Simon Gardner

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT SIMON GARDNER

I have over 20 years IT experience in the areas of Big Data Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Integration. For the last 17 years I have been leading the architecture for large award winning £50M+ BI and Big Data Programmes. Two of which were awarded: “Best Big Data Project” at the UK IT Industry Awards and runner up in the Real IT 9th Award.I have extensive experience of legacy BI and Enterprise-scale Big Data Programmes. I am ‘hands on’ and very technically ‘savvy’; assimilating industry technology direction and its practical application. I am currently working on a number of Alphas to explore the application of AI, designing self-regulating Analytics using machine learning and systems theory concepts and other aspects of improving operational analytics to gain better insights using deep learning. Over the past 4 years I have led the Architecture for one of the most complex and technologically heterogeneous Open Source Big Data Platforms in Europe, underpinned by Cloudera, supported and exploited by: Splunk, Rev R, SAS, Pentaho BA/DI, Protegrity and WANdisco. The Platform’s purpose to host the migration and decommissioning of a large number of legacy Warehouse environments. I’m also used to working in large Programmes with complex and diverse stakeholder management including Client and Suppliers. In short, I’m a very experienced Practitioner with a long history in large scale complex BI and Analytics Architecture, Design and Delivery. All of which has given me a ‘sixth sense’ for predicting where problems will be encountered early on in the life-cycle ensuring timely forward planning and risk mitigation is in place before problems are encountered. I have significant experience of, and understand the benefits of applying Agile, Continuous Integration and DevOps approaches, but also know what works at scale, in an Enterprise context and what doesn’t.