
Kristian Whittick
Verified Expert in Engineering
Solution Architect and Developer
Charlton Adam, United Kingdom
Toptal member since August 4, 2020
Kristian is a solution architect who excels at building elegant, pragmatic solutions for business challenges—whether it be technical, operational, or within a team. With 30 years of IT experience, Kristian's amassed a wealth of expertise and skills, including leading and mentoring architecture/dev teams and technically leading projects (1 to 4 years in length). He's skilled in major patterns, platforms, languages (Java, C++, JS), libraries (TIBCO, Node.js), and paradigms (SOA, microservices).
Portfolio
Experience
- Event-driven Architecture - 20 years
- API Architecture - 20 years
- Solution Architecture - 20 years
- Integration - 20 years
- Architecture - 20 years
- Microservices - 10 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 8 years
- Cloud Architecture - 6 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Java, Agile, C, Microservices, APIs, Cloud Architecture, Integration
The most amazing...
...project was rearchitecting JustEat from a single server, multi-layered, microservices, and database to a serverless/scalable entity which saved costs/ops time.
Work Experience
Senior Solution Architect
HCLTech
- Performed container migration for a bank from on-prem to AWS EKS cloud.
- Handled bank solution design and implementation of the AWS platform.
- Achieved a certification in Terraform IaC. Mentored team members, interviewed for hiring, and wrote material for the cloud practice.
Lead Architect
Varda - Main
- Helped from the initial proof-of-concept to trigger the creation of the startup company and then build the teams and headcount to 50+ people.
- Implemented IAM for the entire company with centralized control of all SSO, OIDC, SAML, and SCIM access from Azure AD.
- Contributed to the initial research and adoption of the Uber H3 hexagonal grid system to map the geospatial data.
- Helped mold the products to allow the company to expose the maps-based user interface and APIs to the internet.
- Handled many roles within the company, including lead architect, scrum master, product owner, and many others, adapting to any role per company need.
- Architected, designed, and managed the building of the cloud solution for the data platform in AWS.
- Architected and managed the building of the end-to-end CI/CD pipeline to deploy on AWS/EKS.
- Built the data pipeline for standardized data platform ingestion from various data sources.
AWS Cloud Architect
Sophos
- Built the patching platform using AWS technologies and best practices.
- Set up an approach to roll out AWS Config and AWS SSM to legacy and new AWS accounts.
- Involved in hands-on development of CloudFormation templates for infrastructure as code.
- Defined stakeholder engagement for the adoption of AWS.
Software Engineer | Architect
BCG - Client Services
- Involved in the hands-on deployment of a new product to a leading European Telecoms company in just eight weeks.
- Architected the deployment pattern for the end client.
- Participated in stakeholder engagement with the end client to gather deployment specifics.
- Adapted the product for OpenShift, Kubernetes, Docker, React, Nginx, Redis, Python, Django, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Teradata, AWS, EKS, ECR, RDS, AWS Gateway, and CloudFront.
- Adapted Docker images to run on with tighter security of OpenShift.
- Continued part-time support of deployment changes once live.
Interim Lead Enterprise Architect | Solution Architect
C&J Clarks International
- Designed a globally scalable AWS pattern for the digital transformation program and eCommerce platform in 12+ countries.
- Led the architecture team and promoted the architecture by creating a guild and chairing meetings.
- Defined the multi-cloud strategy and integration strategy.
- Chose and established the stack for the cloud data-lake technologies and data feeds.
- Reestablished governance for application catalogs and integration catalogs.
- Owned the entire IT estate discovery and created essential diagrams and assessments.
Enterprise Architect | AWS Cloud Architect
JustEat (via Beyond Consultancy)
- Introduced and promoted architecture at JustEat by creating a guild and chairing architecture meetings. JustEat is an eCommerce platform for 14+ countries for takeaway meal sales and delivery.
- Decoupled and scaled components by using AWS serverless technologies.
- Adopted microservices and event-driven architecture.
- Reviewed the entire AWS billing, analyzed the usage, and then implemented a cost savings program, resulting in a $1 million saving for AWS hosting.
- Created the architecture VMOST strategy for the architecture and aligned it with the 3-year business goals.
- Oversaw the entire IT estate discovery by creating essential diagrams and assessments.
- Reorganized and owned the discovery and team's components.
- Introduced Kong as the API gateway, including reusable patterns and best practices.
- Defined the strategy for Android devices in restaurants.
Architect | Solution, AWS, and SOA
Hitachi Capital (UK)
- Introduced and promoted AWS Cloud to Hitachi by creating best practices, obtaining consensus on new service processes, and promoting cloud benefits to initially reluctant teams.
- Implemented serverless architecture for big data analytics to solve business requirements for vehicle telematics.
- Generated and implemented the solution architecture for a stack replacement program for the Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions's leasing system and website.
- Built a B2C eCommerce platform.
- Promoted and coached the IT architecture team and enterprise architecture at the group level for Hitachi Capital UK PLC.
- Introduced collaboration tools that improved cross-team interactions and productivity.
Systems Architect
HP Enterprise Services
- Served as the chief technologist for Vodafone Integration Domain and led the architect and design team of one of the biggest telco companies in Europe and the biggest TIBCO implementation in Europe.
- Led the architecture, design governance, SOA governance, customer relations, process authority, technical authority, Agile methodology, coding standards, development practices, and release management improvements.
- Led and mentored a team of architects and designers across two continents to continue delivering SOA to Vodafone.
- Led the HP team of 180 people, consisting of 6% UK-based and 94% Indi- based for a project.
- Worked within an environment where Vodafone has 600+ SOA services live in production and achieved a 52% re-usage of services.
- Contributed to a transformation project for file transfers by architecting and designing a full mission-critical managed file transfer solution with geo-resilience with Ireland and Germany. It was B2B.
Solution and Integration Architect | TIBCO Specialist
Virgin Media
- Served as a solution designer for the micro-SIM project across seven teams and led the middleware team in the design and development—which allowed Virgin to sell and provision micro SIMs, expanding the potential customer base to iPhone/iPad users.
- Designed solutions for the MINT project, which allowed Virgin to benefit from the T-Mobile and Orange merger, improving network coverage.
- Acted as a solution designer for the Blackberry project, which automatically provisioned/de-provisioned Blackberry services when a customer purchased or ended a Blackberry mobile contract.
- Completed a data center move, where all key systems were migrated from an outsourced data center to an in-house data center. Automated the installations for the latest TIBCO software and configuration via BMC BladeLogic.
- Created, as the integration architect lead, integration solution designs, high-level design, and low-level design documentation.
- Worked on multiple business projects in parallel and ensured compatibility and timely delivery.
- Worked within a 3-month release delivery cycle, overlapping three releases.
TIBCO Specialist
GFI Group (Global Brokerage)
- Architected, designed, and built trading feeds for back-end financial systems, including confirmations, finance, and MIS.
- Architected, designed, developed, deployed, and supported a global SOA platform for a broker-trading system.
- Designed, developed, and reviewed "low latency" TIBCO BusinessWorks™ processes.
- Mentored and developed build-and-deployment scripts and automation tools and implemented process enrichment, quality control, and version control.
- Developed TIBCO BusinessEvents rules and integrated them with TIBCO BusinessWorks processes.
TIBCO Technical Lead
Carphone Warehouse
- Served as the technical lead of the CRIM (configuration release integration management) team.
- Standardized and streamlined deployments by enforcing version control on the previously haphazard deployment configuration.
- Performed environment deployment regression testing and oversaw the detailed environment integration testing design.
- Managed nine environments and delivered five full releases a week from two separate TIBCO development streams.
Senior Consultant
EDS
- Led, as the technical integration architect, in the design and development of an SOA framework for integration for the Ministry of Defence. The reusable framework integrated cross-department systems while complying with high-security requirements.
- Engaged with multiple teams across multiple projects to deliver separate-but-uniform TIBCO integration solutions.
- Gathered requirements for architecture documentation, designed solutions, and took a leading and active role in development.
Lead EAI Technical Architect
Infogain (UK)
- Met the technology needs of a wide variety of business contracts through this co-owned company.
- Cultivated a professional working relationship with Virgin Mobile over more than four years.
- Was responsible for winning the initial consulting work (Virgin Mobile) and continued to drive strategic projects, including five major projects spanning six months or more and many small projects of one to two months in duration.
- Worked as a technical architect and troubleshooter on the associated Mediabase for The Mail, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and Evening Standard.
- Served as a technical architect and senior analyst programmer for a project for ASDA Home Shopping.
- Contributed my skill as a senior analyst programmer and database administrator for Lloyds TSB "Success for Business."
- Served as a project manager and senior analyst programmer for a project involved in the arenas and fairgrounds.
- Multiple B2B and B2C projects where many integrations were designed, developed, and supported.
Technical Architect | Development Manager | Software Engineer
Honeywood Software Solutions
- Developed 3D CAD software for conservatories, including design, plotting, rendering, and cutting lists.
- Built websites for customers, including infrastructure set up and support.
- Constructed software for manufacturing companies. Including order management, costing lists, and CAD/presentation software.
Experience
Serverless Telematics on AWS
Serverless architecture is one where the components chosen are offered as a service. This means that the service provider takes care of the underlying infrastructure, and the consumer is responsible for how the component is used. It allows a consumer to focus on business functionality without regard for the commodity compute resources that support the component.
See the link for the full article.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/adoption-aws-serverless-architecture-kristian-whittick/
Certifications
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (003)
HashiCorp
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate
AWS
Java
Sun Microsystems
Skills
Libraries/APIs
REST APIs, API Development, Node.js, Java Message Service (JMS), React, Amazon API
Tools
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Jira, Shell, Microsoft Excel, Kong, NGINX, VPN, Terraform, AWS CLI, AWS Glue, AWS Vault, Amazon EKS, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), GitHub, Azure Active Directory B2C (ADB2C), AWS Systems Manager, AWS CloudFormation, Figma, Amazon Cognito, AWS IAM, AWS ELB, AWS SDK, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), Helm
Languages
Java, C++, JavaScript, JavaScript 6, C, Pascal, BASIC, Bourne Shell, Python 3, SQL, Python, CSS, HTML, Go, TypeScript
Paradigms
Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), Microservices, REST, Event-driven Architecture, Web Architecture, API Architecture, Microservices Architecture, DevOps, Object-oriented Design (OOD), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), B2B, B2C, Serverless Architecture, RESTful Development, Automation, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Agile, Continuous Development (CD), Test-driven Development (TDD), ETL
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Linux, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows, Kubernetes, Docker, Amazon, Amazon EC2, OpenShift, Apache Kafka, Azure, Red Hat OpenShift, AWS Cloud Computing Services, AWS ALB, AWS NLB, Firebase, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Storage
Amazon DynamoDB, NoSQL, MySQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), MongoDB, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, AWS Elastic File System, Amazon FSx, Amazon EFS, Databases
Frameworks
.NET, Spring Boot, Angular, AWS HA, Tailwind CSS
Other
TIBCO, Team Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement, Stakeholder Management, Governance, IT Governance, RESTful Services, RESTful Microservices, APIs, Software Architecture, Solution Architecture, Integration, Messaging, Lambda Functions, Leadership, Technical Leadership, Cloud Services, Coding, Back-end, Code Architecture, Architecture, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), eCommerce, Serverless, System Architecture, System Architecture Design, API Integration, Message Queues, Cloud Architecture, Software Development, High Availability Disaster Recovery (HADR), Scalability, Terraform Cloud, Memory Management, Mentorship & Coaching, Cloud, SaaS, Amazon Kinesis, Streaming Data, Unix Shell Scripting, Containers, Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Jira Administration, Jira Administrator, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Github Administration, Lean, Identity & Access Management (IAM), AWS Certified Solution Architect, AWS Cloud Architecture, BladeLogic, AWS WAF, AWS VPN, AWS DevOps
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