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Curriculum vitae: Julian Porter

Summary IT Design and Delivery Professional with 20 years’ experience producing innovative IT solutions in

secure Government and Defence environments and the private sector.

Top-down, customer-led Software Engineering and team leadership, bridging the gap between

customer need and software implementation, using established best practice techniques to get the

best results. Experienced in project management: project boards / management teams for multi-

million pound government projects, using lightweight, iterative processes for fast results.

Always looking out for innovative techniques. Natural problem solver, with vast knowledge of the art

of the possible and impossible, and unusually broad background to draw on, including computer

science, advanced mathematics, theoretical physics and epistemology. Able to find solutions that are

too simple for most people to notice.

Record of innovative research, in mathematics and computer science. Published papers

demonstrating that standard big data frameworks were a simple case of something much more

powerful. Currently working on developing programming paradigms for quantum computers.

Proven leader with excellent written and verbal communication and teaching skills. Able to

communicate difficult concepts clearly and comprehensibly to stakeholders of all kinds. Natural

rapport with audiences of all kinds including IT professionals, board members, military, ‘tough

audiences’, interested non-professionals.

Excellent people management skills, including handling problem staff. Able to turn around moribund

teams and make them centres of innovation and desirable places to work. Succeeded in taking staff

with poor attendance records due to ill health and ease them back into willingly working full time.

Has held DV clearance.

Skills

Strategic thinking, planned change, business performance management

Very strong communication, teaching and interpersonal skills, with ability to inhabit other’s world-view / understand their problems

Excellent manager and team leader, directing and motivating highly diverse teams

Qualified interviewer within HMG, interviewing to select senior staff for major projects, qualified to it on promotion boards

Acquires technical knowledge very quickly

Analytical, capable of getting to the nub of complex problems

Natural problem solver, on the look-out for innovative, simple solutions

Background in academic research leading to always looking for new ideas, new techniques

Designing solutions to meet quality, cost and risk constraints

Delivery planning using best practice techniques, suit process to problem

Very broad knowledge of technology; able to program in nearly every major modern language; database techniques standard and emerging; big data processing; data-mining, cloud / web technologies; mobile devices; IT infrastructure; information security

Tools and techniques

ITIL, MDA, MSP, PRINCE2, RUP, UML, MoDAF, Zachmann, Agile

Java, C, C++, C#, Objective C, CoffeeScript, Haskell, Erlang, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Scheme, Prolog, CUDA

Django, HADOOP, HIVE, JQuery, .Net, Node, PIG, SOAP, RESTful web services

HTML5, CSS3, XML, XMLSchema, XSLT, SQL

SQL DBMS, particularly: DB2, MySql, SQL Server

NoSQL DBMS, particularly: CouchDB, Memcached, MongoDB, Neo4J, Riak, Redis

Android, Blackberry, iOS, Windows Phone

LINUX, Windows, VMWare

Embedded systems (ARM, FPGA, PIC)

Qualifications

BA in Mathematics (1st class honours), University of Oxford (1990)

MSc by research in Mathematics, University of Oxford (1994)

MA, University of Oxford (1994)

Certificate in Service Management Fundamentals (2001)

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HMG Interviewing Skills qualification (1999)

Contact

julian@jpembedded.solutions

+44 (0)787 9425697

Employment history and experience

JP Embedded Solutions 2010 –

Chaos2ordeR 2014 –

Chaos2orderR is a small and eclectic record label, specialising in avant garde electronica. Wrote iOS

app to provide showcase for their work which, to take their philosophy into account, had a deliberately

semi-random aspect, with layouts, etc varying on the fly. Also involved AI component to interact with,

and surprise the user, including real-time generation of music ‘composed’ by the phone. Currently

going through app-store approval process.

Active Fleet Solutions 2013 – 2015

Active Fleet Solutions provides fleet management solutions to vehicle hire / contract providers.

Delivered fully interactive information presentation / analysis capability to a client in Shrewsbury.

Delivered April 2015: advanced interactive web service making full use of HTML5 and advanced

JavaScript to deliver a mobile-friendly Web 3.0 experience, including data analysis, RESTful web

services for data queries, etc. Server component, written in Python and C++, includes significant data

mining capabilities and makes use of a mix of SQL and NoSQL databases.

Euroway Group then Ryder 2010 –

Ryder is a world leader in vehicle fleet management, which purchased Euroway Group, a medium-sized British fleet management company, in 2012. Designed, implemented and delivered Euroway FleetSure: using a Python / Java back end to mine

information from a variety of databases and feeds (Microsoft SQL Server, DB2, MySQL, SOAP, XML,

etc) belonging to Euroway and their partners, and presenting the result to customers. This put

Euroway among the forefront of Fleet Management companies in making valuable information

available to customers, and was the driver behind Ryder’s acquisition of Euroway.

Designed and built iOS application to give mobile access to FleetSure information. Passed Apple

Review for inclusion in App Store in 6 hours. As an enabler, designed and developed RESTful web

service framework to supply data to customers’ systems.

Designing FleetSure 2, to use cloud-based processing using HADOOP / MapReduce / NoSQL.

Government department 1994 - 2010

Technology research 2009 – 2010

Evaluated HADOOP-based analytical tools (MAHOUT, HIVE, PIG) and emerging databases

(Netezza), developing Java applications to demonstrate applications and extension capability of the

technologies. Included developing model Java frameworks for use by developer building HADOOP

applications. Became acknowledged departmental expert, also consulted by staff from US

government agencies.

Worked on mining information from very large graphs. Developed an innovative method for detecting

previously undetectable significant features, based on overall graph topology as opposed to internal

detail. This was built using a complex Java framework that made use of Java meta-programming to

allow real-time extensibility, so new analytics could be dropped in to the system without the need for

rebuild / restart.

Developed innovative FPGA algorithms (e.g. hugely parallel sort in linear time), designing, coding in

VHDL and synthesising and testing performance on real FPGAs.

Head of outsourcing strategy 2009

Developed, wrote and gained approval for a formal policy statement on use of time-hire contractors;

this involved complex negotiations with many interested parties, including lawyers and trades unions.

Developed, wrote, socialised and gained approval for a policy to remove barriers to allowing

contractors access to classified information.

Evangelised the outsourcing initiative to staff in the department, giving extremely well received

presentations to large audiences and helping to overcome initial suspicion.

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Technical strategy lead 2006 – 2009

Developed strategy based on EFQM; used metrics to drive continuous improvement in line with

roadmap. Described by Director of Technology as most mature strategy approach he had ever seen.

Devised comprehensive metrics for engineering performance, balancing practicality against precision.

Adopted by department and used by senior management to build plans. Director of Planning

observed that thanks to them he finally knew how much work engineering was doing.

Contributed to EFQM audits in 2006, 2007. Succeeded in hugely increasing scores for engineering

department. Contribution singled out by examiner for special praise. Member of corporate strategy

team, playing large part in devising approach taken, writing parts, briefing seniors, etc.

Desktop system architect 2002 – 2004

Took over highly demotivated and demoralised design team that was shedding staff. Turned it

around, so within two years it had doubled in size and people were volunteering to join it. Changed

profile of team from back-room problem-fixers to high-profile leaders. Built from scratch a blue-skies

research team, to look at emerging tools that could help solve real problems. Developed approach

that allowed department to stop using expensive Sun workstations.

Led delivery of new desktop for non-campus sites. Initiated customer engagement. Produced high-

level design, negotiated over security, programme demarcation issues. Provided close technical

guidance of the implementation and helped users to transition to the new system, as well as providing

critical people-leadership for the implementing team at moments of extreme demotivation. Took the

initiative to outsource parts of the project to industry partners, giving them specifications as opposed

to designs, and to adopt extremely light-weight management protocols. The solution was later rolled

out to other sites, and copied by a large government-wide programme. The department’s Director

described it as making his work much easier.

Managed technical assurance for very large project, building and co-ordinating assurance team.

Interfaced to stakeholders at all levels. Provided technical input to project; designed approach taken

to implement very complex security model, which enabled connection of sites at different levels of

security without causing a breach. Was part of core team that developed the security model for the

service and assured that it gained accreditation.

Deputy IT infrastructure architect 1999 – 2002

Delivered architectural model for IT Infrastructure: service-based approach that unified hardware with

software infrastructure; approved in August 2000. This was the first time the department had been

able to include infrastructure in its architectural models. Invited to address OMG conference (Oslo

2000) on middleware security, as implemented with a Java CORBA application. The presentation was

extremely well received. Took the lead in pushing for adoption of a J2EE based technology-

independent middleware service to decouple application code from middleware products. Proposal

accepted and implemented; then contributed to definition an implementation of its security

architecture.

Took technical assurance lead in storage, intranet and networking projects. In storage project was

responsible for collecting and analysing user requirements, managing stakeholder relations and

managing customer relationships. Involved working out trade-offs with customers when existing

working practices would no longer work, in one case devising approach to avoid critically damaging a

crucial strand of business. Pioneered using rigorous modelling tools like UML to model and design

infrastructure services. This was taken up at a corporate level, leading to the organisation’s eventual

adoption of MoDAF formal architectural techniques.

Architect for special business unit 1999 – 2002

For historical and security reasons, business unit had its own isolated legacy IT. My remit was to

align it with the remainder of the department. Took the opportunity of change in security rules and

move to new site to effect integration within normal systems, moving onto main networks, intranet,

storage and desktops with no loss of service or capability.

Negotiated with users suspicious of change, who feared that uniformity was seen as more important

than them being able to do their jobs. Got them to the point where they were demanding to be put

onto standard systems in place of their existing special ones.

Initiated and drove negotiations with IT security authorities at home and in the US to develop a

methodology for transitioning users to the common network without any data spillage. Devised the

approach; gained approval from foreign data owner for its use; oversaw its implementation.

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Ensured that other projects did not continue to assume that the area was separate, but took on the

risk of integrating with it. This involved constant vigilance, watching projects and acting as a fixer to

work out solutions. The result was a successful integration.

Signal processing research 1997 – 1999

Developed a number of techniques for real-time signal processing in an extremely noisy environment,

writing high performance applications in C and C++: still in use in 2013; made previously unusable

high priority data available for exploitation by analysts. Invited to speak at international conference in

1998 an experts’ conference in 1999. In both cases, contribution extremely well received.

Wrote and evangelised data processing and analysis tools that were adopted as standard for use by

worldwide analysis community (and are still in use). In consequence, was invited by the US

government to provide training to its analysts. Training was huge success and source of considerable

prestige for home agency.

Mathematics and IT research 1994 – 1997

Developed techniques leading to important new capabilities and several major breakthroughs. Wrote

high-performance C processing software for number of critical strands directly affecting the UK’s

national security.

Was invited to attend two international conferences (addressing one) and a special experts’

conference, making major contributions at each. Won the department’s research prize, for being part

of team that solved a particularly important problem. Won the US government’s most prestigious

classified research prize (the first time it was awarded to a non-US citizen).

University of Oxford 1992 - 1994

Lecturer in mathematics

Taught undergraduates in a range of subjects, including theoretical physics and general mathematics.

Also taught university-wide classes on advanced quantum theory for mathematicians.