Uttoxeter, England, United Kingdom
A strategic Head of IT\Head of Information Security with a demonstrated history of delivering significant programmes and services within the financial services and manufacturing sectors. A technology professional with roles across the full spectrum of technology transformation, capitalising on exceptional service delivery and cyber risk management. Adept at leading a full project lifecycle (Agile, Waterfall and hybrid) from initiation to service transition and benefit realisation in pursuit of business strategic goals. Maximises team output, ensuring full compliance with requirements from both regulatory bodies, (PRA/FCA/ICO/PCI/Sox), certification bodies (ISO), and frameworks (NIST\ITIL). Leadership Enabling, aligning, engaging and developing large professional teams to deliver to the very highest of standards. IT Operations Consistent reputation for improving business SLA’s, uplifting business outcomes and enhancing operational processes in complex working environments. Cyber Deep Insight and knowledge to help drive solutions to enhance operational resilience and robustness in the cyber space. Risk History of identifying, articulating and enacting strategies to minimise technology & business risk whilst maintaining key stakeholder engagement. Commercial Track record of turning vendors into partners and delivering multimillion pound cost savings and programmes (over £1m of savings in just 12 months in one instance). Change Deliver transformational change – both internally and through external change through strategic business partnering.
Primary objective to provide strategic leadership and direction of the technology function in line with the strategic business plan. Driving innovation, sponsoring technology initiatives and ensuring the effective delivery of IT solutions that enable business goals and objectives. Accountable for: • Enterprise Technology Strategy and Planning • IT Infrastructure and Operations • Service Delivery • Core Banking Software Development, Operational BI, Product Configuration • Cyber Security and Risk Management • Supplier Management, Procurement and Licencing Compliance Responsible for annual IT budget of £7m & People budget of £2.6m (45 FTE’s) Key Achievements • Saved £1m on OpEx spend within 12 months of starting • Achieved a 70% reduction in the number of vulnerabilities within the network since 2022 • Delivered new 3rd party security operations centre (SOC) and XDR solution (Cortex) • Delivered board-approved cyber, cloud and technology strategies • Implemented a £3m core banking upgrade - Sopra MSS • Doubled monthly product config output by team realignment and amending working practice • Organisational design and implementation to facilitate transforming into a modern digital mutual • Replaced a significant proportion of the technical legacy on the estate and introduced lifecycle management • Delivered an Azure landing zone for enablement services • Delivered the ‘stabilise and optimise’ programme of work that reduced annual P1 incidents from 12 to 2 • Undertook an operational resilience plan with reworked IBSs alongside metrics and a stress testing programme • Delivered £1m security posture uplift programme • Embraced Automation by introducing IBM WLS and reducing all manual intervention in ooh batch jobs • Reduced headcount on the service desk by 15% following delivery of the service delivery uplift plan • Supported over 14 internal talent moves • Consistently in top 5 internal influences, at all levels, and had 2 of top 3 most read blogs in the society
A core member of the Leadership team with specific responsibility for technical infrastructure and service operations. Accountable for the effectiveness of the entire organisations computing estate including 1st line Service Desk, PC Support, change management, release management, problem management, service introduction, infrastructure operations, business systems administration and platform architecture. Ownership of the ITSM solution. Responsible for the Service Level Definition and monitoring/reporting thereof. Accountabilities •Accountable for technical services for all the Society’s infrastructure requirements •Accountable for the effective delivery or IT services to the Society •Accountable for the effective utilisation of the team and ensures all operational areas of the organisation have sufficient service coverage •Responsible for the definition and delivery execution of the infrastructure technology roadmap for all functional areas within role remit. Driving all areas under role remit in terms of efficiency and improvement of quality to meet Service Level agreement and Operational Level Agreements •Owner of the entire groups service catalogue including complete management of the Configuration Management Database. •Owner of the Change Advisory Board ensuring change quality is paramount and setting the policies in place to identify critical technical change considerations •Owner of infrastructure 2nd and 3rd line support and delivery resource with key relationships with other IT and change teams and key stakeholders in the business •ITIL Process Owner and champion for Service Management, Asset Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Service Introduction, Release Management, Change Management and Capacity Management •Accountable for holistic service reporting to drive continuous service improvement across the production estate. Actively driving continuous improvements for the role and department
Managing the companies lease portfolio of assets from inception through to maturity and disposal.
Responsibility for the IT Infrastructure within JCB Finance, a NatWest/JCB joint venture with 40,000 assets, 25,000 agreements and over £1 billion of current lending to UK business. Ensuring that day-to-day operations are conducted safely and security in line with corporate governance whilst allowing the companies creative minds to innovate. Key Projects Managed • Introduced a cloud first framework within JCB Finance. • Technical, budgetary and operational oversight of the migration of JCBF systems from a on premise solution to a hyper-scalable public cloud (Azure) solution o Full M365 adoption o IaaS adoption for all Servers o AAD o Secure Networking (NSG, Express Route, MPLS, Firewalls and Conditional Access) o Citrix Cloud o MimeCast email Gateway, DLP and Archive o Azure Site Recovery o InTune Management o Azure Sentinel as the core security monitoring and alerting platform o Migration from traditional Webserver to hosted Web Apps o SQL Server Clustering and resilience o Licensing and Reserved Instances o Regulator engagement (FCA) o Robust Backup and Restore Capability o Outsourced Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution o Power BI o MIP • Introduced the cloud ‘Risk Framework’ • Introduction of a complete IT Service Desk solution • Cloud based telephony solution • Ensured JCB Finance and its dealer network were prepared for all aspects of the Data Protection Act 2018 including Data Retention, Information Classification and compliant policy and processes. • Oversaw the first Apprentice engaged within, and now employed by JCBF.
Responsibility for the IT Infrastructure and the internal Software Development team with in JCB Finance. The company internally develops all of its internal systems including its websites, CRM, Sales ledger and purchase ledgers. Key Projects Managed • Part of the companies Project Development Team that oversaw key strategic change with the organisation • Oversaw design and implementation of the JCBF Online Customer Portal • Ownership of the Information Security Standards ISO 27001 certification and associated policies • Attainment of PCI DSS certification • Introduced Qualys Vulnerability Scanning • Introduced Citrix (on premise) running on NetApp technology
Joined a graduate placement program – working on the Eurofighter typhoon in relation to the mono pulse radar.