Tim Blair

tim@bla.ir | http://tim.bla.ir/ | 07812 588007 | Thame, Oxfordshire, UK

I am a senior technical leader and technical architect with broad experience of large-scale web-based application strategy, planning, development, and maintenance. I have defined and delivered high-level strategic and technical roadmaps for programmes of work, building and leading teams and broader communities to deliver effective solutions.

I have an excellent understanding of the interplay between technology, delivery, and product to produce solutions in line with, or exceeding users' needs, and am comfortable communicating and translating between technical and non-technical audiences and senior stakeholders.

Lead Technical Architect, Cabinet Office CDIO (2021–present)

In 2021 I moved to the Digital Delivery pillar in the recently-formed Cabinet Office Chief Digital and Information Office (CDIO), to build technical capacity and capability within the team. My work included:

Developing the technical operational model to enable the Digital Delivery pillar to become an effective digital delivery partner for Cabinet Office business units.
Determining capacity requirements to support the delivery of the technical work to be delivered by Digital Delivery, running recruitment to fill all technical roles.
Technical architecture and technical leadership for high-profile projects including Public Appointments, and the COVID-19 Public Inquiry, including building relationships with areas such as Cyber and Information Assurance to ensure the effective delivery.
Developing the technical community within Digital Delivery and wider CDIO, creating forums where both Civil Servant and contractors can learn from each other, and creating L&D opportunities (for example, driving TOGAF training for technical architects).
Introducing service wraps around the provision and management of the central AWS and GitHub services owned by CDIO and offered to the wider Cabinet Office.
Determining the technical approaches and standards to be used within both Digital Delivery and wider CDIO to ensure consistency and effective use of technology.
Lead technical manager working with both CO HR and GDS People Team on the effectiveness of the DDaT capability and pay frameworks.
Technical representation on the CDIO Advisory Board and Demand Forum, and technical panel member for Cabinet Office service assessments.

GOV.UK Head of Technology, GDS (2019–2021)

In 2019 I formally took on the role of Head of Technology for the GOV.UK programme. My responsibilities included:

Engineering and architecture representation on programme SMT with the other "Head of" roles, including engineering and architecture participation in programme-level roadmapping and mission planning, and ensuring senior non-technical stakeholders understood technical constraints involved.
Understanding the current technical position, and assessing and advising on the technical feasibility for product evolution, including creation and communication of the programme’s technical strategy during a time of intense public and political scrutiny.
Contributing to GOV.UK’s overall strategic vision, focussing on personalisation and accounts, and the subsequent spending review bid, ensuring the architectural and technical roadmaps enabled this strategy.
Technical leadership and rapid delivery during COVID-19, building teams and leading them to create vital public-facing applications in incredibly challenging timescales.
Engineering quality and delivery approach, looking across architecture, development, reliability engineering, and cyber security.
Owning technical incident management and response.
Capacity planning and health of the 40-strong technical community within GOV.UK and head of the line management tree for all technologists in the programme.
Understanding and communicating the impact of the DDaT pay framework across the technical organisation, and identifying and working to resolve critical issues which prevent the effective growth and support of relevant technical communities.
De facto Technical Architecture community lead within GDS at a time when there was no official Head of Community in position, ensuring communication across GDS remained efficient, programmes were effectively resourced, and recruitment of new architects continued.
Working for the Deputy Director of Engineering as part of the Engineering Leadership team with a cross-GDS perspective, defining consistent cross-organisation patterns, tools, and processes for use by GDS teams when building and operating services and documentation within the GDS Way. Responsible for ensuring GOV.UK adoption of these standardised practices.
Engaging with cross-government leaders on technical decisions which affect departments and users outside of GOV.UK's direct remit, such as the retirement of TLS 1.0/1.1, and setting cross-government standards, such as the API technical and data standards.

Lead Technical Architect, GDS (2016–2019)

After joining GDS as a Technical Architect in 2016, I quickly moved into the position of Lead Technical Architect for the GOV.UK programme, to lead the technical work of maintaining the high quality bar of GOV.UK as the UK governments flagship, award-winning website. The role included:

Working as part of the multi-disciplinary GOV.UK SMT team
Leading a team of senior technologists (Technical Architects and Lead Developers) to guide and support the forty technologists working on the GOV.UK programme to ensure the continued delivery of the development work required to support and improve.
Setting architectural goals, and defining the technical and platform strategy to allow GOV.UK to continue to meet the changing demands of both government and citizens.
Maintaining and improving the security of GOV.UK by increasing awareness of security concerns and risks, including setting up a regular schedule of application and infrastructure penetration tests, and by working with other departments to trial a form of intelligence-led testing new to government.
Managing technical and information risks, including lead roles in GDPR readiness preparations, and ongoing information assurance issues.
Responsibility for managing and creating a strategy to reduce the large levels of technical debt that had accumulated within GOV.UK during the initial build phase.
Working with lead delivery and product managers to identify the technical requirements of the product and delivery roadmaps, while maintaining a strong focus on the user needs of the platform. Defining project mission scopes, objectives, and team makeups, and supporting those teams throughout the delivery process.
Taking ownership of undersupported parts of GOV.UK such as Licensing, setting up a maintenance programme, while leading the architecture work of the Discovery and Alpha phases of a potential replacement.

Venntro (2008–2016)

At Venntro, I led the development of the White Label Dating platform, including setting technical direction, supporting developers, and ensuring the availability and security of the platform. I worked at a senior management level, liaising with other departments and senior managers to plan and implement company strategy.

WhiteLabelDating: Lead the design and build of the WhiteLabelDating (WLD) platform: a multi-tenant online dating application which supported 25,000 sites, a new member signing up every 3.5 seconds, with revenues in excess of £50m/year, and with a 180-person company grown alongside to support it.
WLD mobile web application: Architected, project managed and built a new mobile web application and service layer for WLD. Created a SOA-based architecture, built on top of a REST API exposing business logic from the core ColdFusion WLD application. The stack consisted of 4 Ruby-based services, communicating via HTTP and JSON, with a Node.js router and authentication service, and a Rails front-end application.
RabbitMQ-based email pipeline: Architected and worked with a small team to build a Ruby and RabbitMQ-based pipeline for rendering and sending emails for the WLD platform. At peak, this was sending in excess of 20M emails per day.
Event platform: Introduced a RabbitMQ-based events stream to the WLD platform, used for a range of diverse applications such as instant application notifications via Pusher, flushing changed assets from a CDN (Akamai), analysing member behaviour to identify scammers, and scheduling messages to send to users.
Payment gateway switch: Architected and managed the work to switch processing of 10,000 daily transactions to a new payment gateway, completed in 6 weeks with zero downtime.
PCI-compliant payment processing: Designed and built a payment system for processing all card transactions meeting PCI DSS 3 compliance criteria. Played a key role in the preparation for the compliance assessment, including drafting and publishing team development standards for code, code review, and application security.
Agile transformation: Spearheaded the agile transformation of the 45-person development team, moving from traditional waterfall to a Scrum process, with 4 cross-functional teams of between 6-10 working in sprints of two weeks. Took on a Product Owner (PO) role for around 15 months, working with the CTO and one other PO to liaise with the rest of the business and manage the backlog of work for the Scrum teams.

Lead Developer, Rawnet (2002–2008)

Rawnet is a web agency based in Berkshire. I joined as the first employee and lead developer, and worked building custom websites and applications for clients such as SciDev, Williams F1, Guards Polo Club and Go Ape.

Lead developer in a large number and range of client projects, from small websites through to large, custom business-process applications.
Led application development and server infrastructure throughout the company, including development practices and processes.
Managed a team of 5 developers from junior through to senior levels.
Attended and fully contributed to client meetings, and regularly saw projects from initial pitch through to final delivery, as well as providing ongoing support and customer client management.

Education

1997-2002: MEng (Hons) Software Engineering, Aberystwyth University
1995-1997: A-levels in maths, physics and economics