**Notes** > **Business** > **Career** > **CV of Darren Smith** &nbsp;&nbsp; # The CV / Resume of Darren Smith &nbsp; ## Overview - **Location:** Sydney, Australia. - **Email Address:** [email protected] - **Mobile Phone Number:** +61 (0) 420 928 123. - **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjsmith - **Personal Website:** https://www.darrensmith.com.au - **Github:** https://github.com/darrensmith - **Industry Experience:** eCommerce; FinTech (Payments); and "Future of Work". - **Relevant Roles:** Business Analyst; Project Manager; Product Manager; Growth & Innovation; Pre-Sales Consultant; Solutions Consultant; Integrations Manager; Technical Account Manager; IT Manager. &nbsp; &nbsp; ## Summary TBC. &nbsp; ## Experience - ***(May 2024 to Present)*** **Product & Technology Advisor.** **IndustrySwarm.** &nbsp; - **Advising For:** (i) Invoicing.com.au. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Consulting For:** (i) Ongoing Development of a Native Mobile App. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Building the Following Products:** (i) Circl.Ai (*work halted*). &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Nov 2022 to Apr 2024)*** **Senior Project Manager.** **Matter Design & Digital.** &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Project Management / Business Analysis:** Performed Project Management, Business Analysis and some Product Management across a variety of new and existing Accounts. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Agile Product Ownership:** Took on the role of Product Owner for my projects, selecting the Agile methodology to use for each project (either Scrum or Kan-Ban) and then managing the process - writing epics and stories, prioritising them and estimating their size. Also managed daily stand-ups and other rituals - as Scrum Master and interfaced with our Clients. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Interviewing / Recruitment:** Responsible for Interviewing all new Software Engineer candidates and interns. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Providing Team Training for Agile + AI:** Responsible for Providing Training on "Agile", "Writing User Stories", "Using LLMs (Large Language Models) to Support Work" and Other Subjects to those whom we hired and the rest of the team. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Pre-Sales Support:** Assisted with Pre-Sales efforts as required and ran a Tender / Vendor Selection Process for one Client where required. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Management / Leadership:** Led cross-functional teams of Developers, QA Analysts and Product Designers for various client-facing projects. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **My Achievement Highlights...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Brokerversity.com.au:** Delivered the Brokerversity Mortgage Broking Education Platform (https://www.brokerversity.com.au/) on schedule - receiving very positive feedback from the Client. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Nurse Patient Call System:** Delivered a Nurse-Patient Call System App for a Consulting Firm that Manages Aged Care Facilities. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Introduced Resource-Centric Planning Process:** Developed a unique Resource-Centric based Approach to Scoping Engagements and rolled it out to the rest of the team at Matter, via group training and one-on-one mentorship. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Personal Projects (Done out of work hours)...** &nbsp;&nbsp; - **Turned My Private Cloud into a Hybrid Cloud:** Setup 3 x Compute Instances on Oracle Cloud's "Always Free" tier and used the Tailscale Mesh VPN and QNAP QTS File Manager's Remote SFTP Filesystems to network / integrate these Public Cloud instances into my (QNAP-Based) Private Cloud. And then installed Portainer Business Edition across all nodes - both public and private - in order to create a single interface for managing containers across the Hybrid Cloud. &nbsp; - ***(Jan 2022 to Oct 2022)*** **Senior Product Manager.** **Freelancer.com.** &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Product Management + Delivery:** Responsible for running a Discovery process to support the strategies that I was working on, that included seeking input from merchants, customers, Customer Service personnel and the Product Managers for each of the ~6-8 products within the Freelancer business. Also managed execution / delivery using the "Scrum" Agile Methodology. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Strategy:** Responsible for building out a Sales and Marketing strategy for Escrow.com – identifying roughly 10 to 20 opportunities to optimise these functions. Also responsible for building out the AI Strategy – identifying opportunities to use GPT-3 to help solve problems from across the business – developing a roadmap of over 20 initiatives – covering Content Generation, Conversational AI (Chat), Project Discovery Support, Skill Enumeration and more. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Software Engineering:** Responsible for both architecture and development of a platform for prototyping new functionality across the various products within the Freelancer business, as well as any additional custom coding for individual prototypes. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **My Achievement Highlights...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Escrow.com Onsite Messaging Library for Merchants:** Part of the Escrow.com Sales & Marketing Strategy. Agile BA work and Project Management / Product Ownership for the Development and delivery of an On-Site Messaging / BPI Solution for Merchants. Thereby turning every merchant who had implemented Escrow.com payments into marketing channels for the brand. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **SEO Popular Queries Prototype (Node.JS / NodeRED):** Delivered a GPT-3 Powered “SEO Popular Queries” prototype for Freelancer.com – which extracted keywords and phrases from the description of a given project (using a prompt that I wrote) and then sent these to the Google Trends API to fetch high ranking related keywords and phrases then injected these into the Project page as SEO content. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Rapid Prototyping Platform (Node.JS / NodeRED):** Developed a rapid prototyping platform for GPT-3 prompt generation, testing and use, and a reverse proxy in-stream UX modification feature for rapid prototyping of features on the Freelancer.com website. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Dec 2020 to Dec 2021)*** **Senior Project Manager.** **Zip Co.** &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Project Management:** Responsible for Project Management of the Global Resource Portal Project, including - Global Stakeholder Management / Communications, Planning, Scheduling and Delivery, along with Reporting. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Business Analysis:** Responsible, in part, for Discovery and Business Analysis activities for my projects including – Requirements Elicitation (primarily through workshops, but also some 1:1 interviews) and Requirements Analysis. Worked with an external vendor to undertake these activities. Also did some additional BA work, for other projects belonging to the Merchant Services team, at the time. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Software Engineering:** Worked on a side-project to demonstrate how an AI-Powered Chat Bot could help stakeholders across the business (both architecture and development). Primarily using NodeRED (a Node.JS based event-driven low code programming environment) – which interfaced with other systems via API connections including Slack – which is where stakeholders could interact with and talk to the bot. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **My Achievement Highlights...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Global Resources Portal:** Worked within a cross-functional team – project managing the development of a Global Resources Portal for Merchant Integrations (including Discovery, Stakeholder Communications and Delivery / Execution), as well as undertaking Business Analysis activities – capturing and analysing requirements as needed. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **The Oracle AI-Powered Chat Bot (Node.JS / NodeRED):** Built “The Oracle” AI-Powered Chat Bot myself, using GPT-3 and the NodeRED low-code programming environment. Then trained it on a knowledge base of information about Zip and connected it to APIs so that it could obtain information on specific topics. The Chat Bot was able to answer questions about Projects, the Org Chart of the business, the History of Zip and it could Solve Plans, Write User Stories and much, much more. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Personal Projects (Done out of work hours)...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **IndustrySwarm Genesis LLM Server MVP (Node.JS / NodeRED):** I created a Large Language Model (LLM) Server using Node.JS within NodeRED. It provided an engine and a JSON-based file format for developing prompts to be executed by the engine. It also provided two main interfaces for prompt execution - a web-based unix-esqe terminal and an API. And supported many different modes for prompt execution including one-off, conversational and more. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **IndustrySwarm Identity IAM MVP (Node.JS / NodeRED):** I created an Identity and Access Management (IAM) System as a side-project using Node.JS within NodeRED. The system used RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) and OAuth2 + SAML in order for its users to implement identity and single sign-on for any one or more of their web applications. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Tim Bailey's Weather Chat-Bot (Node.JS / NodeRED):** Near the end of my contract at Zip, I started looking for other roles. One role was with a company that produced customer service chat bots. In preparation for my interview I created a demo of a chat-bot that sounded like Tim Bailey from Network Ten (on the television and who could answer any questions about the weather - in the past present and future. I used Node.JS within NodeRED, the OpenWeatherMap API and GPT-3 to build the chat-bot. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Cirrus Solar Project (Node.JS):** Was interviewing for a Pre-Sales role at Heroku within Salesforce. I had to do a pitch for a case study of a company called Cirrus Solar. I built a demo application that I deployed to Heroku and integrated with Salesforce. The application was integrated with an Arduino board that was itself wired to a small solar panel - with the voltage generated by the solar panel being streamed into the demo app, shown on a user interface and pushed into Salesforce for reporting. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Oct 2017 to Nov 2020)*** **Head of Growth Projects.** **Zip Co.** &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Strategic Partnerships:** Formed new relationships and managed existing relationships with strategic partners across tech, banking, payments and finance industries. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Product Management:** Worked with our strategic partners to identify opportunities to expand upon our existing service offerings or to offer new services to either their or our merchants and customers. Then worked with our partners to build out business cases to help us assess the viability of short-listed opportunities. And undertook Discovery on an as-needed basis. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Negotiation:** Negotiated both commercials and terms within contracts that we built out with our partners to support any validated opportunities that we planned to roll out. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Strategy, Growth & Innovation:** Worked on several Growth strategies for the business including the development of a strategy to help us solve the Acceptance Problem – which included the identification and delivery of a few different initiatives that helped us tackle this problem from different angles. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Software Engineering:** Responsible for both architecting and building out solutions to business problems that I came across in my day to day - mostly in Javascript (Node.JS). This included prototypes for customer or merchant-facing products, as well as complete (final) products for general business problem-solving. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **My Achievement Highlights...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Shop Everywhere:** Led the “Shop Everywhere” initiative. Zip's largest revenue channel as of Nov '21 with ~$574mil TTV - or Total Transaction Volume (our main metric) - and ~$11.5mil of Fees / Revenue generated. This was our top priority initiative within the Acceptance Strategy that I was working on / leading. The goal was to open up Zip's closed loop payment network to run on open loop scheme rails so that Zip's customers could use their Zip account anywhere that Mastercard was accepted. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Gift Card Marketplace:** Led the “Gift Card Marketplace” initiative. Zip’s 3rd largest revenue channel at the same point (~$349mil TTV; ~$7mil Fees / Revenue). This was the second top priority initiative within the Acceptance Strategy. The goal was to allow Zip customers to use their Zip account to purchase Gift Cards from our website, many of which were for merchants that we had been unable to sign up ourselves onto our closed-loop payment network. I made use of the opportunity of a company-wide internal Hackathon to put together a team to deliver the MVP for this, and we won third prize and were the only project selected to go to market. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Pocketbook Rewards Beta:** Worked on the “Pocketbook Rewards Beta” – A precursor to Zip Rewards. Primarily performing Business Analysis duties. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Payment Gateway RFP:** Managed a formal RFP process to select Zip’s new payment gateway for repayments. Around ~10 gateways participated (all the major ones including Stripe, Mastercard, Visa / Cybersource, Westpac QValent, etc). Gave us an excellent insight into the market in Australia and allowed us to select the best option for us. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **User Research Function:** Prepared and executed upon a user research strategy for various products at Zip. Covering Engagement, Acquisition and other areas. Then produced deliverables for the product managers who owned each area to support their prioritisation efforts and decision-making. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **In-Store Zip QR-Code Purchase Prototype (Node.JS):** Created a prototype of a QR-Code based In-Store payment system. Where order templates can be created with a unique QR-Code generated for each. That QR-Code is then attached to the product in-store (like a piece of art hanging on the wall). The customer uses their mobile phone to take a picture of the QR-Code. Which opens a Zip payment flow for an order derived from the corresponding template. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Partner Email DB Comparison Tool (Node.JS):** At one point during my time in the G&I team I was talking to a BDM who was complaining about a problem they had where they wanted to identify the common customers between Zip and the merchant they were managing. But neither side wanted to reveal their full list. I created a tiny Node.JS app that took the customer list from the merchant and generated hashes for each email (that could not be decoded). Which were given to the BDM who then plugged Zip's customer list into it. This app I built then spat out a list of email addresses that were common to both Zip and the merchant. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Doshii - Zip Connector Prototype (Node.JS):** This was a small middleware app I built in Node.JS that sat between the Zip payment API and the API of another payment platform called Doshii (used in restaurants mainly). It facilitated transactions made by a restaurant using Doshii, where the customer wanted to pay using their Zip account. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Assessed Many Opportunities that Didn't Proceed:** Worked on a business case for Zip to become a bank - which included assessment of core banking systems, resourcing costs and so on; Worked on another business case to add the ability for Zip customers to purchase insurance when paying for their orders - assessing a number of different vendors; Worked on early stage discussions with Klarna for how we might partner with them to help them enter the AU market; and many, many more. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Other Activities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Antler Start-up Generator:** Took a few months off during my employment at Zip to participate in the Antler Start-up Generator Programme. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Personal Projects (Done out of work hours)...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(2018) Built My Private Cloud:** Bought a QNAP QTS-882 8-Bay Network Assisted Storage (NAS) device. With 4-Core 2.4gHz CPU, ~50tb of HDD space and 48gb of RAM. Configured it as a private cloud using QTS, software-defined networking, the built-in Virtualisation Station to run a pfSense firewall VM (with - reverse proxy rules setup using the HAProxy plugin for it) and the built-in Container Station (Docker) in which I self-hosted all of my enterprise applications for my business ideas. Including Portainer Business Edition for container management, Jira-like ticketing using Plane, Confluence-like wiki using xWiki, a Plex media server, Kavita eBook management, emulatorJS for running retro games via a web browser that were stored on the server, GitLab for source control, Jenkins for CI/CD and a range of individual NodeRED containers for each of my product projects that I have been working on. Also played around with Enterprise WAP and Radius on a wifi router that sat behind the firewall for authentication and logging. As well as LDAP and Active Directory. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(2018) ISNode Web Framework (Node.JS):** Built a modular Node.JS-based web application framework that supported dynamic URL generation (from controllers) as well as dynamic Swagger API generation and a range of other modules. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(2020) Blackrock Web Framework (Node.JS):** Refactored the ISNode web application framework to use more modern programming techniques including rxJS (Microsoft's Reactive Extensions) for Reactive Programming. Was compatible with applications built for the ISNode framework. Could be used as an application server OR as a dependency within a broader Node.JS project. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(2018) Cloudflare Dynamic DNS Updater (Node.JS):** Built a small app in Node.JS that would ping an online service on a recurring basis in order to fetch the public IP address of the machine the app was running on. And whenever that IP address changed, it would update a DNS record for that machine within Cloudflare via their APIs. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(2019) MediaHub Media Server (Node.JS):** Built a media server that looked and felt like the popular open source product Plex. But focussed on allowing it to index and process eBooks in PDF, mobi and epub formats. It also contained a user interface that allowed users to search and explore through these eBooks and view them directly in context within their web browser. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(2020) URL Shortener Service (Node.JS):** A URL Shortener service that I built in Node.JS using my ISNode framework. Allowed me to attach to a domain (I used "daz.to" for a period), and specify mappings of short URL codes to full length destination URLs within a JSON file. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(2020) LinkedIn Scrapers (Node.JS):** Built two LinkedIn Scrapers in Node.JS using PhantomJS. The first would take a company name and dump a JSON file of all employees including the LinkedIn profile URL for each. The second would take the JSON file output from the first Scraper and recursively walk through the employees one by one - extracting ALL information from each of their profiles and dumping it into a separate JSON file locally. &nbsp; - ***(Jun 2016 to Sep 2017)*** **Head of Sales Solution Engineering.** **Zip Co.** &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Management & Leadership:** Managed a team of four Sales Engineers – two that helped me out with enterprise and channel accounts and two that worked on SMB opportunities. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Pre-Sales Activities:** Supported pre-sales across many large enterprise merchant & channel partner accounts – including up-front research of merchants and partners and preparation and in-person pitch that often included a click-through prototype of the proposed payments integration into their systems. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Solution Delivery / Consulting & Integration Project Management:** Undertook Discovery with our partners, then built out Technical Proposals including proposed solution architecture for them to guide their integrations. Project managed all integrations from Zip's end - Unblocking impediments and troubleshooting problems throughout the integration process. Managed from 5 to 10 integration projects at any one time. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Technical Account Management:** All integrations that I project managed, once live - became ongoing accounts that I was responsible for. Same with my reports. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Software Engineering:** Responsible for both architecting and building out solutions to business problems that I came across in my day to day - in PHP, Python and Apex. This included prototypes for customer or merchant-facing products, as well as complete (final) products for general business problem-solving. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **My Achievement Highlights...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Large Enterprise Merchant Integrations:** Over 20 enterprise merchant integrations, Including Catch.com.au (Zip's 4th largest revenue channel as of Nov '21 @ ~$195mil TTV - or Total Transaction Volume - and ~$4mil Total Fees / Revenue), Forever New (~$29mil TTV; ~$577k Fees / Revenue), Best & Less (~$26mil TTV; ~$512k Fees / Revenue), WebJet Exclusives, Australian Geographic and The Co-Op Bookshop. Covering Online & In-Store integrations. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Channel Integrations:** Roughly 5 new integrations, Including Retail Express & Retail Directions. Amongst these were In-Store Terminal & POS systems, eCommerce platforms and online payment platforms. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **SMB + Mid-Market Merchant Integrations:** Over 160 SMB and Mid-Market merchants integrated. When combined with Enterprise, Channel & Growth opportunities, accounts for over $1.3bn TTV with at least ~$26mil of Fees / Revenue collected as of Nov '21. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Super Retail Group Tender Response:** Responded within a cross-functional team of three to a major tender for billion-dollar retail group (Super Retail Group) and then pitched to them, culminating with us winning the tender - Zip's 8th largest channel of TTV (~$136mil TTV; ~$2.7mil Fees / Revenue; as of Nov '21). &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Introduction of a Pre-Sales Function:** Re-engineered integrations team process to include a pre-sales function (roughly two months into the job). After which I was promoted to Head of Sales Solution Engineering. The process included building out new artefacts to use, including a pitch deck and technical proposal template. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Zip API Playgrounds (PHP):** At Zip we had a Legacy API and a New API for Online Merchant Zip Payment Integrations. I built a playground for each of these APIs using PHP on the back-end and Vanilla Javascript + JQuery on the front-end. These Playgrounds showed the (merchant) user a mock eCommerce experience where they could add products to their Cart, view their cart, proceed to checkout, select their payment option and finalise payment. At any point in the experience, the merchant could toggle the visibility of an API Viewer that showed the API request messages as well as any responses, tailored to their interactions with the UX. Allowing them to see exactly how the API works for such a website. We then hosted these playgrounds and provided links to merchants within the technical proposals we provided them. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Zip Salesforce Payment Plugin Prototype (Apex):** One of the merchants that I was working with during pre-sales was Trip-A-Deal. They had an online website that our standard payments integration was going to work quite well with. But also had a call centre where they assisted their customers in booking trips. The call centre employees used Salesforce to compile the order and take payment via credit card. I proposed that we could do something similar with Zip, and I created a functional prototype of a Salesforce Zip payment plugin in Apex. Unfortunately we didn't get around to making it production ready and rolling it out during my time in the Sales Engineering & Integrations Team. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Automated POS Configuration Tool (Python):** Another merchant that we were working with was Best & Less. They wanted to accept Zip both on their website and in all of their stores. The website integration was simple. But within their stores they were using PCEFTPOS software for their POS-driven payment terminals. We had a plugin for PCEFTPOS so that part was fine. However it took a manual process to configure each POS terminal once the plugin was installed (by logging into RegEdit on the Windows-powered POS and add config keys). This was going to have quite a lot of overhead for their 1000+ POS terminals. So I created a tool in Python that allowed the SysAdmin to import a spreadsheet of config keys associated with POS IDs and to roll out the config change over the network in one go. It worked just as expected and saved the merchant a lot of time. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Oct 2014 to May 2016)*** **Pre-Sales Consultant.** **PayPal.** &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Pre-Sales Activities:** Supported pre-sales across many large enterprise merchant & channel partner accounts – including up-front research of merchants and partners and preparation and in-person presentation of a customised technical pitch that normally included a click-through prototype of the proposed payments integration into their systems. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Solution Delivery / Consulting & Integration Project Management:** Undertook Discovery with our partners, then built out Technical Proposals including proposed solution architecture for them to guide their integration. Unblocked impediments during integration. Managed up to 10 integration projects at any one time – used Salesforce & Google Sheets to track progress and providing weekly "PPP" reports. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Mentorship & Running Training Sessions:** Undertook mentorship duties during a Hackathon and outside of that – also ran training sessions for our partners and merchants – one example being training Agencies on the Magento PayPal integration. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Software Engineering:** Responsible for both architecting and building out solutions to business problems that I came across in my day to day - in PHP and Javascript (both front-end and Node.JS). This included prototypes for customer or merchant-facing products, as well as complete (final) products for general business problem-solving. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **My Achievement Highlights...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Large Enterprise Merchant Integrations:** Supported pre-sales and integrations across many large Enterprise merchant accounts such as for RAC WA, Opal (NSW), SunCorp and Flight Centre – covering Online and In-Store Payments Integrations as appropriate. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Channel Integrations:** Supported pre-sales and integrations across many large Channel accounts, with one example being QuickBooks Online. Dressed up as Mario (an example of a Plumber – one of the types of merchants who would use the QuickBooks Online Invoice Payment integration) - to train their SMB sales staff on how to use it. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Prototype Development Process + Platform:** Introduced a new point-and-click demo / prototype process and platform to the pre-sales function for both Desktop / Mobile Websites (in JS) and Native Mobile Apps (using Apache Cordova), resulting in a shorter sales cycle. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Hackathon Mentor:** Mentor to Developers within the Battlehack (Public) Hackathon that was held in Melbourne over a 48hr period. Helped participants understand payment systems integrations, troubleshoot issues and answered any questions they had about how to approach any technical aspects of their projects that they were working on. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Splendour Payments Wristband Trial (PHP, JS):** In a team of 3 who built a payment wristband solution, which we trialled at Splendour in the Grass music festival, and received a provisional patent for. I built the on-boarding system that allowed PayPal users to link their PayPal account to a payment wristband that we gave them. It was built in Angular (Javascript) on the front-end and PHP on the back-end. I then attended the festival, setup the systems and handled operations and user research in the field for the duration of the trial. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Personal Projects (Done out of work hours)...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Crypto P2P Lending Bot (Node.JS):** Built an algorithmic lending bot in Node.JS that operated on "loanbase.com" - a Crypto P2P Lending Platform that existed at the time (it has since ceased operation). The bot used platform APIs to pull the complete and incremental history of loans and their repayments along with whatever additional metadata it could pull about the borrowers. It then assigned inverse "risk of default" scores to each of the borrowers based on an algorithm that I wrote and offered loans to high-scoring borrowers. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Feb 2008 to Sep 2014)*** **Project Manager + BDM - Industrial Auctions (2008 - 2009)** **Senior Business Analyst - Technology (2010 - 2014).** **GraysOnline.** &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Project Management:** Responsible for Project Management of those projects that I took on - originally asset disposal projects, primarily for insolvency and repossessions, and later on - technology projects. This included - Stakeholder Management / Communications, Planning, Scheduling and Delivery / Execution along with Reporting. Asset Disposal projects included managing cataloguing of assets, their valuations, sale setup, marketing and logistics. Technology projects utilised a Hybrid Agile (Scrum) / Waterfall-Based Approach. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Business Development:** Took on some small "warm" leads that were generated by our team in the Phillipines through cold calls - whilst working in the Industrial Auctions team. These usually involved meeting the vendors, viewing and assessing any equipment that they wanted to sell, helping them understand the value of their assets, explaining the auction / sales process to them and ideally closing the deal then and there. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Business Analysis:** Responsible for Business Analysis activities for all technology projects that I took on, including – Requirements Elicitation (through interviews, workshops, surveys, document analysis and other techniques) and Requirements Analysis. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Product Ownership:** Also wore the hat of the Product Owner for my technology projects (within an Agile Scrum process) – breaking the projects apart into Epics and then Stories and Tasks before writing out the User Stories and Acceptance Criteria and undertaking prioritisation and estimation. Also responsible for un-blocking any impediments the developers had, and managing delivery / execution. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Supporting QA / Testing & HelpDesk:** Supported the QA team by helping them write out test cases and by participating in the testing process, also writing out Bug tickets as needed for the dev team. Also sat on the IT Help Desk and would troubleshoot any issues submitted and assigned to me - often needing to run SQL queries in MS SQL Server in order to figure out the problem. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Management & Leadership:** Managed a team of two Project Manager / Business Analysts whilst in the Technology team – myself included. Divided all incoming projects up equally between myself and my other team member. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Software Engineering:** Responsible for both architecting and building out solutions to business problems that I came across in my day to day - in both PHP and Front-End Javascript. This included prototypes and final products. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **My Achievement Highlights...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Technology) Analytics + Data Warehousing Systems Integration:** Integrated several Analytics & Data Warehousing Solutions, including Google Analytics, Site Intelligence, Alterian and Adobe Analytics – all on schedule and under budget. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Technology) Personalisation Systems Integration:** Integrated two Personalisation Systems - Optimost and Adobe Test & Target – on schedule and under budget. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Technology) eCom Site & Systems Integration / Development:** Built a new eCommerce website (GraysOutlet), Worked on the GraysEscape Travel Bookings website, Native Mobile App, SEO Optimisations, a BazaarVoice Ratings & Reviews system, Google Tag Manager, a PayPal Integration, a Rewards & Gift Cards Solution (all for both websites) and a Google Shopping Integration – on schedule and under budget. Responsible for solutions architecture of Rewards (.NET C# micro-service) and Shopping Feed (XSLT-based). &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Industrial Auctions) NSW Councils Asset Disposal Programme:** Managed an Asset Disposal Programme for NSW Councils. Primarily organising the cataloguing of plant and equipment from each council, then tracking those assets in an Excel spreadsheet, providing valuations for all of them, grouping them up into themes, creating auction sales, managing the logistics for inspection and pickup/delivery for bidders. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Industrial Auctions) National Asset Disposals (Incl. KleenMaid, ECP Australia):** These were two national companies that went insolvent. The majority of their assets were products that had not been sold (Whitegoods from Kleenmaid and Air Conditioning Systems from ECP) which were distributed across many 3PL warehouses across the country. I had to organise cataloguing, valuation, preparation and execution of auction sales (no inspections or pickup available) and the logistics of delivering the goods to the successful bidders - using Startrack Express for one and Australia Post for the other. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Industrial Auctions) IronPlanet Competitor Analysis Programme:** I was asked by the Director of the Industrial Division at Grays to keep an eye on the plant and equipment that was being sold by our competitor IronPlanet and how much it was going for. I setup an Excel spreadsheet and dumped product listing and sales data from their website into the spreadsheet. I then included similar plant and equipment that we were selling and their sales price in the spreadsheet as a comparison and reported weekly on the stats to the Director. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Industrial Auctions) Re-Engineered Fax-Based Marketing Process:** One of the first jobs that I was given when I started at Grays was to fax an advertisement for a particular Industrial auction to a list of potential buyers. I was given the A4 sheet of paper and directed towards the fax machine. After doing it that way on one occasion I jumped online and discovered an email-based fax marketing service. I signed us up for an account, and for all subsequent times I was asked to fax out advertisements I did so via the online service - which cut down time spent faxing by an order of magnitude. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Industrial Auctions) Chinese Warehouse Opportunity:** 6 months into my job in the Industrial Auctions team at GraysOnline, I was asked by the Director whether I would like to move to China and manage a warehouse over there that we were running in addition to sourcing / buying office equipment to store in the warehouse and then sell at auction here in Australia. I accepted the offer however when I went to the Chinese Embassy to get a visa I was told that it wouldn't be possible due to the Olympic Games that were on at the time. So unfortunately that opportunity fell through and they found someone who was already over there to take my place. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Technology) Salesforce-Based Help Centre:** The Help Centre for GraysOnline was originally built using technology from a company called Right Now (that was later acquired by Oracle). Unfortunately it was not stable and our customers were faced with lots of errors. Right Now wanted something like ~$100k to fix it, however we were already spending $50k a year with them to host and manage it. I suggested to the CTO that I run a selection process to find a new vendor. He approved it and I went ahead with putting together a vendor comparison. I then selected Salesforce as an alternative (it was much, much cheaper and problems weren't going to cost us anything to fix). I then project managed the implementation and migration of articles across to the new help centre - both under budget and on schedule. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Technology) Contextual Art Feature (JS):** Our Art Buyer at Grays was experiencing low sales volumes for the artwork that they listed for auction. They wanted us to build a feature that allowed the customer to upload a photo of their room and see what the art looked like within it. Our development team was busy for the next few months and it wasn't seen as a priority by our CTO. So I hijacked an integration with Google Tag Manager (GTM) that we had already done and I built this feature myself (taking around a day to do so) ensuring that it was self-contained as a piece of front-end Javascript that could be added to the site via GTM. It was a success - and art sales volumes went up. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Personal Projects (Done out of work hours)...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Original IndustrySwarm CMS Platform (PHP/JS):** A Vanilla PHP Back-End + Javascript Front-End Based CMS (Content Management System) with a WYSIWYG / point and click based page editor. And support for multiple environments, ability to push sites between those as well as export / import site files. As well as custom plugins. Data structure was - "Site <1:M> Page <M:M> Block" - where each Block referenced a plugin/module + method within it, and contained content configuration that would be fed into the specified module's method. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Forked Screenshots as a Service (Node.JS):** I needed a way to generate thumbnails for the homepages from all of the websites in the IndustrySwarm CMS, so that I could display these on the website selection screen. I found a Screenshots repo created in Node.JS that used PhantomJS to take screenshots. The only problem was that it would take a new screenshot every time you wanted to show it. So I forked the repo and added screenshot caching into it so that the cached screenshot would always be displayed when requested. And when the TTL for it expires then a new screenshot would be taken in the background. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Better Theme Designer (JS):** Built entirely in front-end vanilla Javascript, HTML and CSS - and available on my GitHub. It provided a core web theme (Genesis) that the user could modify via a point-and-click method in the web browser. Once modified it would then output the customised theme for the user. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Jan 2008 to Jun 2008)*** **Bar Attendant and Glassy.** **Carmen's Nightclub (in Miranda Hotel).** &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Serving Customers:** Behind the bar, responsible for taking orders (beers, mixers and soft drinks) and serving those customers. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Cleaning Up:** Was responsible for cleaning up the nightclub - both throughout the evening and at the end of the night. This included collecting empty glasses and bottles and wiping down tables. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Jan 2007 to Jul 2007)*** **Chemistry Demonstrator for Chem103 (1st Year Chemistry for Engineers).** **University of Wollongong.** &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Demonstrating to Students:** Was responsible for explaining each practical that we were working on in each session to my table of students and demonstrating any experiments that were to be carried out. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Supervising Students:** Responsible for watching the students as they did their practicals and carried out the experiments that they were shown at the start of the session. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Assisting Students:** Had to be ready to help any students who had questions or queries, or where I noticed that they were doing something incorrectly. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Marking Student's Homework:** There was set homework that I provided my students with at the end of each lesson. They would return it at the start of the following lesson and I would take it home to mark it before returning it to them in the lesson after that. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Nov 2003 to Nov 2006)*** **Bottleshop Attendant (2003 - 2005).** **Bar Attendant and Glassy (2006).** **Engadine Tavern & Drive-Through Bottleshop.** &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Bottleshop) Stock Rotation + Merchandising:** Responsible for rotating stock (wine, beer, RTDs) and for setting up displays (including tastings) for brands that we wanted to push. When stock was low on the displays in the store we would go to the wine cellar to get more wine and to the walk in fridge to get more beer or RTDs to put on the shelves and the displays. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Bottleshop + Bar) Serving Customers:** Would walk up to customers in their cars in the Bottleshop to take their orders, then go and collect what they wanted, ring it up on the POS, take payment from customer and, if paying cash, return any change to them. Also served customers who came into the store in the same way. And also served customers at the bar in the Tavern. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Bar) Cleaning Up:** Was responsible for cleaning up the tavern on an ongoing basis throughout my shift. This included collecting empty glasses and bottles and wiping down tables. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **(Bottleshop) Unloading Trucks / Pallets:** Used the forklift to unload all deliveries by truck to the Bottleshop. Would store the pallets in the warehouse at the top of the drive, and then assess what was needed in the store and bring the pallets down one at a time (as needed) in order to unload them. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Jul 2001 to Oct 2003)*** **Sales Attendant.** **The Reject Shop, Miranda.** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **My Responsibilities...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Stock Rotation + Merchandising:** Responsible for rotating stock and for setting up displays for themes that we wanted to push. When stock was low on the displays or shelves in the store we would go to the back storeroom to get what was needed and bring it into the store to put on the shelves and the displays. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Serving Customers:** Manned one of the cash registers when it was my turn on some of my shifts. Scanned all the customer's items, collected payment - returning any change if needed, and then bagged the customer's items for them. Maintained a sunny disposition, welcoming customers when they arrived at my counter. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Cleaning Up:** Was responsible for cleaning up the store an ongoing basis throughout my shift. This included any liquid spills, broken items and just general sweeping and maintenance. ## Volunteering - ***(Jan 2008 to Jan 2011)*** **First Responder @ UniMed.** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Summary:** Obtained my Senior First Aid certificate and performed first aid (as a First Responder) at music festivals including those by Fuzzy (eg; Field Day and Parklife), concerts at the Hordern Pavilion and City of Sydney Events including NYE. ## Education - ***(Jan 2004 to Dec 2007)*** **Bachelor of Medicinal Chemistry (Adv) (Hons)** @ ***University of Wollongong***. &nbsp; - **Grade:** Honours 2A *(U.S GPA of 2.94)*. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Activities and Societies:** Toastmasters (Secretary on the Executive Committee); ChemSoc (The Chemistry Society). &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Summary:** My Honours Project and Thesis were on the Design of Novel Antivirals using Computational Chemistry methods, including Molecular Modelling and Small Molecule - Enzyme Docking, followed by Development (Synthesis) of High-Scoring Drug Candidate molecules in the lab. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Personal Projects...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Industry Collaborative Networks / ICN (PHP):** Started building a web-based event projects management system in PHP, called ICN or Industry Collaborative Networks. When I finished my degree, I started looking for jobs as a Project Manager so that I could learn about formal project management techniques and apply these to the project. Ended up finding a job as a Project Manager at GraysOnline, then lost interest in this personal project and became absorbed in my career. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Jan 1998 to Dec 2003)*** **High School** @ ***Caringbah Selective High School***. &nbsp; - **Years:** Year 7 (Age 13) to Year 12 (Age 18). &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Grade:** Graduated with the Higher School Certificate. With a UAI (*University Admissions Index*) of 64.7. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **HSC Subjects:** (Year 11 Only) 2U Legal Studies; (Years 11 & 12) 2U Business Studies, 2U Chemistry, 2U PE/PDHE, 2U Advanced Maths, 2U English. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Personal Projects...** &nbsp; &nbsp; - **First Person Shooter (C++):** Built a really basic FPS (first-person shooter) using Microsoft Visual C++ and OpenGL on Windows. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Built a Few Games in The Games Factory:** Used the graphical point-and-click game editor, The Games Factory, to create a few basic games including a platformer and a birds eye space ship game (Space Sub Zero). &nbsp; &nbsp; - **System Plugin for Click & Create (C):** Created a "System" plugin for a GUI-based point-and-click game and application development system called "Click & Create" (from Clickteam - the company that also released "Klik & Play", "The Games Factory" and "Multimedia Fusion"). Was developed in Microsoft Visual C++ using the C programming language, and exposed a number of core Windows system APIs to do things like check CPU count, RAM, Window information and more. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Reverse Engineered Clickteam App File Format (Binary):** Used a hex editor and an incremental file update discovery process in order to reverse engineer the binary file format used by the range of Clickteam software, including "Click & Create" and "Multimedia Fusion". Published the file specification on Clickteam's web forums and was banned as a result. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **DIY Bootloader (x86 Assembly):** Built a Boot Loader in x86 Assembly that entered protected mode and displayed some text on the screen. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Jan 1994 to Dec 1997)*** **Primary School** @ ***Engadine West Public School***. &nbsp; - **Years:** Year 3 (Age 9) to Year 6 (Age 12). &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Projects**: Built a text-based Adventure Game ("Emperor of the Galaxy") in Microsoft QuickBasic on DOS 5.0 at Age 11 (in Year 5) in order to qualify for the "Computer" Badge in Cub Scouts; and used ResEdit on an Apple Mac 68k (Performa) Machine to hack the space exploration game "Escape Velocity" and add my own spaceships, missions, etc. &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Jan 1991 to Dec 1993)*** **Infants School** @ ***Marayong Heights Public School***. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Years:** \[K\]indergarten (Age 6) to Year 2 (Age 8). &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Projects**: I built a Word Processor in Microsoft GWBasic on DOS 3.0 (running on an Olivetti w/ Intel 8086 CPU + 640K RAM) at Age 8 (in Year 2) as a submission to the school programming competition and won First Prize. ## Certifications and Organisations - ***(May 2024 - Present)*** **Professionals Australia Membership (#9530069).** &nbsp; &nbsp; - ***(Mar 2010)*** **Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) from the Scrum Alliance (#83001).** ## Skills + Software - **Business:** Skills (Project Management, Business Analysis, Integrations, Solution Architecture and Delivery, Pre-Sales, Technical Account Management, Product Management, Strategic Partnerships, Contract Negotiation, Commercial Negotiation); Software (Microsoft Office 365 Suite, Google Docs, Slack Messenger, Rocket Chat, Sublime Text Editor, XMind Mind Mapping, Obsidian Notes, Loom, WhatsApp, Zoom, Atlassian Jira and Confluence, Microsoft TFS / Team Foundation Studio / Azure DevOps Server, SurveyMonkey, Plane Issue Tracker, xWiki); CRM (Salesforce, EspoCRM). &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Technical:** Operating Systems (Mac, Windows, Linux); Programming Languages (GWBasic, QuickBasic, C/C++, ASP Classic, PHP, Front-End Javascript, Back-End Javascript / Node.JS, Python); Libraries (JQuery, NodeRED Low-Code Programming Environment); Database Management & Querying (Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL / phpMyAdmin, PostgreSQL, MongoDB); Cloud Services (QNAP QTS, Oracle Cloud, AWS, Google Cloud); Virtualisation & Containerisation (Parallels, VMWare Fusion, QNAP Virtualisation and Container Stations, Docker, Portainer); Other Software (JetBrains IDEs, Apple XCode, Patterns, FileZilla); API Design & Troubleshooting (Incl. use of - Postman, Paw / RapidAPI, Charles Web Debugger, Fiddler, Swagger/UI); Networking (QNAP Software-Defined Networking, pfSense Firewall, Tailscale Mesh VPN, Hardware Incl. Routers / Switches / Etc); Generative AI (Incl. OpenAI GPT-3 API / ChatGPT Web Tool / GPT-4 API, Jan, LM Studio, Ollama, Anthropic Claude); Source Control (Git, GitHub, GitLab, Sublime Merge); Cybersecurity (Kali Linux, OWASP Guidelines); eCommerce Platforms (Shopify, Neto, Magento, Wordpress/WooCommerce, OpenCart). &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Payments:** 3- and 4-Party Scheme Network Structures (including - Mastercard, Visa, American Express and Eftpos; and covering - Merchants, Issuers, Scheme using ISO8583, Acquirers and Customers), Central Banking (such as how financial institutions carry out operations with the RBA, using ESAs / Exchange Settlement Accounts, etc.), Payment Hardware (including terminals, NFC / ISO-14443-3 / ISODEP for "tap to pay"), Foreign Exchange / FX. Payment System Integrations (PayPal, Zip Co), and much much more. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Design:** Raster-Based Image Editing (w/ Adobe Photoshop, Pixelmator, Affinity Photo); Vector-Based Image Editing (w/ Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer); User Interface Design (w/ Sketch, Figma, Balsamiq, MockFlow); Prototyping (w/ Sketch, Figma, Axure, MockFlow, Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS); Desktop Publishing (w/ Adobe InDesign, Affinity Publisher); Video Editing & Production (w/ Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion); VJing (w/ VDMX); Audio & Music Editing, Mixing and Production (w/ Apple Logic Pro, FL Studio, Ableton Live Suite, Native Komplete, VCV Rack, Eurorack + General Audio / MIDI Hardware). &nbsp; &nbsp; ## Interests - **Arts + Music:** I used to go to a lot of music and arts festivals in my 20s - such as Burning Man in the USA, Burning Seed in AU, Rainbow Serpent in AU, Rabbits Eat Lettuce in AU - and lots of smaller bush doofs. I also have my own music production workstation in my bedroom that includes - software-based components like Ableton Live Suite and Native Instruments Komplete; as well as hardware (a lot of Eurorack modules and MIDI gear, wireless microphone, JBL studio monitors, Yamaha mixer). Music-wise I like most stuff - indy/rock, psytrance, EDM, folk, bluegrass, Aussie hip hop, etc. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Outdoor Recreation:** I love bush walks and travel - I have been to the South Island of New Zealand a few times, South America (Galapagos, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia), USA (Miami, New York, San Francisco, Burning Man, Las Angeles), Central America (Cancun in Mexico) and Europe (Barcelona in Spain; Rome, Naples, Pompeii and Milan in Italy; Amsterdam in The Netherlands; Berlin in Germany; Interlaken in Switzerland; and Paris in France). I also love snow sports (skiing), abseiling and canyoning trips, caving, scuba diving. I also used to love rock climbing and endurance runs but haven't done any in quite a while. &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Geeking Out:** I love sci-fi / philosophical movies (like Mr Nobody and The Matrix), TV shows (like Doctor Who and 12 Monkeys), fictional novels (anything by Greg Egan) and non-fiction (science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, sensemaking, c2, etc). I also actively work on my Hybrid Cloud setup (QNAP QTS-882 in my room + Oracle Cloud Compute instances in the Public Cloud - networked together). &nbsp; &nbsp; - **Product Ideation:** I keep a log of new product / startup ideas that I come up with and brainstorming session notes for each in xWiki on my Hybrid Cloud. Some of my ideas are described earlier on in my CV but others are under wraps. &nbsp; &nbsp; ## References - *References available on request.*..