Close cooperation with company IT department to ensure that systems are smoothly deployed and well supported, with disaster recovery plans in place.• Resource manager for R&D personnel in the California office, with responsibility for performance reviews and annual appraisal.• Initially based in Oslo, combined project management and lead developer roles to create a shipboard system for predicting excessive motions at sea.• Worked closely with development team based in Stockholm, and management in Bergen and California.

Oslo Area, Norway

Product Development Manager at Fugro Satellite Positioning, a global leader in the provision of high-precision positioning services for the marine industry. Fugro’s Marinestar and Oceanstar brands introduce innovative navigation, safety and efficiency products into the commercial shipping market.Achievements and Responsibilities• Responsibility for bringing new software products from concept to market.• Co-operated with senior management to evaluate development proposals, capture requirements and plan projects.• Create business cases for new projects, presenting timescales, costs, business value and risks.• Used agile management techniques such as burn-down and velocity charts to provide regular, accurate project reports.• Lead developer for the company’s flagship navigation product, Marinestar Manoeuvring System, bringing the product successfully to market within nine months.• Built relationships with marine equipment manufacturers to create a hardware platform for the Marinestar system.• Experience installing hardware and software on-board large commercial ships.• Guided the organisation towards achieving marine type approval for key products.• Worked with major bridge system manufacturers to interface Fugro equipment with other on-board systems.• Experience working with contractors for software development and graphical user interface design.• Managed a large information system project, with development contracted out to an external software house.• Responsible for the development of release strategies for new systems including validation, acceptance, documentation, training, version control and issue tracking.

London, United Kingdom

Software Development Team Leader for Kelvin Hughes ChartCo, a subsidiary of the Marine Systems Division. The company business involves the delivery of critical navigational information to ocean-going vessels via a satellite broadcast system.Achievements and Responsibilities• Responsibility for planning software projects and co-ordinating the activities of a team of developers.• Lead developer for ship-board software products.• Worked with external companies to integrate ChartCo software with other maritime information systems.• Involved with customer-facing activities such as technical planning and on-board system installation and training.• Development of complex back-end systems for manipulation, compression and communication of data.• Worked on collaborative projects with major third party organisations such as Inmarsat and the UK Hydrographic Office.• Responsible for managing the introduction and customisation of the company’s integrated business system using Microsoft SQL Server and Crystal Reports.• Created and successfully implemented procedures to guide the department through ISO-9001 quality audits.

London, United Kingdom

Part-time lecturer teaching evening classes for the technology department within a college of further education.Achievements and Responsibilities• Planning, preparation and delivery for a series of lecture courses.• Subjects taught include Visual Basic, Web-site Design, Dreamweaver and Flash, all at a range of difficulty levels.• Regional award winner for part-time teaching excellence.

London, United Kingdom

Software engineer, working with the UK’s leading supplier of electronic registration systems for schools.Achievements and Responsibilities• Developed a network-based application for recording academic marks and attendance.• Employed a wide range of Java development technologies.• Responsibilities across the full project lifecycle.