Project Manager
Introduction
Hi, I’m Sam, a very strong team member with excellent communication skills and an avid interest in product development within digital technology businesses.
I have 10+ years’ experience delivering projects and products across a number of industries (civil engineering, construction, telecoms, digital media, and betting and gaming). I have coordinated delivery teams spread across multiple locations and disciplines.
Latest information is available here on my LinkedIn profile.
Professional Experience
PROJECT MANAGER, FLUTTER UK&I
SEPTEMBER 2022 – PRESENT
Project Manager in our Flutter UK&I Infrastructure & InfoSec division.
Flutter is the parent company, and our Sky Betting & Gaming brand now sits within our UK&I division, alongside Paddy Power, Betfair, Tombola and others.
Delivering Projects across our Physical and Virtual IT Infrastructure.
Recent Projects include Hosting Strategy, migration to AWS Cloud, renewal of our Load Balancers, refresh of our Firewall estate, upgrades to our existing Infrastructure tech stack, and setup of shared data access initiatives between various Global Office Locations.
PROJECT MANAGER, SKY BETTING & GAMING
SEPTEMBER 2018 – SEPTEMBER 2022
(January 2022 – August 2022)
Project Manager in our Infrastructure Tribe.
Delivering Projects across our Physical and Virtual IT Infrastructure.
Recent and current Projects include renewal of our Load Balancers, refresh of our Firewall estate, new office building fit-out (Networking, Server room equipment, Data Access Points, WiFi Access Points, UPS etc.).
(September 2018 – December 2021)
Project Manager for the Customer Tech and Product – CTAP Tribe (formerly Core Services, Enterprise Services) within our head office in Leeds.
Our team is responsible for supporting the technology upon which our Customer Experience Centre, HR & Finance, and Marketing platforms are built upon. This includes Salesforce CRM, telephony platforms, Workday HR & Finance, and a range of marketing products.
I typically deliver Projects alongside a number of delivery squads as part of a wider Tech Roadmap and Delivery Programme across the Tribe.
Recent projects have included decommissioning of retired systems, on-boarding of new suppliers and software, delivery of compliance initiatives including GDPR, SOX and PCI DSS.
Day to day, I manage both internal and external stakeholders – including 3rd party suppliers, and business stakeholders across our parent company Flutter Entertainment.
PROJECT MANAGER, TRIBUS DIGITAL
SEPTEMBER 2017 – AUGUST 2018
Delivered an innovative new software platform designed to help clients in the Construction Industry manage project costs and improve their own customer experience.
Day to day I managed the client briefs, change requests, scoping, project costs, testing and review workshops, and a team of inhouse web developers and designers. I also acted as the Product Owner for this particular product, I owned and maintained the Product Requirements Document, the Product Backlog, User Stories, and Project Plan.
Our team operated in a semi-Agile manner, running weekly and fortnightly Sprint Cycles, with regular Stand-ups, and Sprint Retrospectives. I maintained the team’s Kanban board, tracking and organising our development tasks and progress.
I also supported our internal product testing, writing Acceptance Tests and test scenarios for our Development team, all as part of our BDD testing approach.
Elsewhere, I also supported new business development – producing development cost and time estimates, briefing and requirements documents, and pitch proposals.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, MULTISITE MASTERS
OCTOBER 2016 – 2019
Multisite Masters is a new Podcast audiobook focussing on how to better manage and grow multi-site businesses.
I founded and started work on Multisite Masters whilst at Yapster. It was originally conceived as a sales lead-generation mechanism for the Yapster product. I then spun this out of Yapster in the New Year to be a separate entity and have been running and growing this small business on my own since.
Day-to-day work has involved finding, booking and liaising with both guests and show hosts, recording interviews, editing and publishing the Podcasts, producing artwork and promotional material, managing the website and social accounts.
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & FUNDRAISING LEAD, LUMINESCENT ALARMS
SEPTEMBER 2016 – MAY 2017
Supported a small Startup team based in Yorkshire, in their efforts to bring to market a novel new car alarm system. I was brought in to analyse and improve their existing business plan, then seek out and pitch for private equity investment to fund the next stage of the venture.
The Luminescent Car Alarm is a revolutionary new car alarm system, which conceals a hidden ‘stolen’ message within a modified vehicle number plate. Once triggered, it alerts the vehicle owner, and then also passers-by and the Police to a theft – by activating the highly visual display alert.
BUSINESS, PROJECTS AND PRODUCT (BPP) MANAGER, YAPSTER
MARCH 2016 – DECEMBER 2017
Responsible for the Product Requirements Document, planning and prioritisation of new product features, product testing, and managing weekly development sprint cycles.
Worked alongside the CEO in a key business development role – pitching the product to new clients, and working in-house with existing clients to understand their needs, collect and prioritise new feature requests, and then communicate these back to the development team.
My day-to-day work involved product strategy and road mapping, research and requirements gathering, design sketches, wire-framing, liaising with key stakeholders and external clients, and coordinating the vision to the development team (mostly remote workers).
PROGRAMME LEAD, STARCOUNT & PURPLE SEVEN
FEBRUARY 2015 – OCTOBER 2015
Held a number of roles, working for Edwina Dunn and Clive Humby, founders of dunnhumby and the Tesco Clubcard, at their two new ventures – Starcount and Purple Seven.
During my time within the product team I worked side by side with the Chief Product Officer, lead designer, data science team, and a team of 5 developers; to create a new social insights reporting tool. Conducted product strategy and road mapping, research and requirements gathering, design sketches, wire-framing, liaising with key stakeholders, and coordinated the vision to the delivery team (both data science and development teams).
Moved to a role supporting the new managing director of Purple Seven (sister company). I worked alongside the managing director and the existing team, to help understand the inner workings of the business, map out the work streams, products, risks and issues, and ultimately deliver a new change and transformation agenda to help turn the business around and steer it to success and future growth. I conducted an impact assessment and produced a revised business case / proposition for a mobile application which the business launched to market earlier that year. As part of this I was involved in designing the roll out strategy for this mobile product, and produced pitch proposals for key clients.
PMO MANAGER, TALKTALK
SEPTEMBER 2013 – JANUARY 2015
Day to day work involved providing direct support to both the Director of Strategic Products, and the Director of Group Change. Within this role I helped to manage and coordinate a number of large pieces of transformational change within the business. I was responsible for weekly reporting, risk and mitigation, and coordination of governance meetings for a number of key strategic projects. Through this role I was very closely involved in the programme management and delivery of a major new piece of change within TalkTalk, right at the transition phase from design to implementation and group wide roll-out.
Responsibilities and objectives: Benefits Realisation – Design and execute effective financial and non-financial benefits tracking and reporting of priority programme delivery. Support design and development of benefits focused annual business planning process. Delivery Governance – Actively support first class delivery governance to plan – through reporting, tracking and management of issues and risks in the priority programmes.
PROJECT COORDINATOR, MOTT MACDONALD
JANUARY 2013 – JUNE 2013
Member of the Strategic Consultancy team based in Newcastle. Supported Project Directors on a number of major procurements including two new UTCs (University Technical Colleges) – one in Newcastle, and one in Cumbria. The team’s core competencies included Project Management and Technical Advisory on major civil/ structural procurements for clients including the Education Authority and NHS.
Day to day work involved face to face liaison with client, project sponsors and other key stakeholders, preparation of tender documents and contracts, coordination of surveys, site meetings, organisation of bidder’s days etc.
GRADUATE CIVIL ENGINEER, MOTT MACDONALD
SEPTEMBER 2011 – DECEMBER 2012
Graduate Project Engineer working on multiple varied projects within the regional water team, based in the Buildings & Infrastructure division.
Additional Information
Education
New Entrepreneurs Foundation Programme
2013 – 2014. London, UK
Alumni
M.Eng Master of Civil Engineering
2007 – 2011. Durham University, UK
Achieved grade 2:1
A-Levels
2005 – 2007. Leeds, UK
Maths (A), Physics (A), Design & Technology – Product Design (A).
AS-Level Chemistry (B).
GCSE’s
2005 – 2007. Wakefield, UK
6A*, 1A, 3B, 1C.
Skills and Competencies
- Experience working in Agile teams
- Scrum and Kanban methods
- Experienced Product Owner, and Project Manager (inc. PRINCE 2)
- High competancy with MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
- Experience with HTML5 and CSS3
- Prototyping, wire-framing and strong drawing skills
- High competancy with Adobe CS (Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere, Dreamweaver, InDesign)
- English – fluent, native tongue French – spoken: basic, read: basic
Professional References
Paul Baker
Senior Project Manager, Mott MacDonald
1 West Durham Office Park, Meadowfield, Durham, DH7 8RD.
Contact details: available upon request.
Susanne Vanner
Formerly: Director of Strategic Products at TalkTalk
Current: Director of Operational Transaction Services at Ernst & Young
Contact details: available upon request.
Rob Liddiard
CEO & Co-founder, Employee Republic (T/A Yapster)
The Euston Office (Floor 1), One Euston Square, 40 Melton Street, London, NW1 2FD.
Contact details: available upon request.
Personal Projects & Interests
- Road Cycling, Mountain Biking, Triathlon, Rock Climbing
- Music
- Entrepreneurship & Business Development
- Web & Mobile Applications