Polis Pilavas, Associate Director, Application Systems

Polis Pilavas

Associate Director, Application Systems

TSYS International (www.tsys.com)

Location
Cyprus
Education
Master's degree, Computer Science
Experience
8 years, 11 Months

Share My Profile

Block User


Work Experience

Total years of experience :8 years, 11 Months

Associate Director, Application Systems at TSYS International (www.tsys.com)
  • Cyprus
  • June 2013 to July 2013

- SME duties (system architecture, solution design / approval, code reviews).

- Working closely with product owners, TAs, BAs, PMs to design / review / approve solutions and deliveries.

-Strong mentor / line manager of all technical team leaders.

- Leading distributed teams of developers / testers / solution designers / project leaders in a very fast-paced matrix delivery services environment, some of which overseas.

- Responsible for leadership, supervision, mentoring, task planning, solution design.

- Responsible for career development / KPIs of technical team leaders.

- Performance reviewer for all technical team leaders, matching team goals with department goals through quarterly 1-1 reviews.

- Delivery Services resource manager (pool of 30 engineers) . Responsible for allocating / utilizing all available resources in the most effective way across a multitude of projects running in parallel while meeting the deadlines. Owner of all utilization, allocation reports to senior management.

- Responsible for innovation, automation, and process improvement.

Manager, Application Systems at TSYS International (www.tsys.com)
  • Cyprus
  • July 2011 to June 2013

- Leading a team of 10 junior and senior developers / solution designers / project leaders in a very fast-paced matrix delivery services environment, some of which overseas.

- SME duties (system architecture, solution design / approval, code reviews).

- Responsible for task planning, solution design as well as code reviews and optimisation.

- Responsible for career development / KPIs of team members.

- Performance reviewer for all team members, matching team goals with department goals through quarterly and yearly 1-1 reviews.

- Coding, contributing technically to a number of complex projects.

- Responsible for managing and driving concurrent technical projects (Issuing / Acquiring credit card management software) of various sizes (some over 1 million GBP) from inception to completion for a number of international clients in the Banking industry (i.e. Barclaycard, Entercard).

- Responsible for allocating / utilising all available team resources in different roles in the most efficient way across a multitude of projects running in parallel while meeting the deadlines.

- Working closely with project leaders overseeing the whole project lifecycle, i.e. requirements gathering and analysis, specification design from technical architects and business analysts or client through on-site workshops or remote conference calls, build - QA, delivery, UAT testing phase making sure deadlines are met.

- Project Manager for all client projects delivered by the team. This includes project planning, project execution, creation / ownership of PM plans, change requests, project status reports, etc.

- Client -facing, managing and overseeing all client - team communications while maintaining client "project pipeline".

- Managing 24x7 "Help Desk" production support services for major clients, overseeing quality standards and resolving escalations with production issues.

Senior Software Analyst at TSYS International (www.tsys.com)
  • Cyprus
  • July 2008 to July 2011

- Project leader for medium and large projects. This consisted of specification analysis / solution design / code delivery.

- Responsible for driving the project (i.e. analysis & design, problem solving, specification document writing / maintaining) as well as leading development / testing team and code reviewing of junior team members, while reporting to and closely working with Project Manager.

- Responsible for addressing operational and schedule discrepancies, in accordance with client requirements and departmental standards as set by the team manager.

- Actively involved in all project lifecycle phases, from inception to shipping and post Go-Live implementation and support.

- Responsible for the creation of appropriate program documentation (technical design documents) as well fully operational and tested code, successfully delivered on time.

- Actively participating in on-site and remote client design workshops.

- Responsible for advanced Service Desk issue resolution (i.e. performance related issues, database engine issues, advanced logic issues).

- Responsible for a number of junior members mentoring.

Software Analyst at TSYS International (www.tsys.com)
  • Cyprus
  • January 2006 to July 2008

- Actively participating in the parallel development & testing of small / medium / large client projects, delivering fully tested pieces of functionality as per signed solution / specifications.

- Exposed to the full SDLC

- Creating test cases / evidence for on-going projects.

- Actively participating in on-site / remote client UAT support / Dress Rehearsals / Go-Live implementation / post Go-Live warranty period support.

- Served as “Help Desk” administrator for 1+ year, responsible for the resolution of all issues in sensitive banking production environments.

Software Systems Analyst at ACNielsen (en-cy.nielsen.com)
  • Cyprus
  • June 2003 to September 2004

- Working in teams for the development of large Client/Server Statistical Database Systems (n-Tier RDBMS) running under the Windows Operating System.

- Undergoing through full lifecycle of RDBMS.

- Daily tasks include database analysis/design, front-end development in MS Visual FoxPro, existing software systems version upgrades, bugs tracking / fixing.

Education

Master's degree, Computer Science
  • at University of Manchester (ex UMIST)
  • September 2005
Bachelor's degree, Business Systems and Information Technology (BSIT)
  • at University of Northumbria
  • September 2003
Bachelor's degree, MIS (Management Information Systems)
  • at European University of Cyprus
  • September 2002

Higher National Diploma (HND) in MIS (Management Information Systems)

Specialties & Skills

Team Management
SME management
CREDIT CARD
PROJECT MANAGER
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT (.NET - C#)
TEAM LEADING / MENTORING
DATABASES (SQL, DDL, DML)
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE / DESIGN
Solution Design

Languages

English
Expert
Greek
Expert

Memberships

PMI (Project Management Institute)
  • PMP (Project Management Professional)
  • December 2012

Training and Certifications

PMP (Project Management Professional) (Certificate)
Date Attended:
September 2012
Valid Until:
December 2012