Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Experienced technology and business leader with expertise in customer-centric innovation, product strategy, impactful AI, scaling and culture. Enjoys advancing the state of the art.
Delivering self-driving software and hardware packages for third-party vehicles, including on-highway shuttles (US, UK and Europe), light industry (airports and yards), heavy industry (container movement in ports) and asset monitoring (solar farms). Ensuring that the Oxa Driver software is configurable for multiple vehicle types, sensors, compute packages and domains. Led and grew a team of over 300 people. Established the Solutions and Customer Support functions and processes. Introduced the necessary structures and processes across product, technology and program management to deliver Universal Autonomy across a variety of software, ML/AI, hardware and operational teams in the UK, Canada and North America. We focused on learning from commercial deployments, scaling vehicles driven by Oxa, driving down the cost and time to deploy, and expanding our capabilities to operate in even more environments.
Leading most of the Creator engineering teams at YouTube, including YouTube Studio, Analytics, Channel Memberships, Paid Digital Goods (e.g. Super Thanks), BrandConnect (influencer marketing) and YouTube Giving (charitable fundraising).
Amazon acquired Sizmek Ad Server and Dynamic Creative Optimisation in June 2019, and I joined as COO (leading the product and engineering group) to integrate the team. In April 2020, I became CEO. Led a multidisciplinary team of 400 (excluding sales and resellers) across the Americas, EMEA and APAC. Established the group as a successful Amazon team, drove adoption of best practices across business, product, UX, engineering and operations, delivered 'better together' partnerships with Amazon Advertising, and established the future vision for third-party ad serving & creative at Amazon.
Grew and led a team of 300 machine learning scientists, software engineers, product managers and designers working on some of Amazon’s most challenging programs. • Personalisation and Dynamic Merchandising – delivering new customer experiences, and introducing increasingly sophisticated machine learning/deep learning. • Advertising - worldwide remarketing for Amazon, real time bidding, growing the Sponsored Display product, started the dynamic video program that led to 'shoppable video ads', developing Audience targeting and measurement products, and working on malware detection. • Worldwide product relationship data – driving up precision and recall to power the Amazon customer experience e.g. books and TV series, bibliography, discography and substitutable products for the grocery business. Over the years, we went from heuristics and human input through to deep learning. • Talent Management – we delivered web applications for Amazon's talent management processes, including annual review, a system for managing underperformance, monitoring spans & layers in organisations, and automating workflow for career promotions. • Automated Talent Sourcing – we pioneered the use of machine learning to prioritise job candidates, carefully negotiating the ethical and legal requirements. • Resilience - tools to assist with root cause analysis in Amazon’s microservice architecture. • Storyteller - a web application for Amazon Studios to create storyboards from movie/TV scripts. Diversity & Inclusion - established the Amazon Women in Engineering bursary, sponsored the Scotland Women in Technology Awards, supported the Amazon Early Insights program. Finalist in the 2018 Barclaycard everywoman Male Agent of Change awards. Public speaking and media interview experience.
Launched and grew Amazon's first remarketing program. This team was the first to integrate with Amazon’s nascent ad technology, including Real Time Bidding (RTB) and identity systems. We iterated on the customer experience, developed a scalable architecture to handle Amazon’s catalog and clickstream, and optimised targeting and bidding, making use of machine learning. Launched Artist Central, which enabled musicians, record labels and managers to upload promotional content to Amazon (photos, biographies, free streaming tracks, and videos). I was responsible for the business plan, product development, design, engineering and operations. Following success in North America, I led the rollout to Europe and Asia and the eventual handover to the Amazon Music team. Led various other programs, including SoundUnwound (an 'IMDb' for music), Newer Versions (creating links to the latest versions of products on Amazon), and Search Suggestions (a social search program sponsored directly by Jeff Bezos).
Led analysis, design and development of web interfaces and re-engineered business processes for Personal Customer Setup and Account Opening at Barclays bank. Managed a blended workforce of Accenture consultants, client staff and suppliers onshore and offshore. Served as Technical Architecture Authority for the broader £40MM retail banking programme, identifying and closing architectural gaps and improving the development architecture and processes.