Curriculum Vitae

Name:
Nationality:
Marital status:
David M Cowlin
British
Single
Key skill sets and technologies

  • Business skills:

Business analysis, project management, consulting, sales, client relations, E-commerce,

  • Development skills:

Web Analytics, ETL, Analysis and architectural design, quality assurance and testing, W3C WAI and 508 accessibility standards, cross platform development

  • Technologies I have previously worked with:

ASP, VBScript, .Net 1.1 & 2.0, C#, T-SQL, PL/SQL, ZXTM, HTML, DHTML, CSS, JavaScript, ADO, VB, ADOX, DTS, XML, JSON, PHP, Perl, Java (servlets),

  • Software and platforms I have worked on:

VS.Net, MS Office, Dreamweaver, Perforce, Photoshop, MS Office, Visio, PVCS, Homesite, Photoshop, Fireworks, Flash, Clearquest, Netmeeting

Windows 95 / 98 / XP / 2000 / NT4 / 2003, IIS, MS SQL Server, Silverpop, Coremetrics, Zeus, Google Analytics, Joomla, WordPress

Employment & Achievements
Dates: December 2005 – currentCompany: Play.comRole: Systems analyst – R&D Team

At Play I have been involved in most areas of the business from the frontend web site design through to fulfilment, marketing to customer services working at and with all levels of the business and with all teams. I am currently involved in the mobile strategy, application design and API development reporting directly to the CTO;

  • Mobile strategy; campaigning for the adoption of a mobile strategy supported by analytics and research, application requirements capture and recommendations, systems and application design.
  • Mobile http API R&D; design, development and documentation utilizing PHP, Oracle, MySQL, XML and JSON.
  • Recommendations; worked with both business and development in the promotion, requirements capture, review and selection of the supplier for onsite recommendations.
  • CRM and marketing email communications: Worked on initial CRM initiative aggregating key customer metrics in order to give insight and expedite intelligent use of data in Marketing to power customer targeting.
  • CRM/ESP: worked with business and architects through a communications/email vender engagement and selection process culminating in a PoC and final vender selection and engagement.
  • MVT; lobbied for and introduced MVT to key members in order to take advantage of this technology. Worked on steering group during exploratory phases and implementation.
  • ETL; Investigation and recommendation of ETL tools for integration and feeds management resulting in adoption of Pentaho. Analysis, design and production of ETL solutions with Pentaho for internal applications and integration with 3rd parties; processing feeds into and out of various data sources.
  • Manage on daily basis a resource who assist’s in the production of reports and data files for business, development and my analysis.
  • Data mining and segmentation; analysing data from Play database, Web Analytics and other sources to identify areas of interest and concern and making recommendations based on the data.
  • Web Analytics; Implementation and management of Coremetrics and Google Analytics, lobbied for and initiated business wide analytics requirements review, gathering and scoping, identifying benefits, deficiencies and areas for improvement. Key member of the RFP and vendor selection program.
  • Email delivery; responsible for managing integration with Silverpop email system for use with newsletter and transactional. Ongoing support, development and strategic planning both technical and commercially focused.
  • Affiliates; review and document affiliate feeds, tagging and reporting. Container tag specification and solution provider review and subsequent implementation.
  • Fulfilment; worked on mapping out warehouse, business and systems processes around stock management and warehouse fulfilment.
  • Working at all levels of the business from CTO and heads of business and development to individual resource level.
  • Enterprise systems analysis and documentation. Collating view of entire Play enterprise from front end web site through transactional processes to fulfilment.
  • Worked as a member of team designing next generation enterprise architecture for Play backend systems and website technology.
  • Devised solution for multi Adword account management on site
  • Working with 3rd party analytics company on consumption of data into Play databases. Use of data within marketing and customer services.
  • Involvement in PIM selection, review of catalogue and requirement, associated integration issues both data and technical. Technological and performance issues.
  • Responsible for MRM analysis and design, documentation of requirements, selection of vendor and planning implementation. Completed analysis and design phase with chosen supplier. Retained advisory capacity during solution implementation and integration.
  • Pricing capture; designed and built in C# ASP.net a price capture spider against a SQL Server database as a PoC. Review and reporting on associated issues and benefits.
  • Consummation and collation of externally collected email lists into local Oracle db for emailing campaigns and analysis of results.
  • CV2, fraud and security; worked with Head of Security in an advisory and investigative capacity..
  • Product promotion system; BOGOF, link save, bundling analysis and design of technical and commercial issues.
  • Working closely with marketing and other areas of business as technical liaison

 

Working at Play has been an interesting and rewarding experience; my prime goal was to attain E-commerce knowledge and experience however I have acquired much more including many aspects of enterprise architecture. My focus during the years has shifted from hands on development skills to higher level enterprise and business related in order to understand the complexities of the unique business environment that Play.com operates within. As such I believe I have achieved that goal and have attained a good understanding of online retail.

Dates: December 2000 – June 2005Company: TMP Worldwide / Monster.com, Prague, Czech RepublicTMP is one of the world’s foremost advertising and recruitment solution providers. The company operates world wide with offices throughout Europe, Asia Pac and the US. The Prague Web Development Centre was set up at the start of Dec 2000 to give TMP offices across Europe a single and dedicated production and knowledge centre. We have devised, architected, and programmed custom recruitment solutions for some of the world’s largest corporations. In spring 2002 Monster.com started to move part of its production to the WDC and has continued to expand its operation with a move to newer and larger offices when the team was incorporated into Monster.com.
Dates: Feb 2003 – June 2005Role: Team Leader / Senior developer / AnalystFull responsibility for management of team and project delivery to all global offices. In this role I expanded the group and guided them to become the principle development team for all non US TMP/Monster development. My duties were varied and I was involved in the complete project lifecycle;

  • Responsible for all non US custom development for TMP within EU and Asia Pac.
  • Managed team of up to 10 in an offshore environment.
  • Total project value for 2004 handled by my team $8m+
  • Reported to European and Asia Pac development director.
  • Analysis and design of custom web sites from business briefs.
  • Product design through collaboration with stakeholders.
  • Quotations and project planning.
  • Directing and assigning development team members.
  • Programming both server (ASP, ASP.net, SQL) and client side.
  • Change request management and responsible for decisions on code deployment.
  • Trouble shooting code and server issues, ongoing support.
  • High level management of production servers; IIS and MS SQL.
  • Managing multiple simultaneous projects through full technical lifecycle.
  • Improved specification gathering through use of HTML prototyping.
  • Adopted tools and processes to reduce build times and improve quality.
  • Introduced internal QA role to improve quality.
  • Maintained high levels of visibility and communication with offices and clients.
  • Promoted and directed adoption of new technologies within the team to improve code re-usability, scalability, accessibility and reduce build time.
  • Mentored team to learn new technologies and keep current.
  • Promoted and devised solutions allowing use of Monster XML gateways; allowing custom solutions to interact with core Monster.
  • Promoted team to replace local and third party suppliers in market areas resulting in team growth and cost savings.
  • Worked with systems admin’s to improve hosting and code deployment.
  • Implemented procedures and testing to ensure compliance with W3C and 508 accessibility standards.
  • TMP intranet: Programmed TMP intranet in C#, SQL server with content management. Analysis, design, programming, QA.
  • Vattenfal: Development of Unicode compliant mini Monster for Polish customer in .net, subsequently promoted site as a down sell on full Monster product. Analysis, design, specifications, consulting, project and team management, QA.
  • Salary Survey: Project to rebuild JobPilot salary survey tool in .net from PHP for deployment across Monster EU sites. Analysis of current system and identified areas of improvement, specifications, project build and deployment. Analysis, design, specifications, consulting, project and team management, QA.
  • Ulster Bank: A system allowing integration of 3rd psychometric testing with Monster HQ via a custom site with CMS. Analysis, design, specifications, consulting, project and team management, programming, QA, support.
  • LG / NHS: an easily customizable and fast deployable recruitment solution product. Analysis, design, specifications, consulting, project and team management, programming, QA, support
  • Agilent; developed EU University collaboration intranet in ASP and SQL server. Design, consulting, programming, QA, support.
  • Johnson and Johnson; internal recruitment and candidate management system. Design, consulting, programming, QA, support.
  • Le Meridian; global recruitment solution and candidate management. Analysis, Design, consulting, team and project management, QA, support.
Dates: May 2002 – Feb 2003Role: Team Leader / DeveloperManaging the Adcomms interactive development group, responsible for planning and overseeing all site development from initial idea inception through to promotion to live servers including code and databases. Business analysis, site architecture, specification development, delegating rolls and responsibilities within the team. Ensuring efficient and timely delivery, maintenance and support of production sites. Continued programming in ASP plus training and test projects in C#. Investigated and implemented procedures to help with specification gathering, project management and QA in an attempt to reduced end of production thrashing, post production change requests and extended QA times.
Dates: Aug 2001 – May 2002Role: Developer / Team leaderGiven a greater responsibility for gathering specifications and overseeing projects; architecting sites, drawing up documentation and site maps. Increased contact with TMP offices and clients acting in a consulting roll. Continued to program and guided other developers within the team.
Dates: Dec 01st 2000 – Aug 2001Role: Web DeveloperInitially involved with investigating QA methodology and software, creating QA plans and recommendations. Moved to programming small custom sites and implementing pre canned solutions utilizing: ASP, PHP, SQL server, MySQL, Access and Perl.
Dates: June 14th 1999 – July 30th 2000Company: Standard & Poor’s Fund Services, Ipswich, SuffolkRole: Web developer.
Dates: May 1997 – December 1999:Company: Deep Thought Computer Solutions.Role: Owner