Chris Collins

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

People Management and Development | Distributed Team Management | Digital Transformation
Change Management | Business Process Maturity | Systems and Solutions Architecture
Product Ownership | Project and Program Management | Vendor Management | Quality Assurance

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Delivering contract negotiation, invoicing and fuel management services for the aviation industry. Leading 3 squads and 18 FTE and contract staff, supporting legacy and web native/cloud native applications
• Delivered custom invoice reconciliation services for a $2bn account.
• Reduced external labor costs by >20% while upskilling the team and increasing velocity.
• Enabled customer access to federal programs promoting the adoption of sustainable aviation fuel, accelerating the company’s release of a new multimillion dollar product line into a mature low-margin market.
• Championed and evolved the IT Org’s career and performance management programs for 150 employees.
• Chaired and revitalized the Leadership Chapter for the IT organization’s 40+ people managers.
Technologies used: Angular frontend, Java/Springboot/GraphQL service layer, Atlassian toolchain, Oracle and Postgres databases.

A hands-on role, leading multiple teams; Custom Solutions/Professional Services and Core Product Development of up to 15 full time and contract team members. SoundCommerce is a Series A funded startup supplying data analytics to D2C retailers and High Street brands providing Amazon-like insight into sales, ad spend and customer behavior.
• Drove process maturity and introduced performance-based metrics across the entire SDLC, enabling accurate quarterly capacity plan and road map.
• Drove DevSecOps adoption to reduce cycle time, improve MTTR and data security.
• Created reusable integrations from 10+ customer source data systems, providing batch and real time ETL(ELT) workflows, reducing implementation time from weeks to hours.
• Created and executed Career Planning and Performance framework, driving the culture, commitment and accountability of the remote workforce, boosting morale, collaboration and keeping turnover to a minimum during turbulent change.
Technologies used: Stack included functional programming (SCALA) language components, with Node.js frontend, into Big Data hosted on GCP backend. GitHub, Terraform, Kubernetes, Kafka, Jira, Confluence

Leading two product development teams of up to 18 full time and offshore contract members for this media company, owning 170 local TV stations and online sports and entertainment properties.
• Owned the foundational technology for the STIRR.com OTT product, delivering free, ad-supported TV (FAST) over the internet to applications for the web, phones and streaming devices (Roku, FireTV, Apple TV) enabling the successful launch of other subscription-based products; Marquee Sports (Cubs Baseball) and the Tennis Channel.
• Monetized the delivery of live local news and entertainment video content for the nation’s largest producer of local news content (linear and AVOD) through Ad insertion.
• Drove the stability and resilience of the operational stack, including refactoring for scalability. Conducted risk assessments and addressed single points of failure, applying DevSecOps practices to move the products to 99% uptime whilst supporting an audience of 1MM+ concurrent users.
• Acted as Product Owner and Technical Architect on new technology, delivering functionality around machine learning, telemetry supporting SLA/KPI reporting and automation.
Technologies used: Responsive java script and elastic, AWS hosted java-based REST microservices. ELB, GitLab, BitBucket, Jenkins, Terraform, Kubernetes, Kafka, Jira, Confluence, Vault/Consul

Led multiple teams supporting all the retail and customer care support and sales applications for T-Mobile.
• Transitioned a portfolio of 10 web portal applications supporting retail and call center operations, to a $12MM managed service involving 150+ resources.
• Drove the organization’s digital transformation with the adoption of Agile, DevOps and Continuous Delivery techniques within frontline retail and call center applications.
• Managed the expansion of 15-person team to 60 direct reports, with an annual budget of $8MM+, consisting of fulltime and contract resources, located in the US, India and Mexico.
• Defined the DevTest discipline within Care and Retail Channels for both UI and middleware application development. Transformed team from a manual test role into Continuous Test using virtualized environments and automation tools.
• Delivered cost reductions of 25% by transitioning to an onshore/offshore staffing model while simultaneously increasing consistency of service and the onboarding of the majority of applications within the organization.
• Instilled an innovative spirit and a drive for constant improvement.
• Organized and managed technical teams and ensured growth and development of team members.
Technologies used: Responsive java script and elastic, public cloud hosted java-based REST microservices. Tibco, BitBucket, Jenkins, Jira, Confluence

ADDITIONAL RELEVANT EXPERIENCE

T-MOBILE, Bothell, WA | Architect / Principal Analyst (contract)
ACTEKSOFT, Birmingham, AL | Compensation System Product Specialist
DEVIZES SOLUTIONS, Birmingham, AL | Technology Services Company Owner
T-MOBILE, Seattle, WA | Atlanta, GA | Senior Business Systems Analyst, Project Manager (contract)
VENTURI TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS, Birmingham, AL | Technical Director
BELLSOUTH, Birmingham, AL | Data Analyst
SCAN OPTICS, Birmingham, AL | Development Lead
BELLSOUTH, Birmingham, AL |Technical Architect
KPMG, Manchester, UK | Management Consultant
FISONS INSTRUMENTS, Manchester, UK | Development Lead
BIODATA, Manchester, UK | Development Lead

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Computer Science (Honors)
COVENTRY POLYTECHNIC, West Midlands, UK

TRAINING

SAFe 4 Certified Scrum Master
Microsoft Certified Professional in Visual Basic 6