Manchester Area, United Kingdom
Security Architecture leader with over 20 years experience spanning, telecoms, enterprise architecture and large scale security transformation. I began my career in telecoms and network engineering, developing deep expertise in large-scale networks and network security. That operational grounding shaped a pragmatic architectural mindset focused on resilience, scalability and performance. I later transitioned into enterprise architecture leadership, defining market unit technology strategies and multi-year roadmaps across networking, end user services, hosting, cloud platforms and shared application estates. This broadened my scope from domain delivery to enterprise-wide transformation, governance and strategic planning. In recent years, my focus has been enterprise security transformation. I have led the uplift of the security architecture function, establishing structured governance, domain blueprints and target state architectures aligned to business growth and regulatory expectations. My role sits at the intersection of business strategy, cyber risk and transformation delivery, ensuring security is embedded into growth, modernisation and operational change rather than applied retrospectively.
Held accountability for the Shared Technology Strategy and Architecture function, overseeing a team of Enterprise, Technology and Security architects. In this role, I ensured that the function's strategy and roadmaps aligned seamlessly with broader business, security and security plans. • Led the Technology architecture function in a £60 million security programme: making impactful architectural decisions, augmenting the current team, approving deliverables, sponsored projects covering Endpoint DLP, DC and Network Security as well as Identity management; ensuring controls were in place and our security baselines were uplifted. • Sponsored the architecture planning for the Cloud Transformation programme, covering application roadmaps, tenant Consolidation and DC exit. Delivering workload placement strategies, roadmaps, migration paths, business cases. Ensuring costs are understood and how FINOPS is essential. • During the challenging times of COVID I led operational work streams, streamlining governance processes and facilitating remote working through initiatives such as VPN split tunnelling and video calling capabilities for care home residents. • Modernised the governance process, creating tiered approvals and an agile estimating process. Enabling a more agile business by embedding security by design and shifting governance left.
The role was dedicated to gathering and agreeing strategy and methodology alignment across all levels and market units, creating frameworks and approved standards as well as delivering repeatable solutions. • Championing the transition to zero trust network access from perimeter security, the most notable success was the move to internet based VDI solution for all our BPO sites. • Technical lead for the design and provision of a MU wide NAC solution with compliance driven timescales we enabled a low-impact approach to what was a high-risk rollout. • Led the transformation of the back-office telephony and video conferencing to a Skype/Teams capability. Followed the full lifecycle from business case approval, vendor selection, governance, including FCA compliance, negotiations and service design/transition across the whole estate. Enhancing smart working and saving costs. • Provided leadership and governance to the Global Services transformation portfolio totaling over £25m a year. • Architecture and Design Lead for DC segmentation project, balancing compliance, legacy applications, cost and the future Cloud aspirations, driving down risk.
Offering exceptional IT consultancy to the business, providing architectural guidance for IT services covering an estate of over 24000 internal customers, delivered by collaborating with a combination of 100+ internal resources, outsourced service providers and business engagement. • Lead several building moves programs, updating our strategies, creating a truly agile, collaborative, smart working experience. • Modernised the Engagement process for consultancy, design and architecture, formalising demand management. • Design team lead for a multimillion-pound project delivering advanced networking services to Bupa’s Care home business; creating a unique selling point in the market.
Provided 3rd line operation support across national telecoms infrastructure Lead technical escalation and incident resolution with a 24/7 NOC/SOC environment Maintained routing, switching and security infrastructure across complex distributed networks
Supporting a diverse range of business customers’ network and security solutions and liaising with other departments/engineers to ensure resolution within pre-described service levels. • 2nd line support of customers services including, MPLS, Firewalls, ATM/FR, DSL CATV & ISDN