Richard Esson

Engineering Team Leader at Finova

Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom

About

Results-driven Engineering Leader and Product Owner with 10+ years of experience delivering complex software products across finance, agriculture, and automotive industries. Proven track record leading cross-functional teams, managing stakeholder relationships, and delivering high-quality, scalable solutions on time and within scope. Passionate about interactive digital experiences. Strong expertise in Agile/Scrum, cross-team collaboration, backlog prioritization, and technical project delivery.

Experience

  • Engineering Team Lead at finova
    Aug 2024 - Present · 1 yr 11 mos

    Lead and support software engineers in building both direct-to-consumer and business-to-business mortgage application software for banks and building societies. Oversee project delivery, foster collaboration, and ensure high-quality, scalable solutions aligned with business needs.

  • Engineering Team Lead at Iress
    Jan 2019 - Oct 2024 · 5 yrs 10 mos

  • Product Owner at River Agency
    Oct 2016 - Jan 2019 · 2 yrs 4 mos

    Key stakeholder of 5 Business Intelligence platforms for the automotive industry. (Volvo, Jaguar, Landrover etc) Collaborating with stakeholders to define business requirements, building and prioritising the product roadmaps. Working with 3 teams of software engineers, assisting them to develop and deliver valuable & high-quality product increments for clients. Provided support for other product owners in the business sharing best practice and refining our processes.

  • Muddy Boots Software (Ross on Wye, Herefordshire)
    • Business Analyst (Product Owner)
      Apr 2015 - Oct 2016 · 1 yr 7 mos

      Provided a solution allowing clients to generate advice for their customers in line with UK laws and regulation. Lead two International projects (New Zealand - PGG Wrightson & Canada - Cargill) to provide nutrition decision support services. The implementation and use of product management tools, providing critical information helping to define product roadmaps for product/development teams. Formed a new Agile (Scrum) team of 6, providing training and coaching.

    • Account Manager
      Apr 2013 - Mar 2015 · 2 yrs

      Provided account support for around 3 thousand customers using, dealing with licensing requests. Identified prospective customers, process sales, and provide them with setup support. Gathering requirements from potential and existing customers to build a new cloud-based product.

    • Customer Support Technician
      May 2012 - Apr 2013 · 1 yr

      Job Roles include: Customer Support: Providing email and phone support for a number of products across the company, CropWalker, Procheck, Orderbook, Greenlight Assessments & Greenlight Quality Control. My role also included being the Farm Services product champion. This role formed part of our support ticket escalation process with the aim of providing additional support to 1st/2nd line support & reducing the number of support tickets sent to the development teams where possible. Internal Support: internally I was also the Lync (Skype for Business) internal product champion. If we have any internal issues with the communications system I am the first line of support internally to deal with these support issues. Software Testing: As part of Deployments for our Greenlight Quality Control customers we will complete skim/regression tests of the products to ensure that we provide quality and functional software.