Summary
IT professional with a strong background in technical support, unified communications, architecture, infrastructure configuration and deployment, and project management. In recent years have specialised in Cisco videoconferencing and unified communications, Microsoft Teams, Qumu Cloud, ON24, but have experience of management and architecture of both specialised and general IT systems. Multi-lingual with right to work in the UK, and U.S.
Skills & Experience Summary:
Technical Support/Troubleshooting—Experienced in all levels of application support, from desktop client, including use of tools such as dev tools in Chrome, and Wireshark, to network troubleshooting, and server side and database. Wide experience in service management platforms, including ServiceNow, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Remedy. Good understanding of ITIL processes.
Solutions Architecture and Design—Designed web applications, email infrastructure, UC, and streaming platforms used internally, including server sizing, load balancing design, network topology, security, and redundancy.
People management—Managed successful teams of between three and twenty members for over 10 years, delivering specialist technical solutions in video conferencing, intranet web development, mobile application development and support, streaming media, and project change management.
Project management—Successfully managed numerous projects, including:
● Streaming platform deployment
● Building new physical web-streaming studio
● Telepresence room rollout
● HR application development and deployment
● Projects to deploy visual communication services in new office locations
● E164 re-numbering
● Service desk migration
● Email domain migration and upgrade
● Mobile telecoms billing platform migration (handled change and risk management as part of
a program team)
Streaming media platforms—Managed and engineered projects to deploy streaming media platforms using technology by ON24, Qumu, Kulu Valley, and VBrick platforms. Extensive design and engineering work done using Linux, Windows, Flash, Wowza, Silverlight, ffMpeg, and other streaming technologies.
Written and spoken communication— Asked by John Wiley & Sons to write an authoritative book about mobile application development, which I successfully completed and published in 2001. Receive requests to speak at major conferences and to lead industry panels, and have done so both in Japanese and English. Communicate effectively in multilingual environments. Professionally wrote for major trade publications.
Professional History
Senior Platform Support Engineer, ON24, London, UK
Work as a third-line platform support engineer for a web streaming platform, which is customer facing, and includes deep-dive troubleshooting on issues ranging from networks to integrations. June 2019 to June 2023
Assistant Vice-President, UC Service Strategy, Barclays, London, UK
Worked as part of the unified communications service strategy team, evaluating and implementing new unified communications products into Barclays Bank and related companies. Deploy, document, test, and evaluate new products, and then project manage their deployment. Used this process to do infrastructure upgrades to video conferencing infrastructure, as well as new products, such as deployment of Cisco Meeting Manager. September 2017 to June 2019
Senior Unified Communications Consulting Engineer, Barclays Capital (as contractor), London, UK
Engineered UC solutions, tested, and documented those solutions. Worked as part of a network engineering team to architect and design infrastructure and endpoint deployments. Engineered and deployed Webex CMR infrastructure, Skype for Business gateway (based on Acano), Qumu streaming media solution, as well as deploying TMS, engineering a solution to synch TMS phone books with AD, doing interoperability testing of LifeSize endpoints, testing new software versions on MCUs, TMS, endpoints, and VCSs. 2014 to 2017
Senior UC Operational Support Engineer, Credit Suisse (as contractor), London, UK
Managed third-level support for a large global videoconferencing environment. Specialised in Cisco videoconferencing infrastructure, and have sole operational responsibility for all VCS, MCU, and TMS infrastructure. Also supported Microsoft Lync integration with videoconferencing platform.
2012 to 2014
Consultant, Mobile Travel Technologies Limited (as contractor), London, UK
Consulted on Japanese mobile content market for major airline clients, managed supplier contracts, testing, and carrier approval activities for Japanese market. 2012
Senior Manager, Media Services, Vodafone Group Services Ltd., London & Newbury, UK
Created Vodafone’s first webcasting program, and managed the deployment and operations of the infrastructure and studio. Architected Vodafone's global videoconferencing infrastructure, of 16 VCS Controls, 5 VCS Expressways, 800+ Codian bridge ports, 6 ISDN gateways (which I wrote a CPL script to do least-cost routing on), and a network which supports 2000 hardware endpoints, and a potential 60,000 software endpoints. Architected and project managed new deployments and migration to global service desk. Architected Vodafone’s current network, which does about 6 million minutes of video conferencing per month. 2005 to 2011
Global IT Projects Group Leader, Vodafone K.K., Tokyo, Japan
Led a group charged with facilitating global IT projects and initiatives. Included the developing web applications, managing support, and extensive project management. Was responsible for vendor management of Asia’s largest billing system project ($500m+USD). Managed developer support for Vodafone Live! 2003—2005
Education
Graduate Certificate in Novel Writing, City University, London, 2012
Managing Remote Teams, Vodafone Group Training Course, 2006
Coaching Course, Vodafone K.K. Learning Center, 2005
Vodafone Global Business Challenge, Placed first in Japan, and sixth globally, Vodafone Group, 2005
Project Management Course, Vodafone K.K., 2004
B.A. Asian Studies, Carleton College, 1992
Semester Abroad: Thailand, School for International Training, 1991
Languages
English, Native speaker
Japanese, Fully bilingual, Level 2 on Japanese Proficiency Test, 1996
Thai, Daily Conversation, Level 2 on Peace Corp/ETS Proficiency Test, 1991
Spanish, German, Portuguese, Rudimentary conversation
Nationality/Permission to Work
UK, Citizen, fully entitled to work in the UK
US, Citizen, fully entitled to work in the US
Not tested, but have implied right to live and work in Italy (and potentially the whole EU) and Brasil, as my dependent daughter holds citizenship in both places.