Group CTO
Tiqmo
Total years of experience :23 years, 1 Months
• Technology Function: Built the technology Function across the Tiqmo geographical landscape. Ensuring that quality resources are applied across the domains of Cloud, Network, API development, Infrastructure, Security, Data, IT Support, Testing, Site Reliability, Service Delivery, Band others.
• Technical Architecture: As a hand-on Technologist, led the design of Tiqmo’s Core Reference architecture in Cloud which was applied across all deployments across multiple cloud vendors. This covered the creation, configuration and deployment of Instances, Virtual networks, object storages, Identity Access Management, Key Vaults, Alerts, Notifications, logging and more.
• Operating Licenses: Worked with Central Banks across the globe \[Saudi Central Bank, Central Bank of Egypt, Bank of UAE, Bank of Sudan, etc.\] to obtain operating licenses and ensure local/global regulations are adhered to \[Data Patriation, Hosting, PCI and others\].
• Vendors and Contracts: Managed the Final sign-off all technical contracts across the landscape; Agreeing costs, contract durations, RPO & RTO levels, Business Continuity, SLA, Escalation Matrixes, Timelines and Business needs.
• CI / CD Pipeline: Managed the implementation of Tiqmo’s Code Delivery pipelines to automate code deployments, manage code repositories, perform source code analysis, run vulnerability scans, package applications, deploy packages on to Infrastructure, initiating services and of course monitoring. The pipeline utilized tools such as Git, Docker, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Fortify, ArgoCD, Prometheus, Grafana, etc.
• Technology Governance: Documented and drove the delivery of all Tiqmo Global / local documentation \[covering policies and process to cover IT Governance, Security standards, Technology approval workflows, Technology Risk Escalation, CI/CD standards, Cloud Best Practice and Backup Strategies\]. This governance will coupled with ITIL processes & delivered through tools such as JIRA, Managed Engine, Azure, Git, etc.
• Cybersecurity: Led the design and implementation of all cyber controls within the Tiqmo landscape (covering both VM and Kubernetes based workloads). This included ensuring compliance against Cybersecurity Frameworks, defining Cybersecurity roadmaps, performing code reviews, running periodic penetration tests, implementing Cyber resilience programs and architect solution such as SIEM, XDR, SOC, Agua (for Kubernetes), Brand Protection, etc.
• Cross-Domain Management: As part of the Senior Leadership team was also responsible for tasks pertaining to Change Management, Incident Management, Release management, Service Management, Asset Management, Access Management, Service Catalogues as well as preparing Tiqmo for soft-launches in different countries.
• Strategy Definition: Was asked to parachute into Lloyds of London to rescue the delivery of a suite of pivotal new platforms that were intended to revolutionize the way that Lloyds and Lloyds Members would interact. This role required taking ownership for the design and delivery of new systems to enable Lloyds to Onboard new members, Setup Assets at Lloyds, Manage Funds at Lloyds, etc. The role also required for migrating/removing a suite of applications for the upcoming data center exit and Nationwide Product Release of Lloyds new InvestCloud platform.
• Enterprise Architecture: To accommodate Lloyds new digital strategy was required to (1) re-scope the Data Center Exit into varying prioritized work-streams, (2) Identify areas for parallel development (3) revamp waterfall processes into more agile / scrum ways of working, (4) Define alternative independent architectures for development by 3rd parties to speed delivery as well as (5) Define Transition Architectures to bring all components back into a homogeneous offering.
• Delivery Support: In addition to providing Architecture direction, worked with multiple Lloyds teams to actively support delivery teams in terms of business process modeling, data flow analysis, Coding & development, infrastructure definition / creation, testing as well as change management
• Technical Design Authority: As lead Architect was responsible for ensuring the approval and ratification of architecture designs at Lloyds TDA forum as well as the resolution of technical risks and divergences within the Technical RAID registers raised by the senior executive team (CTO, Head of Enterprise Architecture, Data Center Program Lead, CRO, etc.)
• Strategy Definition: Building on the FCA’s vision and desire to manage and exploit technology to perform regulatory tasks; was responsible for defining the roadmap of how the FCA’s Vision can be realized through systems, tools and processes. Deliverables have included a roadmap, objective setting, documenting As-Is states, depicting To-Be state, defining transition states, identifying KPIs for assessing and monitoring progress as well as building business cases for resources & budgets.
• Enterprise Architecture: Being responsible for a portfolio of 60+ technical systems (covering the FCA’s Regulator Collection Systems, Data Warehouse Systems, Data Science Platforms, Data Lake, Survey Platform, Reporting Platforms, Market Monitoring Platforms, etc.), was charged with ensuring these systems (a) continue to meet existing/new requirements, (b) meet or improve on the RPO/RTO SLAs, (c) Review and align all system changes and (d) remediate technical debt.
• Performed an enterprise wide data maturity assessment of the FCA (using DAMA) and am driving an initiative to improve the FCA’s data maturity through purchasing new data management tools (Catalogues, DQ tools, Reference Data, Modeling, etc.) but more importantly defining how the tools should work in the FCA to deliver real value and improve data (which is further linked to policies, standards, ways of working, training, documentation, processes, technology & governance). This was linked to the delivery of a Data Management, Architecture and Tooling methodology (DMAAT).
• Enterprise Architecture: Primarily focused on introducing Enterprise Architecture rigor to the Design and build processes within Close Brothers. This role included the definition of an Enterprise Architecture Framework to guide projects (using principles, standards, policies, patterns, etc.) on how to deliver technical projects in either an agile or waterfall manner. The effort also included the development of a “Disciplined Agile Development” methodology (using DAD 3.0) to facilitate all upcoming Transformation and BAU projects.
• As-Is Landscape: Initiated and conducted a full review of the Close Brothers’ Application Landscape over multiple lines of Business. This included defining an enterprise landscape meta-model to define not only the information about applications but also how it should linked to the data domain, business functions, integration methods, security protocols, vendors, technology stacks as well as technology documentation and patterns.
• Cloud Data Strategy: Defined the proposed To-Be architecture to replace the on-premise enterprise data warehouse (MS SQL Server) on to Cloud (AWS and Snowflake). This involved defining cloud infrastructure and operating standards for the bank as well evaluating vendors, system integrators, contracts, accelerators, security tools and in-house skill sets.
• Governance & Domain Integration: Having agreed an enterprise Reference Model to depict the different domains, sub-domains, functions and processes within the company; was then tasked to define an enterprise governance function for the company covering roles, responsibilities, identification of SMES, interlinks between collateral, governance forums, templates, governance KPIs as well as governance training collateral
• Integration Architecture: Responsible for introducing API integration to MARS. This included defining API-led development frameworks, reviewing the data distribution landscape, discovering systems of record as well as defining Principles, policies and procedures for all integration methods and integration tools at MARS. Also as Lead Architect was responsible for reviewing all integration as well as data architectures in terms of their compliance to MARS Business and IT strategies.
• Portfolio Management: Primary contact for the delivery of all data integrations within MARS’ Digital Segment and personally spearheaded the first integration projects at MARS which included: (1) the delivery of a new multi-million order management system for MARS’ pet-care segment and in particular; the integrations to warehouse systems, inventory systems, couriers, E-commerce systems and payment systems with Salesforce. (2) Delivery of all Master Data to all critical systems. (3) The integration of digital assets across all MARS’s Marketing and E-Commerce systems (4) The integration of MARS’ new career site with job agencies, talent management systems, external job boards, recruiters, interviewers, candidate checking services and others.
• Architecture & Data DevOps Framework: Within HSBC, led the transition from traditional waterfall model development to the Disciplined Agile Design framework. The role entailed identification of control stories for all Architecture domains, the delivery of an agile operating model within JIRA, creation of training material, continuous schedule of communication & learning, a mechanism for continuous improvement (roadmap of MVPs), centralized dispensation/escalation processes as well as capabilities to allow for customizations / nuances in different lines of business tools & processes.
• Architecture / Data Training Curriculums: With the introduction of the HSBC University, was responsible for identifying the creation of training curriculums and subsequent accreditation processes for various concepts within the Architecture, Data Architecture & Development Domains. This included the integration of learning pathways from both external accreditation providers for generic topics & internal HSBC specific training courses. These training modules were accessible to all employees within HSBC and at times covered 1000s of people.
• Architecture Gatekeeper & Technology Approval Board: As the Chair of the Architecture Forum was responsible for communicating enterprise wide initiatives (like the introductions of new HSBC frameworks, methodologies, policies and patterns), coordinating SMEs to help resolve high profile issues and dispensations as well as reviewing the progress of key HSBC Projects. The role also included being co-administrator of the Technology Reference Model and approving the use-cases for new tools and technologies at both the enterprise level, Business Level and Project Level.
• Governance & Architecture Strategies: As an enterprise architect was responsible for implementing a number of HSBC initiatives which included (a) Defining the on-premise Data Lake clean-up strategy, (b) Implementing the HSBC Crown Jewels & Data-Source Accreditation initiatives to strategically understand the HSBC Application landscape, (c) Developing the HBSC strategy for prioritizing applications as part of HSBC’s 100% API enablement roadmap, as well as, (d) Implementing the HSBC clean-up of the application inventory within Troux at regional, country and line-of-business level.
• Lead Enterprise Architect: Currently working for the Saudi Arabian Central Bank in Riyadh, am directly responsible for implementing an integrated architecture for Monitoring all retail and inter-bank transactions within the country (SPAN £350M daily, SARIE £29B daily); Surveying the performance of all ATMs and POS within the country, Overseeing the volume / value trends of Cheques / Retail Cards (Magnetic, Chip, Wireless, etc.) as well as designing systems to track the levels and types of claims being raised by individuals, banks or organizations (public and private).
• Head of Architecture Governance: Lead and introduced a suite of modules, policies, processes and other governance mechanisms surrounding Technology Standards, Change Management, Architecture Design, Requirements Gathering, System and Data Ownership, Release Management, Defect Management (data and Systems) as well as User Access Management & Security. This not only covered SAMA central bank but all sister organizations as well as all Saudi retail banks.
• Head of Data Architecture: Created a Data-Warehouse-as-a-service (DWaaS) architecture for SAMA, all Saudi Retail Banks as well as a number of GCC National and GCC Retails Banks. This enforced DWaaS not only allowed SAMA to investigate / monitor the transactions volumes and values of all banks in the country, but also allowed all Saudi member banks to see their own performance (as an issuer as well as an acquirer bank), The DWaaS also provided a single storage for analyzing national transactional trends as well a platform for monitoring new banking policies.
• Other: Oversaw the creation of SAMA’s Charging model application allowing SAMA to charge banks based on their percentage share of transaction volume, value, performance, claims, etc.
• Enterprise Architecture: Am currently an Enterprise Architect working for the largest retail bank in the United Kingdom. Working with all areas of the enterprise (Data Architecture, Infrastructure, Security, Service Delivery, Application Development) am responsible for delivering a number of strategic project initiatives (from Inception to Delivery).
• Data Architecture: Am responsible for delivering Enterprise Master Data Management and Enterprise Reference Data Management capability across Lloyds for all lines of business (Retail, Commercial, Insurance, Wealth, etc). This strategic initiative required rationalizing 90+ old reference data stores into a single system, building a Lloyds central reference data governance team, the remediation of all existing consumer systems to point to the new strategic tool, and implementing an enterprise shared environment to cater for an estimated 80+ reference data projects a year.
• Architecture Governance: Am part of the Architecture Design Committee for Enterprise and Information Architecture. Am charged with reviewing all designs being developed within Lloyds, understanding how they fit in the current landscape, defining how these new designs correlate to the group strategy as well as defining standards, policies and procedures.
• Stakeholder Management: Have been responsible for presenting various business cases to the Lloyds IT Strategy Board (ITSB) for securing budget for project expenditure (development resources, licenses, software and hardware, operational resources).
• Enterprise Architecture: Working for one of the largest organizations in the UAE, was responsible for defining the current As-Is landscape for all Enterprise Technology Applications within Mubadala. This low level investigation covered identifying technology standards, evaluating levels of system integration, reviewing database design, documenting application architectures, recording technology exceptions as well as uncovering all data flows between systems.
• Data Architecture: In addition to the role of Enterprise Architect was also responsible for defining the To-Be Architecture for information exchange across Mubadala. Working across all MDC Lines-Of-Business (Aerospace, Hospitality, Industry, Petroleum, Real-Estate, etc.), was charged with bringing together date from disparate systems (Hyperion, Oracle E-business, Quantum, CRM Dynamics, E-Front, etc) into a single consolidated structure for enterprise reporting.
• Master Data Management: As part of a data cleansing initiative before the data warehouse implementation was responsible for liaising with the Line-Of-business Heads to define shared enterprise data within Mubadala (such as Currencies, Employees, Legal Entities, FX Rates, Geographies, Org. Structures, etc) as well as how to periodically refresh & re-distribute this data to achieve a consistent enterprise view of the organization.
• Data & Technology Standards: Single handedly developed 2 versions of Mubadala's initial data warehouse using both the Microsoft Technology stack as well as the Informatica / Oracle stack. This was then further utilized to pick a preferred vendor as well as become the golden template for all future data warehouse development by Mubadala's offshore team.
• Technology Strategy: Working in both roles as an Enterprise Data Architect and Senior Enterprise Architect, was responsible for working directly with SITA’s CTO to define the technology strategy for SITA within the Information Architecture arena as well as SITA as a whole.
• Enterprise Architecture: Over the past 2 years, my main role has been to lead the creation of SITA’s Enterprise Architecture Framework integrating SITA’s Architecture building blocks (its EA process, Technology Standards, Architecture Reviews, Reference Architectures templates) for the various architecture domains (Middleware, Infrastructure, Security, OSS, etc) within SITA
• Technology Standards: As part of governing/integrating technology into SITA’s EA Framework, was tasked with defining SITA’s standard technologies, their integration with other technologies, the context in which they are authorized to be used as well as the process for continuous review.
• Governance: As both a coordinator and a member of SITA’s ARC (Architecture Review Council), was part of a team responsible for the review of all large projects within SITA or any project that affected SITA’s common services/product offerings or indeed SITA’s technology strategy.
• Data Architecture: Working on SITA’s largest ever product offering (50M+ project); was responsible for defining an enterprise data model (integrating 25+ product domains), Data standards, a comprehensive information architecture methodology as well providing subject matter expertise (training,
• Communication & Collaboration: Was the creator of SITA’s Architecture Toolkit; In order to standardised SITA’s architecture process across the enterprise, was responsible for creating a ‘one-stop shop’ of approved architecture templates and reference documents for ensuring the standard and completeness of SITA’s architecture reviews.
• Project Management: Am currently leading a three man architecture team for BearingPoint’s largest data warehouse contract with the responsibility of integrating data from 90+ stock inventory system into one homogenous data warehouse for the Army, Navy & Royal Air Force
• Responsibilities included assessing the technical feasibility (i.e. effects on the enterprise architecture, infrastructure, application landscape, support procedures &development timescales) as well as detailing key project issues (i.e. highlighting technical & business dependencies, establishing project & development costs and creating enterprise roadmaps) of integrating the MoD’s disparate inventory system into a consolidated Teradata Warehouse system.
• Technical Architecture: Working directly for Glitnir CIO, Created an Enterprise Framework and Logical Architecture to support the bank’s Risk, CRM, Integration and Regulatory needs.
• Design Authority: Designed BearingPoint’s ‘Single Source Architecture’ for maintaining complete General Ledger and Data Warehouse Reconciliation with complete traceability. In addition, was responsible for aligning software and technology across the Enterprise, ensuring quick ROI, requirements fulfillment, mitigating technical risks and ensuring project completion.
• Vendor Management: Lead the vendor selection process for all ‘One Glitnir’ project areas, crafting RFIs, evaluating solution offerings, designing best-of-breed solutions, organizing customer reference visits and assisting in client/vendor commercial discussions.
• Data Warehouse Consultancy: As lead Architect was also responsible for overseeing the architecture of both Glitnir’s MDM (Master Data Management) and ETL (Data Integration) work streams and aligning these technologies/strategies to the overall Data warehouse architecture
• Data Warehouse Consultancy: Working in Dublin (Monday to Friday), as one of the initial members of AIB’s newly created Ab-Initio Competency Center (AICC), I was responsible for implementing standards, techniques and best practices for AIB’s new preferred ETL tool.
• Business Analysis: Many projects were implemented internationally and as such, I was responsible for aligning business requirements and code across the UK, Ireland and Poland on a project basis. The role included working with the business to validate business transformations, relaying all Project issues to AIB Management, reviewing change specifications whilst also estimating and adjusting project deadlines.
• Ab-Initio Development: Developed and maintained a number of finance specific Ab-Initio projects to monitor AIB’s reserve capital within Ireland, UK and Poland. These ICAA (Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment) Projects also catered for regulatory interaction, in particular the creation and ftp of financial reports via Ab-Initio to AIB’s relevant supervisors (IFSRA, FSA and the National Bank of Poland). These initial projects were then used as examples of Ab-Initio best practice and were templates for all future AIB Ab-Initio development projects.
• Ab-Initio Consultancy: As an initial AICC member, my role included defining best practices for parallel running, use of multi-files, sandbox administration, graph phasing, compression, reusability and documentation. Also worked with AIB data-quality teams to create generic reusable Ab-Initio code to self rectify, alert & reconcile all code to enable the BAU team to utilise resources elsewhere.
• Design Authority: Participated in the development of a strategic vision for an enterprise data warehouse for the GRCB (global retail and commercial banking) arm of Barclays. Performed source system analysis across all retail functional areas to help develop conceptual and logical architectures for the end-state data warehouse. Assisted in the development of a business architecture for IT, based on requirements sessions with executives, trading desks and other system users.
• Data Warehouse Consultancy: Developed detailed planning and strategic roadmaps that leveraged the existing environment, rationalized physical assets and aligned multiple projects (CDI HUB / MDM, RISK, CRM, MI, Data Warehouse and Reporting) implementations
• Design Architecture: Designed and created a homogonous data warehouse model (LDM), bringing together multiple Kiln accounting systems, (whether it be Access, SQL Server, Oracle, VB, Spreadsheets), into a central data warehouse, so as to provide 'a single version of the truth'.
• Development: Individually Installed and Implemented 3 business Objects Data Integrator Environments, interacting with a number of different databases running on varying operating systems. Was responsible, for not only creating the central data warehouse but also a number of financial data marts which in turn reduced the time taken to compute Kiln’s month end figures from a full week to 6 hours. Was also responsible for performance tuning the SQL server databases, reviewing ETL code and maintaining the Data Integrator Servers.
• Consultancy: Performed a number of ‘proof of concepts’ which manifested into a number of projects, such as decoupling Kiln’s month end process to allow for incremental running, investigating all code changes needed to implement the FSA’s new requirement to report on a 5 year basis rather than 3, as well as reviewing all changes to the new LDM as a result of changes of the underlying source systems.
• Reconciliation: Lead the Data Quality Improvement & Reconciliation imitative of the newly created repository, not only reconciling Kiln’s £800 million transactions for that year but also the past 20 years. In addition, Kiln’s collections of financial regulatory reports were also re-created off the new data marts, which proved to be even more accurate
• Technical Design Authority: Was responsible for decommissioning various aspects of T-mobile’s data warehouse and its subsequent migration. The role included reviewing all new Ab-Initio & UNIX code, validating business rules as well as creating automated procedures for maintaining mappings, ETL procedures and common oracle functions performed on the data warehouse. As a TDA was also seen as a “point of contact” for T-Mobile Finance division in terms of knowing where, how and what data was being held within the data warehouse as well as determining the work needed to extrapolate this data for their various projects.
• Data Quality: As part of the TDA team was partly responsible for ensuring that data-quality was maintained when migrating to the new data warehouse, this involved working with a DQ team to create automated ‘generic’ business objects reports to not only reconcile the migrated data but all future ETL transformations and loads. The role also involved reviewing all ETL procedures, so that it confirmed to the newly adopted company standard.
• Ab-Initio Development: Working with the Ab-Initio vendor, aided in the development of a number of generic reusable tools for the in-house Ab-Initio team, as well creating a various RAD prototypes for Business Users.
• Ab-Initio Consultancy: Aided in the creation of a source control code system for Ab-Initio as well as defining the coding standard / good practices KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for all development using Ab-Initio.
• Initiating New Business: As the lead Aspective consultant was partly responsible for presenting POCs “Proof of Concepts” to T-Mobiles Service Delivery Management in order to win new work
• Team Leading: Managed a team of 6, with responsibility for the operational running of O2’s largest data warehouse, including liaising with external source systems, monitoring all system load processes & the support of various Data Marts. In addition, I was responsible for training the team, setting objectives, authorising leave, planning work and allocation of resources within the team.
• Business and Customer Management: Primary for establishing and maintaining good working relationships with the customer on operational day-to-day issues
• Service Delivery: Ensuring that the service is delivered within the SLA targets appropriate for each part of the Data Warehouse, escalating issues with the client and managing client expectation, liaising with O2 Marketing and Finance on how to further expand, support, automate and exploit the various data marts to provide maximum benefit.
• Technical Design Authority: Responsible for evaluating & authorizing all releases (in house or third party) going into the Data warehouse, whilst calculating risk offset by priority. Member of the O2 CDG (Core Design Group) and as such was responsible for the majority of O2’s software and hardware environments. This included checking current capacity and growth of all servers and databases, as well as catering for potential upgrades
• UNIX Development: Responsible for maintaining and developing +400 Unix scripts. These scripts were used to perform ETL manuipulation, Database Loads, FTP and Generating Reports.
• Nucleus DBA: Administrator for the O2 nucleus database (the biggest Nucleus database in the world, being queried by over 200 users). Responsibilities included general maintenance, performance tuning and administration of this 2-terabyte flat file database.
• UNIX Administration: Monitored performance on 4 different Tru64 Servers, minor Administration tasks (such as adding patches, adding new users, housekeeping, backups & Ensuring Security)
• Data Quality: As part of the CDG was partly responsible for ensuring that data-quality was maintained from the initial source feeds into the data warehouse and through to the data marts
• Control-M Developer: Designed and managed the running of the production schedule, optimising & automating several hundred jobs on a daily basis to ensure that data was loaded on time, within SLA and without compromising data quality or user availability.
• ETL Developer: Responsible for designing and developing the ETL interface for all source Feeds interacting with the data warehouse. Also created various bespoke Unix scripts as well as a number of Ab-Initio Graphs to manipulate and load data between the Data Marts. Other duties included fixing various PR (Problem Reports) raised by clients, checking the data within the database was correct, Writing queries to provide ad-hoc data to O2 Finance and ensuring all ETL processes were automated.
• Business Reporting: Combined different data marts in order to produce specific data models and reports, enabling O2 to effectively highlight specific customers for various campaigns. Headed the rollout of O2’s preferred reporting suite (Brio 6.4.4 mounted on an Oracle 9i database).
• Support: Role included being the Primary 24-hour On-Call Support member for all O2 critical systems.
• Led a 4-person development team, supporting a series of Unix, Business Objects, PERL, C++, Access 97, Excel and DB2 based applications. Also ensured that all Fault Tickets raised by Energis’ users were resolved within SLA.
• Unix Development: Unix Scripting (including K-Shell / bash-shell and born-shell scripting) for FTP / E-mail / Data Extract and Loading. Other related duties included basic Unix administration such as creating accounts, monitoring disk-space and checking server activity
• WebObjects Developer: Created a number of reporting applications allowing Energis and it’s Customer to query the grade of service, Customer base and CDR usage, which in turn were used by directors and published to the city. These applications were written using Objective C++, HTML / DHTML, Java Scripting, Java Applets and then deployed using Actuate Reporting suite.
• Business Objects Developer: Providing report capabilities to Energis’ engineers so as to effectively audit and improve their Hardware Technology. The role required Complete Universe design using the Business Objects Suite coupled with techniques such as Oracle SQL (Creating tables, constraints, indexes and database design), DB2, OLAP Cubes and Data mining
• Other technologies: Provided Technical Support in areas of PERL, ACCESS, RRDD (Round Robin Database Development), Select Enterprise and Visio.
• Managed the transition of 4 applications written by 3rd party suppliers into LogicaCMG support contracts. On each occasion, took the technical lead in the bid phase and subsequently in stabilisation / handover of the application to team members.
• Support: Role included being the Primary 24-hour On-Call Support member for all of Energis’ CDR business critical systems.
BSc with Honours in Computer Sciencee
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