Summary
Overview
Work history
Education
Skills
Websites
Certification
Languages
Timeline
Generic
Shaq Arif

Shaq Arif

New Malden,Greater London

Summary

Consultant with 27 years of experience in IT, specialising in cloud engineering and leadership. Proven ability to drive team performance and client satisfaction while aligning with strategic goals. Holds a Chartered Manager qualification and several technical certifications. Experienced in leading large teams and managing high-profile client engagements.

Overview

25
25
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work history

AWS Team Lead

Version 1
London, London
07.2023 - Current
  • Leading a team of 60 engineers within the AWS Capability, ensuring optimal engagement across client assignments.
  • Own KPIs including chargeability, revenue, and profitability for the AWS Capability.
  • Launched and managing a Skills Hub for bench engineers, resulting in 30+ AWS certifications in the last quarter.
  • Coach and embed the company’s core values, with Engagement as a key performance measure.
  • Drive the company’s AI Native strategy by equipping the team with foundational AI knowledge and encouraging practical adoption.
  • Maintain strategic relationships with AWS, supporting the Capability in winning the AWS Collaboration Partner of the Year award in 2023 and 2024.
  • Contribute to pre-sales efforts, providing technical expertise and solution design support.
  • Maintain personal chargeability by serving as technical lead on key client engagements.

Technical Lead

Engagement - HM Passport Office
London
11.2024 - Current
  • Supporting Team Lead and Delivery Management in ensuring that Team is highly performant
  • Liaising with Client Stakeholders
  • Providing coaching in Scripting (Python, Bash)

Test Manager

Engagement - University College, Dublin
10.2024 - 11.2024
  • Company Overview: Higher Education / Digital Transformation
  • A large scale migration of business workflows from multiple legacy systems to Workday. Workflows included payroll, supplier invoicing and research funding.
  • Shaq took on a role overseeing end-to-end testing of a migration to Workday, conducted by the internal team alongside another consultancy.

Technical Team Lead

Engagement - Ove Arup & Partners
06.2024 - 10.2024
  • Company Overview: Legal & Professional Services / AWS Full Stack (New Development)
  • Shaq was responsible for the technical delivery of the product, working with product owners, ecologists, data scientists and technical architects.
  • Shaq also provided technical guidance and conducted code reviews. When required, Shaq was able to step in to write code (Python) and deploy this through lambda functions.
  • Additionally, Shaq acted as scrum master for the project, running standups, retros, sprint planning and refinements, and led on sprint reviews to the end users.
  • Project Skills: AWS DynamoDB Streams, AWS, AWS Lambda, Python, Geospatial data modelling and management

Technical Team Lead

Engagement - Centrica Plc
05.2022 - 06.2023
  • Company Overview: Utilities & Energy / Modernization
  • Migration of customers from legacy Salesforce platform to New Energy Platform, which is an ENSEK based solution.
  • Liaise with Customer key contacts to identify opportunities.
  • Proposed and developed a Storage Cost Calculator tailored to help make strategic architectural solutions. Recognised by the customer as 'a brilliant compass for business decision making'
  • Project Skills: AWS Step Functions, AWS, AWS API Gateway, AWS Cloudwatch, AWS DynamoDB, AWS IAM, AWS S3, Git, Terraform, TypeScript, Jest Testing Framework

Technical Team Lead

Engagement - Department of Work and Pensions
10.2021 - 05.2022
  • Company Overview: Central Government / Development
  • Management, storage and indexing of Container Images for Development environments.
  • Authored white paper assessing the various proprietary solutions for container image management. Comparative review of Container Image registries to provide a recommendation to the customer of a solution that is the best fit for their requirements.
  • Project Skills: AWS ECR, Docker, DockerHub

Team Lead

Engagement - DEFRA
11.2020 - 10.2021
  • Company Overview: Central Government / Modernisation to Azure
  • EU exit projects across multiple teams in DEFRA. Supporting infrastructure builds and releases to Production environments in an Azure environment for up to sixty projects across the estate.
  • Liaison with the client leadership team and Product ownership team to build client relationships.
  • Project Skills: Microsoft Azure, Azure DevOps, Octopus Deploy, GitLab, Agile Project Management

Lead Cloud Engineer

Thomson Reuters / Refinitiv
02.2018 - 11.2020
  • FinOps Lead
  • - Led FinOps team to develop and implement change
  • - Reserved Instances, tagging, rightsizing, housekeeping, monitoring
  • - Weekly meeting with Director of Public Cloud Cost Optimisation to monitor progress
  • - Implemented initiatives that reduced cloud spend by £4M in the first year and £500K pa ongoing
  • Team Lead
  • - Helped Design and Implement Landing Zone Architecture across Thomson Reuters estate. Reduced the time spent to onboard a project team from 10 days to 2 days.
  • - Led all Agile Ceremonies
  • - Met weekly with AWS Technical Account Manager to understand new services and how they could benefit Thomson Reuters.
  • - Supported Team manager by conducting all final stage interviews and managing OOO support
  • - Dealt with a high profile issue, reporting to CTO and directors on a daily basis. Received a commendation for this work.

Integration Engineer

Aviva
08.2014 - 02.2018
  • Developer (mainly Python). AWS, technologies including AWS Lambda, API Gateway, S3.
  • Agile Methodologies - Scrum.
  • Technical Lead, focused on Cloud Native development.

Senior Integration Engineer

Algorithmics / IBM
08.2010 - 07.2014
  • Onsite consultant working in Europe on Solvency II and Basel III Risk Management Solutions (Insurance and Banking Sector)
  • Clients included, Prudential L&G, Aviva, Generali, ING, Societe Generale.
  • Algorithmics acquired by IBM Oct 2012.

Analyst Developer (Contract)

Goldman Sachs
03.2000 - 06.2009
  • Support and development of Securities Settlement communications software.

Education

BSc - Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

University of Birmingham
Birmingham

Skills

  • Team leadership and building
  • Strategic planning
  • Client relationship management
  • AWS and Cloud FinOps
  • Python programming
  • DevOps practices
  • Agile frameworks

Certification

HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate, HashiCorp

Corndel Leadership Diploma, Chartered Manager (CMgr)

Technical University of Dublin, Strength in Balance Leadership Diploma

Languages

Native English speaker
Native
Urdu
Advanced

Timeline

Technical Lead

Engagement - HM Passport Office
11.2024 - Current

Test Manager

Engagement - University College, Dublin
10.2024 - 11.2024

Technical Team Lead

Engagement - Ove Arup & Partners
06.2024 - 10.2024

AWS Team Lead

Version 1
07.2023 - Current

Technical Team Lead

Engagement - Centrica Plc
05.2022 - 06.2023

Technical Team Lead

Engagement - Department of Work and Pensions
10.2021 - 05.2022

Team Lead

Engagement - DEFRA
11.2020 - 10.2021

Lead Cloud Engineer

Thomson Reuters / Refinitiv
02.2018 - 11.2020

Integration Engineer

Aviva
08.2014 - 02.2018

Senior Integration Engineer

Algorithmics / IBM
08.2010 - 07.2014

Analyst Developer (Contract)

Goldman Sachs
03.2000 - 06.2009

BSc - Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

University of Birmingham

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