Work
Extensive experience in eCommerce, Dynamic Media and cutting-edge Dynamic Content solutions, Conversion Optimisation, Digital Marketing. Accomplished in both Technical Pre-Sales and leading the successful delivery of 100+ projects for leading global online retailers and prestigious global brands.
Author of “Practical Responsive Images” (published by Five Simple Steps): http://responsiveimag.es/
Regular presenter at UK developer/designer meet-ups and co-founder and organiser of the “NE Dev” meet-up in the North East.
♦ Technical Pre-Sales : exceeded EMEA Sales targets FY'16, consistent YoY growth.
♦ Significant role in establishing new products in the eCommerce marketplace, supporting significant increases in AoV & YoY growth, expanding existing geographies, establishing a foothold in new territories.
♦ Responsible for Professional Services and successful delivery of all client projects 2007-10, 2012-13
♦ Published Author, magazine contributor, Conference and Webinar speaker as subject matter expert, Technology and Product Evangelism for Customer and Developer Events. Co-organiser of the "NE Dev" Developer Meet-up
A results driven technical leader and evangelist with a passion for successful client engagement, delivering value and the realisation of business benefits.
Diverse skill-set incorporating Technical Pre-Sales, Technology and Solution Evangelism, Solution Consulting, Team Leadership, Technical Project Management (PMP), Project Delivery, Business Analysis, Customer Advocacy, Customer Relationship Management.
STEMnet Ambassador / Code Club volunteer
Volunteering to inspire young people in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It’s amazing what you can learn, when you try to teach something.
Senior Solutions engineer (Late 2018 – Present)
With well over 6,000 customers and nearly 500,000 users managing over 30 Billion images and videos, Cloudinary is fast becoming the de-facto solution for powering all aspects of dynamic media optimisation, delivery and management.
- * Forbes #Cloud100 (2019 & 2018), recognising the Top Private Cloud Companies in the world
- * $60M+ ARR announced end 2019 with zero VC funding, through continued delivery of critical media management, optimisation and delivery tooling.
- * MarTech Breakthrough Winner of the “Best Digital Asset Management Platform” Award.
- * Developing and defining next generation media formats such as JPG XL, through participating in expert groups such as the JPEG working group
Used by web and mobile application developers to streamline image and video management and deliver an optimal and engaging User eXperience. With the addition of next generation asset management solutions, we are all that you need to manage and power all digital media for your Enterprise.
Director, Solutions Consulting (2012 – July 2018)
Playing a significant role in establishing Amplience's Dynamic Media solution in the eCommerce marketplace, I led the technical pre-sales engagements, was a member of the core Product Management team, was extensively involved with RFPs, and then owned the post-sales projects and implementations as we established our initial Dynamic Media customer base, and continued to win over some of the most prestigious brands and largest global enterprises to our platform (including Shop Direct, Tesco and a global top 5 retailer I can't yet mention).
Responsible for leading the Professional Services team and the delivery of all client projects (’12/’13), my role has subsequently expanded to encompass technical pre-sales, developer and community engagement and technical evangelism; Along with the direct provision of Technical Project Management, Technical Consulting, Subject Matter Expertise, Business Analysis, Solution Architecting and Training.
Building on my extensive experience from leading scores of Dynamic Rich Media projects, and as a member of the Product Management team, I have worked closely with our eCommerce clients to guide the development of Amplience’s Dynamic Media solutions. By leading the client engagements inline with a concierged minimum viable product approach, and coupled with Agile software development principles, we have successfully undergone rapid iterative enhancement of our Dynamic Media solution to best suit the needs of clients, and to closely align with the current needs of the industry.
Senior Manager -> Senior Solution Specialist (2007 – 2012)
Responsible for Scene7 Professional Services in EMEA (’07-’11), additionally providing Technical Pre-Sales support, along with the direct provision of Project Management, Technical Consulting, Business Analysis, Solution Architecting, Training, Client Engagement Management, recruitment, on-boarding, mentoring and line management.
Senior Solution Specialist (’11-’12) focused on Dynamic Rich Media and Conversion Optimisation for large retail clients and the online presence of prestigious brands. I partner with our Key and Strategic accounts to help them reap the rewards of increased utilisation and adoption of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite. Develop & teach best practices, while consulting with clients on increasing online conversion and website optimisation through improved use of Dynamic Rich Media, A/B/n and multivariate testing, behavioural targeting, landing page optimisation, and becoming more data-driven organisations.
Experience of working across timezones and across global virtual teams has necessitated very strong time management and prioritization skills, and the ongoing development of excellent interpersonal & communication skills, both verbal and written and the ability to constantly adapt within ever changing technological, business and organisational landscapes.
Adobe Scene7 is the industry-leading SaaS platform for automating the management, production and delivery of high-impact data-driven rich media. Enabling our large retailer/ecommerce clients to grow revenues, enhance customer experience and cut production costs.
Co-Founder/CTO (2008 – present)
Save Your Past specialises in helping people make the most of their pre-digital, and early-digital, precious memories.
Committee member of IST41 (2005 – 2009)
Committee member of IST41, which represents the UK in the technical work for International Standards Organisation (ISO) Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, which maintains and develops standards for SGML, DSDL and Topic Maps. During this time we provided the technical reviews of key standards ODF and OOXML.
Technical Consultant (Team Lead) -> Technical Account/Project Manager (2004 – 2007)
Line managed a team of 8-12 product specialists, technical consultants, testers, and interface specialists. Through staff turnover and reorganization I have recruited, onboarded and line managed over 20 members of staff, performing yearly appraisals, coordinating their professional development, and was involved in writing the quality processes for the delivery of 2nd line and 3rd line support, and the redesign of processes to augment their ITIL compliance.
CSW was a leading provider of products for electronic records management and knowledge engineering, a Times TechTrack 30th fastest growing company, and the British Computer Society’s SME Organisation of the year 2007
Senior Developer (2000 – 2003)
Responsible for the design and development of a suite of applications for Dendral’s semantic/neural network based Natural Language Recognition and CMS (content management) software products (Java, web services, XML, XSLT, ASP, PHP, JSP)
Dendral SmartSell is a unique web service that intelligently guides a user through an interactive sales process. Customers get an online experience that more closely resembles a traditional face-to-face interaction with a highly trained sales professional who guides them through the sale of products and
services-and learns about them in the process.
E-commerce, Rich Media, Project Management, SaaS, Business Analysis,Training Delivery, Digital Marketing, Conversion Optimization, Scene7, Digital Imaging, SEO, Pre-sales, Web Analytics, Web Development, Solution Architecture, Management, CMS, Professional Services, Cloud Computing,Online Marketing
MSc, Information Technology
University of Liverpool</strong> (2004 – 2006)
Dissertation: Topic Maps and Digital Social Trust Networks
BSc, Physics, Mathematics (Joint Hons.)
The University of Sheffield</strong> (1991 – 1994)
Dissertation: Computational analysis of matter–antimatter annihilation using data from CERN.
Activities and societies: Korfball – Captain, President, British Student Gold medal, Qualified Coach, University Colours.
Ben handled our most important global accounts at Adobe with skill, authority and diplomacy. He has an exceptional ability to communicate well and engender trust across the globe and management level. I have seen him impress a managing director with his business insight and creativity and quell engineering concerns surrounding timelines and solutions. In addition to all his skill and achievements it is simply a delight to work with Ben.Pamela Sogge : Senior Director, Adobe Systems
Ben is a domain expert and great at solving problems for customers with his breadth and depth of industry experience and technical knowledge. He is very bright and articulate, so can convey his knowledge and understanding very effectively. But beyond that, Ben is simply a pleasure to work with. He is an extremely pleasant and humble individual, a real team player, keen to help others, and I'm very happy to have the opportunity to work with him.Daniel Rotman : VP of Business Lines, Cloudinary
Having worked with Ben for 5 years, his enthusiasm for technologies and imaging in particular still continue to grow. Ben is nurturing as a leader, supportive as a peer, inspiring as a teacher and captivating as a speaker. His many qualifications and years of experience are invaluable to ensuring accurate and timeline delivery of projects, but the underlying mentality of wanting to do what is best is what makes his work successful.Neil Mistry : Senior Solutions Engineer, Amplience
I’ve worked with Ben for many years, and most recently on our dynamic imaging migration. Ben has an exceptional eye for detail and is an asset on any project, his knowledge of the Amplience technology and eCommerce in general is outstanding and has been critical to the projects we have completed together.Simon Poole : Senior User Experience Manager, Shop Direct
Ben is an intelligent and driven people-oriented technophile; he loves technology and gadgets but beyond that he loves to delight customers (both internal and external). I’d recommend Ben for virtually any job that benefits from knowing the technology whilst dealing with people.Kevin Wise : Director, ABC Self Assessment Ltd.
Ben has a great talent for engendering confidence in our customers as they explore new technical avenues to increase their competitiveness. His product and technical expertise and passion bubbles to the surface and allows customers to fully explore and exploit the capability and potential without feeling overwhelmed. In my experience this has greatly helped us fine tune our approach, which in turn maximises the value and benefits our customers get from our solutions.Darren Lee : VP Engineering, Amplience
Ben is an extremely bright and outgoing professional who helped me greatly while I was taking my first steps with the Adobe Scene7 product line. He managed to teach me the product fundamentals over a single 2 hours meeting and I was amazed by how Ben can make even the most complex technology simple. Always willing to give a guiding hand when needed, with great positive energies, I would be very happy to work with Ben again in the future..Ittai Baratz : Multi-solution Architect, Adobe Systems
I worked with Ben for over 3 years as a senior manager at Adobe. Ben’s ability to combine his in-depth technical understanding, efficient and effective project management and his ability to engender confidence and trust while handling customer relationships under extremely tight schedules are the keys to his success at Adobe. Ben is also a capable and autonomous manager, taking day-to-day responsibility for the EMEA region, while keeping the US leadership team informed of key events, and escalating when necessary. Ben would be an asset to any technology-based company.Brent Garlow : Senior Manager, Adobe Systems
I worked with Ben as a senior solution specialist in Adobe. In addition to his excellent technical background and a proven track record in management and customer related services, he has a great reputation with both his clients and his peers. I enjoyed working with him and can recommend him to everyone.Jan Exner : Consulting Delivery Manager, Adobe Systems
I worked with Ben on transferring Halfords CDN platform from Scene7 to Amplience. Ben’s level of expertise of the Amplience platform capabilities along with technical understanding of back end systems in asset management is exceptional.Matthew Evans : Digital Operations Manager
Ben is a true expert in his field and completely respected and trusted by colleagues and customers alike. Specifically, he has just managed a very large and complex implementation of Amplience rich media solutions at a major online fashion company with great competence and ultimately success. In short, Ben is hugely skilled, passionate and trustworthy.David Sykes : Account Director (Adobe Systems, and Amplience)
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