In Industry

I have been working on and off in the finance sector for over 10 years and have consulted for a number the market leading investment banks including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital, Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse, UBS and ABN Amro. During this time I've learnt how to build large scale, complex, distributed, heterogeneous systems that connected a wealth of applications together across the front, middle and back office systems.

Given that these banks tend to periodically re-align their technology strategy with ongoing business challenges, I have worked within numerous operating environments (mainframe, Unix, Linux, Microsoft), using a plethora of different languages (SQL, Java, C, LISP, C++, C#, VB, Perl, etc.) to bind various vendor solutions ( MQ, J2EE, TibRv, Oracle, etc.) together to deliver business solutions within the Bonds, Credit Derivatives, Sales, Risk Management, etc spaces, as a project manager, developer, technical architect and business analyst.

During my working life I have spent a lot of time researching better ways to deliver software and ran a technical consultancy that focused on delivering training and mentoring services to companies interested in achieving the same goal. It was during my time running this company that I augmented the theory of delivering high quality software I researched as part of my doctorate with real-world feedback that I gained in the field.

Currently, I'm putting all this into practice as a the Chief Technology Officer at Cognifide. Cognifide is a software professional services company that has offices in London, UK and Poznan, Poland. Cognifide was borne out the frustrations of issues that arise from engaging and building trust relationships with offshore companies. Cognifide addresses these issues head-on in providing an established client engagement model for both its UK and European customer base.