Alicante, Valencian Community, Spain
I work as an interim Head of IT / CIO or Head of PMO, depending on what's needed. Sometimes that's full accountability for an entire IT function, reporting to a CEO or PE representative. Sometimes it's building and governing a multimillion-euro IT service operation – most recently a €5m annual service providing independent control across a €150m greenfield European Commission programme. Sometimes it's building an Agile PMO and portfolio from scratch across more than 140 companies. And sometimes it's walking into a programme stalled at 5-10% progress and getting it back on track within weeks. The technical side is the easier part. What matters more is the mindset. I lead with an Agile and lean approach because it works. I try to read the system before problems surface, adapting operating models and ways of working so teams are set up to succeed rather than firefighting. I build environments where people genuinely want to deliver: removing obstacles, empowering the team, acknowledging good work, investing in professional development. The best thing an IT leader can do with engineers is treat them as human beings. If you do that well, they don't want to leave. I also believe IT should do more than support the business. It should act as an engine, pulling innovation forward, showing what's possible with technology, and helping other functions grow more easily. That takes a particular mindset. People who've worked with me tend to say: I keep politics out of the way, I'm direct about expectations, and I focus on what's being delivered. I lead with honesty, integrity and transparency, and hold myself to the same standards I set for the team. MBA in Management, Finance and Economics; IT Engineering degree; 20+ further leadership and delivery courses across traditional and Agile methodologies. Contracting since 2000, based in Alicante, available immediately across Europe and the UK.
Between contracts – a deliberate break that has included a house purchase and renovation, an intensive five-month Portfolio of Automated Trading Systems course, and self-directed familiarisation with AI and automation platforms (Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Power Automate, BMMI.ai and others). I've been contracting since 2000 and I'm available immediately.
Indra brought me in to set up a brand-new IT service for the European Commission's Simpl programme – an annual service worth around €5m, providing independent governance over a much bigger three-year programme (around €150m, six providers). The framework contracts were the only things that existed when I arrived, and even those weren't consistent between the two contracts involved. I built the operating model, governance structure and reporting from scratch – covering three-lateral collaboration, communication strategy, programme management, technology, QA & QM, testing, cybersecurity and compliance – and had it all working within about three months. I led seven mid-level managers within a wider team of around 50. There was a bump early on: the Head of Quality Management couldn't deliver what was needed, so after a few weeks of trying to support him, I had to let him go. His replacement started a couple of weeks later, and we'd recovered all the related delays by months three and four. Short contract, but I'm genuinely proud of what we got working in that time.
After a year leading Rubix's IT and cybersecurity programme recovery (see below), they asked me to build something more permanent: a group-wide Agile PMO across the whole organisation – 140+ companies, 21 countries, around €3.15bn in revenue. I introduced a common methodology, moved project tracking into Jira, and built largely automated reporting in Power BI, so for the first time leadership could actually see what was happening across the group. The core portfolio was around 50 projects, but it grew to 80-100 as two other business portfolios asked to join voluntarily – which I think says more about whether it was working than any metric I could quote. I chaired IT steering committees across seven regions, worked with 20+ project managers, regional IT leaders and 2 cybersecurity managers, and helped coordinate a group-wide ERP review (over 100 systems to assess and prioritise). Reporting matured enough that PE steering committees went from bi-monthly to twice a year. Following an EY assessment, I also governed the improvement of IT and cybersecurity maturity across 20+ domains, moving from Initial levels to Defined and Quantitatively Managed levels.
This was the role that got me into Rubix in the first place. I was brought in to recover a 140+ project IT and cybersecurity programme across seven regions that had stalled at around 5-10% progress. The previous Programme Manager and the IT Director and Head of Cybersecurity had reached a genuine impasse, and no one was moving forward. With an Agile mindset, my first job was rebuilding how the three of us worked together. Once that was sorted, I went through every project across all seven regions with the relevant project managers and regional IT leaders, re-aligned them with the group's IT strategy and local circumstances, and we were back on track within two to three weeks. I led 16 project managers and 2 cybersecurity managers, supported integration work across around 35 companies, and helped with due diligence on a further 20 acquisitions. Over the course of this role and the one that followed, the work we did on endpoint, server, firewall, 3rd party providers and network security contributed to our BitSight rating moving from the Basic band into the Advanced band – tracked biweekly via penetration testing.
International travel and relocation, including a property purchase and renovation project in Barcelona; return to the interim market extended by COVID-19 market conditions.
A shorter contract, but an interesting one. FAO's Statistical Working System provides the statistical data that supports international aid decisions for developing countries – so the stakes, in a quiet way, were pretty real. I led the Agile delivery side of things: a four-person platform team plus four data scientists. We re-hosted the platform on AWS, which gave FAO a lot more flexibility to scale it, and delivered a number of new statistical modules. Reporting into FAO's IT directors meant working across a genuinely complex, multi-department UN environment – lots of stakeholders, all with their own priorities.