Resume

The Neurability Foundation - a 501_c3 non-profit incorporated in Connecticut - is the collaborative embodiment of my research and experiences in building and managing communities and teams of neurodivergent individuals.

Our team of volunteers develops the curriculum of the Neurability Academy, equipping neurodivergent individuals to better approach the workplace, and the evolving definition of the Neurability Campus, a community pattern that can be deployed on a virtual, municipal, and/or institutional basis to provide supporting structures and affordances for a neurodivergent group to integrate into the host community.

The foundation also fosters the development of open tools in support of individuals and groups with divergent neurocognitive architectures.

Following on from the awareness raised through the neurodiversity and employment symposia, and the success of the neurodivergent recruitment hackathon, I was invited by Auticon to lead the inception of Auticon Australia in a new working paradigm - fully integrated neurodivergent teams deployed into the client origanisation.

Having sourced, screened and interviewed the initial team, I led its deployment to its first engagement with the largest retail chain in Australia.

When COVID hit, with the corresponding lockdowns, I successfully transitioned the engagement and team to a fully distributed remote model, delivered projects in areas ranging from point-of-sale validation (through robotics), labelling and price-setting (computer vision), to internal data science and software engineering initiatives.

My wife and I founded Praxorium with the objective of collaboratively developing through application - praxis - the interdisciplinary, systems-based, complexity-embracing approaches we have come to value in approaching the intractable wicked problems that humanity faces.

Through these collaborations, we have been developing approaches such as Kairotic Flow, Commons Governance, as well as tools for emergent collaboration and collective sense-making.

Beyond the customary technology consultancy, Tech Advisers marks an inflection towards the study and application of neurodiversity as a competitive advantage. Following on from my talk “Integrating outliers in agile practices” at the Brisbane LAST Conference and becoming a co-moderator of the world’s largest Asperger’s syndrome community (/r/aspergers on Reddit, with more than 150k users), I partnered with Thriving Now to deliver:

• 2019 Brisbane Neurodiversity and Employment Symposium
• 2020 Sydney Neurodiversity and Employment Symposium
• First Sydney IT neurodivergent recruitment hackathon

Led the product side of a (successful!) Level 1 PCI-DSS compliance initiative, with emphasis on agile project management of multiple cross-company initatives with stakeholders in all functional areas. Revitalised and gave voice to Neto’s internal communities of practice in Architecture, Agility and Development.

After an initial period of getting to know the business through working in the flagship product in the Consumer Team, I instigated the formation of the Data Team, identifying and implementing the key drivers of data-driven product development.

Assisted in the migration of all of Everyday Hero’s stacks to AWS, the containerisation of several applications into Docker, adoption of a micro-services architecture around an event-processing pipeline and CQRS/ES for reporting, API, and behavioural marketing uses.

I stepped in to manage the OtherLevels development team in lieu of the outbound CTO. Prior to deciding not to pursue the role beyond probation, I successfully implemented issue tracking and sprint planning, and cleared up a technical backlog that was overshadowing product development.

I joined AOT in a new trial role to help examine the business viability of several acquired business to consumer (B2C) travel and accommodation websites. By reengineering application workflows we doubled the conversion rate of one of the websites, and through metrics analysis gained additional insight into consumer behaviour and demand. We also recovered the SEM ratio from a clear loss to a 20% ROI by re-structuring accounts, analysing performance data and automating bidding.

My final recommendation, after ascertaining the enterprise architecture needs of joint B2B and B2C operations, was that AOT’s core systems and business processes need to be re-architected and rebuilt before integrating the two disparate business models (B2B, which is AOT’s core business and the miscellaneous and unprofitable B2C web properties).

I joined Kudoo just in time to refine the business model and design the roadmap to take us from a mock-up of a brilliant idea to a Facebook-commerce site that soon went live in The Netherlands, and was on track towards the planned international rollout.

Initial go-live occurred after an intense four months of sourcing infrastructure from external vendors and rapidly hiring technical staff and contractors. The CTO (to whom I directly reported) and I also did much of the required coding ourselves. The resulting systems, built using agile development methodologies, flawlessly fulfil business needs and can be scaled horizontally to handle even the most rampantly optimistic scenario of international growth.

Other achievements with Kudoo included delivering national bank level compliance and reporting, aiding in the negotiation of innovation grants with tax authorities, collaborating with financial logistics experts to deliver an international finance infrastructure blueprint, negotiating terms with payment systems providers and mapping out potential PCI/DSS issues.

My main focus at Booking.com was the scalability, maintainability and time-to-market of new features using agile development methodologies. My first achievement was re-engineering the organically grown web services code base. The resulting system was able to handle a 400% increase in transactional volume (up to 5 million transactions per day) with only a 100% increase in system resources. This system is now considered an ideal assignment for new developers due to the clarity of its code, documentation and test suite.

My next achievement consisted of updating the ailing Messaging Engine – which manages communication of reservation information to guests and hotels – and evolving it from a single-server architecture to a massively parallel system that presently serves more than 5 times its original traffic, with stronger resilience and recovery capabilities.

I also contributed to the evolutionary maintenance and development of new functionality for most of Booking.com’s other systems, gaining experience across functional areas and collaborating with stakeholders at all levels in all business areas. Heavily involved in PCI/SOX compliance, negotiating technical integration with leading hotel chains, designing and implementing technical hiring procedures, conducting technical, end-user and professional development training, organising events, project management, agile transformation, and countless other “little details” of being a “developer” in this remarkably flat, agile, and hard-hitting organisation.

The challenge at Guestcentric was to build their core technology platform in six months. This platform continues to drive their ever-growing business. Subsequently trained the incoming mainline developers and operations staff on the platform, and jointly developed the first business objects.

Engagement lead, managing teams maintaining and evolving Portugal’s most-visited portal and Portugal Telecom’s most significant web presence, sapo.pt. Ad-hoc scrum master for the two Segula teams on-site, and project manager of the overall engagement.

Responsible for giving support, continuity and evolution to a suite of legacy applications in the financial arm of the Portuguese post office. After analysing and (where the source was unavailable) reverse engineering the applications, I developed a code generation system which enabled new business rules to be coded into the system from a descriptive language. As a result, support calls dropped by 35% and response times by approximately 60%.

Designed the core technologies for a document management system then guided the subsequent application development and customisation for major pharmaceutical industry concerns. I also wrote the developer’s handbooks and collaborated on end user documentation.

Designed and led the development of a multi-platform “instant portal” tool, using code and template generation techniques to implement generic content management systems and front ends. Applied that technology in the development of two major portals that were in short order acquired, unchanged, by Portugal’s two leading ISPs.

Implemented a web application development framework integrating Markdata’s Audience Analysis Engine. Led the development of the online version of the flagship product, Telereport. Designed and led the development of a TV news clipping and analysis engine, Telenews. These products are the reference for national broadcast analysis and have international implementations in several countries including the UK, The Netherlands, Brazil and the US.