Software engineering manager with over 10 years experience developing for the web across multiple languages. Highly collaborative with an excellent understanding of development best practices throughout the entire SDLC, growing high-performing agile teams and crafting/executing on company product roadmaps. Demonstrated success in collaborating with both executives and technical/non technical stakeholders, leading to many successful deliveries
Startup Adviser, fractional CTO and Lead Engineer, specialising in 0-day startups. I provide strategic guidance, lead MVP development, and offer general, technical, strategic and management expertise to help startups succeed from day one
Worked with some of Australia's most exciting emerging startups
Entrepreneur in Residence
Joined the program to explore nurturing my own startup, learnt many valuable skills along the way from ideation, taking concepts to market (0 to 1), market validation, business models, product/market fit to capital raising/pitching
Developed strong problem-solving and critical thinking skills by identifying and addressing challenges facing early-stage startups
Gained experience in business strategy, market analysis, and financial planning to help startups develop sustainable and scalable business models
Built a diverse and global network of entrepreneurs, investors, and industry experts to share insights and best practices and create new opportunities for collaboration
Honed skills in pitching and presenting to effectively communicate complex ideas and value propositions to investors, customers, and other stakeholders
Developed a deep understanding of emerging technologies and trends and how they are reshaping industries and markets, enabling more informed decision-making and innovative thinking
Founder
Ran multiple campaigns to evaluate problem/solution fit
Built a landing page & MVP
Pitched to Antler & was accepted into the program
Engineering Manager
Lead & managed a team of iOS/Android/Backend Engineers (Ruby/Go) both co-located and remote, building and successfully delivering on alias (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1467090341) a brand new app & brand for GOAT
Levelled up multiple employee's through goal setting/coaching and the introduction of a career matrix to add more structure/conversation points around the journey
Solutions Architect
Pragmatically defined & owned the product technology roadmap and provided architectural direction to teams through deep collaboration with product owners, QA, teams & other stakeholders, roadmap artefacts were created in the form of user stories & through visual language eg. UML
Championed key initiatives to increase release predictability & reliability, reducing cycle time, reducing escaped defects through collaboration with multiple facets of the business such as management, support, sales & engineering
Selected and evangelised appropriate design and integration patterns with first/third parties & processes to help scale the business through contribution to the organisation's wiki, lightning talks and pair programming / mentoring resulting in improvements to organisations engineering conceptual integrity & reduced cycle time for user stories
Developed technical tools to aid in story visibility through the development pipeline & defect tracking/resolution
Engaged in Web App & Network Security, PEN Testing & PCI Compliance
Maintained a suite of apps hosting in AWS using Configuration Management (Ansible/Chef) & PaaS such as Elastic Beanstalk, Heroku and containerisation using Docker
Orchestrated a zero downtime organisation wide migration to Heroku (PaaS) from Ansible/Chef managed infrastructure, this resulted in a reduced operational overhead on the engineering team & direct cost saving's through a reduction in hosting costs
Provided direction/planning to engineering teams and collaborated with third party vendors in order to meet PCI / GDPR compliance
Engineering Manager and Technical Product Owner
Built, hired & lead scrum teams of 6-8 as a servant leader both domestically and remotely, worked closely with recruiters both locally & abroad during a growth period of 20-to 50 employee's
Worked closely with clients/customers to ensure customer requirements were converted into high quality development artefacts for teams
Delivered on the product roadmap & on-boarded some of Australia's biggest universities
Formulated & articulated the vision and goals to scrum teams to ensure alignment/shared understanding through story mapping sessions, five whys, kick off's, pair programming & mentoring
Engaged in application performance, load & stress testing and implemented appropriate infrastructure and processes to support a 10x growth in on-boarded companies
Implemented/improved many technical and operational procedures and processes to facilitate scaling the business such as streamlining/automating the support, implementation & development pipelines with a constant emphasis on continuous improvement
Improved backlog priority transparency & stability through sequencing using a very simple cost/value weighting, it was previously ordered via the HiPPO method which wasn't scaling
Identified key unique selling points, key features and competitive advantages through user, sales feedback and competitor analysis within the market and crafted user stories to guide product development
Guided product decisions through empiricism primarily through the build, measure lean feedback loop
Advocated a product strategy of saying "no" more than "yes" on the back of maintaining integrity of our product vision
Supported and collaborated with third parties through due diligence as part of an acquisition
Engaged in annual & successful PEN Test & Security audits of the application for one of Australia's leading banks
Engineering Team Lead
Built & Lead a scrum team of 6-8 both domestically and remotely
Guided team development efforts towards many successful project deliveries
Provided technical leadership to teammates through individual contribution, coaching and mentorship
On boarded & Collaborated with some of Australia's leading banks and universities
Built & Nurtured a positive & much lauded working culture
Implemented/maintained best practice Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery/Test Automation & Deployment pipelines
Adviser
Provided guidance on product strategy, ownership, and best practices
Made key individual contributions (IC) with a focus on Django/Python
Implemented and optimised development (CI/CD) pipelines for increased efficiency
Advised on and assisted with the hiring and recruiting process
Lead Senior Engineer
Lead, hired and mentored other software engineers
Collaborated & mentored Senior Developers, Juniors & Contractors and provided technical advice and direction to management
Delivered E2E & supported over 20 projects with Ruby on Rails/Zend Framework
Built a custom Zend Framework based Video Delivery platform that was pitched as a corporate Video Delivery Platform & CMS, this integrated with third party video platforms such as Brightcove and BitsOnTheRun. Features such as channel creation, pre/post roll advertisement injection, video scheduling and search by time based video meta data, it was later sold to a USA based company
Phased out a legacy custom built PHP CMS and coordinated / co-developed a complete rewrite of the CMS using Zend Framework which is now in use in a multitude of sites
Supported and maintained a high traffic legacy CMS based site for a popular travel company. Routinely dealt directly with the client and collaborated with their hosting company, their IT department and key stake holders to achieve great project outcomes. Implemented solutions for integration with an internal File Maker Database, Online Trip Payments & Online Trip Bookings* Lead, hired and mentored other software engineers * Collaborated & mentored Senior Developers, Juniors & Contractors and provided technical advice and direction to management * Delivered E2E & supported over 20 projects with Rails/Zend Framework * Built a custom Zend Framework based Video Delivery platform that was pitched as a corporate Video Delivery Platform & CMS, this integrated with third party video platforms such as Brightcove and BitsOnTheRun. Features such as channel creation, pre/post roll advertisement injection, video scheduling and search by time based video meta data, it was later sold to a USA based company. * Phased out a legacy custom built PHP CMS and coordinated / co-developed a complete rewrite of the CMS using Zend Framework which is now in use in a multitude of sites. * Supported and maintained a high traffic legacy CMS based site for a popular travel company. Routinely dealt directly with the client and collaborated with their hosting company, their IT department and key stake holders to achieve great project outcomes. Implemented solutions for integration with an internal File Maker Database, Online Trip Payments & Online Trip Bookings
Co-Owner
Created & maintained a custom Ruby on Rails based online e-commerce platform for clothing retail, stock management, invoice management & CRM
Senior Engineer
Worked in a team developing a complex advertisement builder for Australia Post using a custom in-house CMS
Junior Web Developer
Worked on a variety of intranet based solutions for architectural firms. Features such as project estimation / tracking, time sheet management and reporting amongst others
Software & Hardware support for clients
Junior Web Developer
Developed a training scheduling system for the CFA and a local intranet based version of that scheduling system for the ESTI unit
Developed an automated solution to map students exemptions from various courses