AILA

Founding Engineer

Various Companies

As a seasoned blockchain enthusiast, I've delved deep into the realms of crypto and web3, with a distinctive focus on NFTs and payment ecosystems. 
From ideation to fruition, I've architected DeFi solutions, crafting not only their tech framework but also shaping the business and marketing blueprints. 
My advisory roles span early-stage crypto startups to web2 SMEs making their foray into the blockchain space.
Technically adept, my expertise includes authoring and auditing smart contracts in both Solidity and Rust, adherence to standards like ERC-721 and ERC-20, and leveraging frameworks such as Truffle, Hardhat, and Metaplex. 
I seamlessly integrate with eminent blockchain providers, including Alchemy and Infura, while also working proficiently with IPFS and esteemed custodians like Copper.

Founder & Advisor

Quiet Loud

Excited to join Quiet Loud Technology, where we're pushing the boundaries of innovation in the Events and Celebrations space. As the Head of Engineering, I’m leading a talented team to build scalable, robust solutions that drive our mission forward. Focused on optimizing our development processes, enhancing product delivery, and fostering a culture of collaboration and technical excellence. Thrilled to contribute to our rapid growth and to work on projects that are making the world a better place by enabling people to celebrate more.

Head of Engineering

Kaskade Finance

Solutions and Architecture Lead

Union54 (YC S21)

Chief Technology Officer

Playter

Playter is a fintech BNPL solution for B2B. After raising more than $55m we are building the go-to solution for splitting any cost over 3-12 months, interest-free. 
At Playter, I joined as the Co-founder and CTO. Since then, I've been actively involved in all parts of the business, helped scale from 2 to 20 headcount, redesigned e rebuilt completely the product offering, and moved the product team in-house. During this period I had the opportunity to build a platform supporting millions worth of £ in lending leveraging the latest technologies and banking infrastracture.

Responsabilities:
 - Designed and owned the technical, product and engineering strategy
 - Built and scaled the engineering and product teams from scratch. Moving the team from offshore to in-house.
- Ensured that requirements, compliance, roadmaps and goals are timely executed.
- Foster a friendly and collaborative culture, enabling and empowering each member of the team.
- Overviewed and enforced architectural standards and scalability
- Promoted innovation and technology advancements
- Managed the agile teams and processes
- Optimized workflows and roadmaps to match the business vision
- Managing and implementing cyber/network/internal security and compliance
- Delivering exceptional UX and focus on user-centric product 
- Budget optimization
- Monitoring of performance metrics
- Working with third parties and offshore teams

Achievements:
- Designed, Build, and Scaled three different products throughout the whole lifecycle
- Optimized budget spending and kept the team and technology costs under the threshold
- Implemented and improved the technology stack and the architecture.
- Assessed and defined policy for security, compliance, and data
- Drove the company vision 
- Ensured a culture of excellence and collaboration 
- Managed the implementation of multiple third-party banking integrations 
- Improved the product and team structure based on stakeholders and business feedback

CTO & Cofounder

Technical Lead

Nvayo Limited

Spearheaded technical initiatives to deliver robust financial services solutions across multiple currencies for elite clientele, notably for the renowned Aurae Lifestyle and ClubSwan programs. Leveraged cutting-edge technologies to enhance user experience, streamline processes, and drive innovation in the concierge and lifestyle service domain.
Tech stack: Node, React, AWS

Brightcast.io

Brightcast is the easiest way to reach out your customers via multi channels. We enable mass messaging on whatsapp for brand awareness and customer journeys.
Tech stack: .NET, Angular, Azure, Twilio

Co-founder & CTO

Financial freedom should be available to everyone. At Fio, we’re helping gig workers be financially free. Our mission is to enable financial services for the future of work.
Tech stack: .NET, Angular, Azure, Adyen

Co-Founder and CTO

Antler

Entrepreneur

Experienced CTO with a passion for fintech and focus on crypto and innovation. Committed to leveraging technology to solve complex business challenges.

Theodor Chichirita

Financial Times

Re-hired into the Financial Times as a member of the Delivery Team reporting to the Director of Delivery, supporting the design and development of innovative service implementations and driving process improvement projects / programmes, in part ensuring they land within the £4.1M capitalised budget. 

Global remit for Projects Portfolio split across five (5) key OKRs within the Programme. Responsible for planning project resources, preparing budgets, monitoring progress, and engaging stakeholders, whilst liaising with 3rd parties and cross-functional teams.

Supporting Global Teams deploying technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, digital experience tooling, Windows 11 migration, VoIP migration, Apple upgrades and hardware refreshes globally.

Senior Consultant - contract

Alon and Araw Non-Profit Organization

After working for large Enterprise Organisations I decided to apply my skillset with an NGO focusing on the things I care about namely Ocean Advocacy, Environment, Community, Youth Empowerment, and Education. 

I am privileged enough to have found an Organisation that abdicates for all of these - Alon and Araw located in the Philippines!

I have been helping them with Strategy Planning and Grant Proposal Writing, mainly focusing on formalising their very successful Community Development Program which we hope will become a blueprint for helping other local Communities in the Philippines.

For more on the amazing work being done by Alon and Araw please visit their website with links to their FB and IG pages via this: https://alonandarawclub.org/

Strategy Consultant

Re-hired into the Financial Times as a member of the Delivery Team reporting to the Director of Delivery, supporting the design and development of innovative service implementations and driving process improvement projects / programmes, in part ensuring they land within the £3.4M capitalised budget. 

Global remit for Projects Portfolio split across five (5) key OKRs within the Programme. Responsible for planning project resources, preparing budgets, monitoring progress, and engaging stakeholders, whilst liaising with 3rd parties and cross-functional teams. 

✔	Defined, created, and led global implementation of skills matrix and training requirements that drives consistency and standardised process across Global Tech Support.
✔	Documented and shaped the Delivery capability within a Global Service Desk aligning to strategic direction at the FT, and gained agreement from Stakeholders for this new shape.
✔	Delivered Enterprise wide Windows 10 Operating System aiding the FT to pass Cyber Essentials certification.
✔	Managed 2022 Global Laptop and Macbook upgrade project ~2200 devices.
✔	Successfully managed IAM selection, implementation and pre-migration data cleansing operations (AD and HR data) project.
✔	Managed numerous company acquisition onboarding including 3rd Party vendors service integrations.

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations. Operating in over 40 different countries it's recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy.

Nando's UK & IRE

Product managed Point of Sale (ePOS) for Nando’s UK&I. Led application upgrade for business-critical Point-of-Sale (POS) Application. Key member of the Product team that created a new business model for “order at table” service thereby transforming the business model to align to Covid rules and guidelines for the Hospitality sector.

Implemented Agile/Kanban principles normalising delivery pipelines to complete projects, improve technical capability and quality thereby greatly reducing operational outages experienced across the platform.

✔	Delivered fit for purpose project to pivot Nandos to new order at table system, achieved within 1.5 months and tight budget control.
✔	Led UK&I wide fast-track hardware / supplier selection, negotiation and deployment of an android tablet solution that supported the transformation of Nando's target operating model from order-at-servery to order-at-table. Completed requirements gathering, multi-stream product strategy, and vendor selection for new ePOS strategy that aligned to strict Covid guidelines and regulations.
✔	Managed complex infrastructure and application upgrade alongside incumbent 3rd Party across UK&I locations; 451 restaurant-side application servers running Windows Server 2016, and 2,706 PC’s running POS application and a mixture of Windows 7 and 10.
✔	Deployed a greenfield logging and management platform (Logz.IO, Grafana, Kibana), and helped create detailed dashboards for the Operations team that improved efficiencies and reduced time to service restoration.
✔	Became an Agile Coach for the wider Product team as well as created a personal development programme for Software Engineers that aligned to the Corporate Tech Strategy which included soft skills development.
✔	Implemented “Well Engineered” principles and practices that drove operational excellence and brought stability to the mission critical service.

Nando's is an international food chain company operating over 1,200 outlets in 30 countries.

Product Lead - Contract

The Restaurant Group plc

Project manager for the roll out of new VOIP platform transformation for the regional group encompassing all restaurants across UK&I. Existing project needed drastic intervention to facilitate a successful roll-out, amongst multiple complexities. Managed two further projects for CyberSec and Cost optimisation. Managed vendor relations, introduced project governance, and set up JIRA and MS Teams that improved Delivery tracking and communication.

✔	Set up Agile Delivery function within the business and migrated all projects on to Atlassian JIRA for greater delivery tracking and visibility.
✔	Successfully led the implementation of a complex VOIP deployment across the business supporting its strategy and realising cost savings.
✔	Introduced Cyber Security initiative alongside Technical Architect that launched via Cyber Essentials audit and discovery work.
✔	Managed national transition of 400+ restaurants secondary WAN Comms from incumbent to a new supplier.

The Restaurant Group is one of the UK's biggest hospitality businesses. They have a diverse portfolio of well-known and much-loved brands, operating approximately 400 restaurants and pub restaurants across the UK.

Re-hired into the Financial Times as lead highly visible, business critical projects and transformations across the Wintel, AWS, Microsoft and Linux technology stack. Managed projects that delivered increased operational efficiencies, improved team capability, enhanced technical solutions and reduced overall OPEX costs.

✔	Led and effectively delivered multiple Cloud transition projects; AD capability from partner to AWS, Unix estate from on-prem Red Hat Linux to AWS Linux. Digital Print services from on-prem to AWS. Reduction of on-prem Window-based services into AWS Linux-based services. Several complex legacy applications/databases to AWS hosted.
✔	Managed support services transition onto AWS Lambda thereby flipping these to a DevOps model (Infrastructure as Code using CI/CD pipelines) making use of the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
✔	Transition of Logging and Management platforms onto Enterprise-grade [Grafana/Splunk] service for Production teams.
✔	Led delivery of training for all Product and Technology divisions to AWS Architect Associate level.
✔	Acting Scrum Master for Internal Tooling Software Dev Team developing software tools using Python and JavaScript (Node.js)
✔	Managed transition of API Gateway capability from one 3rd Party vendor to another.
✔	Drove efficiency and reduced anxiety across the team following headcount reduction of ~25%; created a unique delivery model by utilising traditional delivery methodologies in a unique and creative manner, to establish and protect management direction and key deliverables.
✔	Led implementation of global telephony transformation from in-house Cisco platform to cloud-based RingCentral VOIP platform receiving a personal citation from the then CPIO for the role he played in this transition of the company’s voice capability.

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations. Operating in over 40 different countries it's recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy.

Sabbatical 

Project managed high-level transition of FT’s global storage platform from 3rd party vendor to back in-house onto new on-prem storage capability. UK-centric role as part of Enterprise Services business unit, reported to Divisional Director. 

✔	Reviewed and streamlined delivery process to remove Agile bloat moving towards a more lean process focus.
✔	Delivered Storage migration project - achieved on time and within a budget of £862K whilst avoiding 3rd party contract renewal costs of £1.3M.
✔	Managed migration project for Production Unix platforms off of Solaris onto RedHat Linux greatly reducing OPEX costs by ~73% for the platform.
✔	Managed spin-up of new Cloud infrastructure provider, AWS to support the business transformation of services from on-prem systems to Cloud-based systems.
✔	Managed migration from Akamai CDN to Fastly CDN as part of a cost reduction initiative. 
✔	Managed migration from Private to Public DNS service.

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations. Operating in over 40 different countries it's recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy.

Consultant - contract

DNV GL

Supported global post-merger business transformation to deliver multi-phased, multi-million-pound (£38M+ for UK alone), company-wide programme that included all Enterprise IT areas. Reported directly to Global Programme Director and UK IT Director, as part of a regional project management team of two, within a global contract programme team of seven. Managed UK deployment team to deliver projects.

✔	Managed planning, preparation and execution phases associated with UK region of a 12,000 users / 350 office global transformation programme: replacement/upgrade of the associated WAN (Verizon), LAN including Security (Cisco), Server (HP), Storage (EMC), Client (Dell), OS (Windows), Database (SQL) and Application (O365, Lync, SAP, “Own Grown”) base.
✔	Delivered new technology introduction that included: MS Windows 7 build the BitLocker drive encryption, MS DirectAccess VPN, Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client.
✔	Managed cultural “step-change” within Energy and O&G businesses to parent company ethos of “self-help and collaboration”.
✔	Supported creation of a single global active directory infrastructure; consolidation of 27 Active Directory forests across three business lines and an external service provider.
✔	Assisted migration of 3 “on premise” Exchange platforms to cloud-based Office 365 solution, plus EV archive to O365 for continuation of strategic data warehousing and data mining capabilities.

DNV (formerly DNV GL) is an international accredited registrar and classification society headquartered in Norway. The company currently has about 12,000 employees and 350 offices operating in more than 100 countries. It provides services for several industries including maritime, oil and gas, renewable energy, electrification, food and beverage and healthcare.

Senior Technical Consultant - contract

Emarketing Strategy UK

Joined Startup Emarketing-Strategy Ltd as a business management consultant and served as a non-executive director on their board. 

My primary function was to assist with company strategy, product formalisation and business operations. A key outcome was to help the company formalise its product offering into various services for specific buyer personas including SME's and Digital Agencies.

The Company has formulated their process into an award-winning framework and designed a first-in-market keyword strategy tool - https://keywordstrategytool.com/digital-marketing-framework/

Non-Executive Director

Detail-oriented data-driven Digital Transformation and Operations Lead with ~25 years’ experience in global, enterprise-grade infrastructure, application, and software-based program / project delivery and operations for both Start-Up and International companies.

Leads design and planning through to implementation and operations, achieving positive and measurable results. Leverages a comprehensive understanding of project/delivery/operational management best practices and extensive technological expertise to lead resources to deliver projects on time and to budget. Combines analytical knowledge, integrity, and relationship-building skills to engage stakeholders at all levels.

Dynamic troubleshoorter/problem solver, focusing on identifying and mitigating risks. Well rounded knowledge and abilities gained through solid engineering and business development grounding in early career.

Sector Experience includes:- Insurance, Digital & Print Media, Banking, Financial Services, Managed Service Provider (MSP), Energy (Renewables), Oil & Gas, Mining, Utility, Hospitality, Value Added Reseller (VAR), Education (L&D), Manufacturing.

Technology understanding includes:- Routing & Switching, Solutions Architecture, IT Security, IT Management Systems, Mobile (MDM), Cloud Technologies, Data Centre Architectures, End User Computing, Application Architecture, Orchestration & Automation, DevOps, CICD, TDD, API, Blockchain, AI, Datatech.

taplio

The Battle

Theodor Chichirita

Gary W.

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