Harvington, England, United Kingdom
A multi-skilled 4th line support engineer carrying out a variety of roles that span both customer facing and technical activities with good all-round ability to prioritize my workload to meet contractual obligations and deadlines whilst comprehending complex and interdependent business and technical processes. Owning problems while working with others who have domain specific knowledge to permanently correct issues and where necessary expanding my investigation to associated environments ensuring that any issues identified in lower environments are not transferred into the production environment. I provide technical pre-sales consultancy such as answering customer requests for information as part of the proposal process and on site technical sales support, visiting customers and answering any technical questions as part of the sale process. To further my technical skills I take on projects such as the refactoring of IMPACTs reporting application from one that’s over ten years old to a completely new version ensuring all aspects of the customers functional experience continues without any interruption. Core Skills • Excellent interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills. • Client focused approach to work. • A flexible attitude with respect to work assignments and new learning opportunities. • Ability to manage multiple and varied tasks with enthusiasm and prioritize workload with attention to detail. • Perform technical pre-sales consultancy as part of the sales process. • Providing the technical input for customer request for proposals. • Show initiative, take responsibility, is adaptable and able to cope with changing and evolving priorities • Ability to identify and implement process improvements • Proactively participate in skills improvement training and encourages their teams to participate • Ability to operate collaboratively, coordinating direction, providing alternative ideas and influencing others within a global team environment • Ability to interface with vendors on Operational & Technical issues • Documents and publishes knowledge base solutions
A multi-skilled 4th line support engineer carrying out a variety of roles that span both customer facing and technical activities with good all-round ability to prioritize my workload to meet contractual obligations and deadlines whilst comprehending complex and interdependent business and technical processes. Owning problems while working with others who have domain specific knowledge to permanently correct issues and where necessary expanding my investigation to associated environments ensuring that any issues identified in lower environments are not transferred into the production environment. I provide technical pre-sales consultancy such as answering customer requests for information as part of the proposal process and on site technical sales support, visiting customers and answering any technical questions as part of the sale process. To further my technical skills I take on projects such as the refactoring of IMPACTs reporting application from one that’s over ten years old to a completely new version ensuring all aspects of the customers functional experience continues without any interruption. Core Skills • Ability to manage multiple and varied tasks with enthusiasm and prioritize workload with attention to detail. • Perform technical pre-sales consultancy as part of the sales process. • Providing the technical input for customer request for proposals. • Show initiative, take responsibility, is adaptable and able to cope with changing and evolving priorities • Ability to identify and implement process improvements • Proactively participate in skills improvement training and encourages their teams to participate • Ability to operate collaboratively, coordinating direction, providing alternative ideas and influencing others within a global team environment • Ability to interface with vendors on Operational & Technical issues • Documents and publishes knowledge base solutions
Scaled Agile Framework Team Scrum Master for two development teams overseeing: • Project Planning • Program Increment Planning - Negotiating with Management the terms of under which our chosen feature would be deemed complete. • Backlog Grooming. • Sprint planning and Co-ordination. • Scrum of scrum meetings • Sprint Retrospective meetings. A key part of this role was the implementation of LEAN principles; to identify key issues my teams were facing, formulating solutions, then liaising with project management to get a number of very important infrastructure and process improvements implemented.
Technical Pre-sales • Working with the sales team gathering the customers technical requirements • Technical presentations • Working with the customer, understanding how our product could be integrated into their technology stack. • Demo systems configuration to showcase the software • Proof of Concept creation • Providing the technical input for customer request for proposals (RFP). • If a project was sanctioned I would collaborate with the project management and design teams to ensure the requirements met the customers needs. Product Support Duties • Perform Research and Development projects as required to determine candidate technologies, hardware and platforms for future product development. • Document research results and present findings to management. • Provide technical support to Engineering teams with ongoing development issues and design/architectural improvements. • Assist the design group working on both current and next-generation products. • Attend the corporate User Group giving presentations and offering advice and consultation to customers directly. Research and Development projects: • Conversion of the existing enterprise corporate product into Multi-Tenant capable web application. • Feasible to modularize the core application using the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGI) development framework so creating a set of loosely coupled services that inter-operate rather than the current set of closely coupled applications. • Authentication,authorization offerings; OpenAM, OpenDJ in concert with the Liferay portal to provide a secure enterprise wide “single sign on” mechanism allowing customers to have complete access to all the global corporate web products through one interface. • TIBCO Business Works integration suit and Enterprise Messaging Service to form the framework by which external customer applications could interface with our technology stack.
Project Management using Prince2, requirements analysis, development and testing of a major set of business logic alterations to a B to B application that previously allowed wholesalers to make orders on behalf of their customers before being altered to allow the customers to login and purchase as well as track their orders themselves.
Project Management using Prince2, estimating costs, business case analysis, requirements gathering, stage and risk control, SCRUM development, customising, testing, release control and deployment. 2nd and 3rd Line support, liaising with the customer, writing software patches as well as larger scale product enhancements that naturally involve consultation, analysis and design, development, testing, release and deployment in the live environment while working within Service Level Agreement contractual deadlines. Trained and managed new employees in company processes, customer communications and their expectations, OO techniques and the tools used in the delivery of change requests, patches and documentation reducing the time required before the employee becomes a productive member of staff by half so enabling the IT department to become more responsive to client demands for change and enhancements. Member of the Staff Group Committee organising company staff meetings to update everyone on current affairs, discuss new ideas and process improvements.
Over 3 years of commercial experience successfully designing Web Applications in HTML, CSS, PHP4 using the MySQL database that incorporated complete client support across the full project life cycle from initial consultation, project management, business requirements analysis, application design, development, maintenance, testing and user training coupled with responsibility for both project extensions and enhancements. Created my own company named IMS Solutions to market my web applications and hardware, requiring the design of the corporate identity through the creation of the company logo, brochures, leaflets, Christmas cards and organised events. Founder member of Grunden Wird Leichter (Company Foundation Made Easier). We held Berliner Volksbank sponsored exhibitions showing new start ups the trials and tribulations of starting their own firms while acquiring new business along the way.