Mark Cowen

Experience

• 

  Royal Navy

  Jan 2009 - Feb 2014

  Communications and Information Systems Specialist

  I served on HMS Ark Royal and HMS Illustrious as a Communications Information Systems Specialist within the Royal Navy for a number of years, having two main roles onboard, the first of which was working as an Administrator and Maintainer on the MoD information system DII. This included working with VMware, Microsoft Exchange, Windows Server and SQL Database management applications, this meant a high level of technical training was undertaken; I gained over 4 years of experience working on these systems, whilst also conducting on the job training and passing down my knowledge to junior members of the team. This involved working in a team with 5 other trained personnel in dealing with the administration, support and server maintenance of the 1200+ accounts through Active Directory, VMware and Windows Server 2008 which also included the hardware maintenance of over 300 Computer terminals onboard.My other main role onboard was the maintenance and operation of communication and satellite circuits to and from land, air and surface units. This involved a great deal of technical knowledge and mediation across a number of departments on the ship, mainly with the operations room, to provide HF and UHF communications primarily for tactical and strategic operations.Throughout my time in the Royal Navy a great amount of time was spent away from the UK on various exercises and operations, all over the world. I believe this has given me vast experience in both working as team and especially on my own initiative, particularly in high pressured environments such as real life threats whilst recently operating in the Middle East.Towards the end of my final Deployment in the Royal Navy, I spent four weeks in the Philippines assisting in the Humanitarian Aid relief that HMS Illustrious supplied for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan. Show less

• 

  Cumbria Police

  Jun 2014 - now

  My current key responsibilities consist of producing designs, configuration, testing, documentation, evaluation and piloting of new systems and services, as required to meet ongoing requirements and expected benefits to Cumbria Constabulary.Preparation and delivering technical project plans, producing key project documentation making recommendations for the appropriate approach to a project delivery, ensuring the quick and effective delivery of real business benefits.Providing specialist technical support to the 2nd Line Support team on current and new Infrastructure and Services, along with providing technical support to both the ICT Business Development team and ICT Project Managers, responding and resolving complex technical issues to ensure project delivery is achieved. Show less Provided specialist technical support to the ICT Service Desk, responding and resolving complex issues concerning incidents, requests, problems and system availability and deciding upon the correct course of action to ensure minimal impact on availability of systems.Provided 24 hours rostered on-call service for Business-critical systems, including supporting the emergency Control Room Infrastructure to ensure high availability.Acted as the technical lead in our annual Dell EMC Release Certification Matrix upgrade for VCE Vblock Infrastructure and Cisco UCS, this involved pre-assessment suitability and planning work on each component before implementing the upgrade in conjunction with Dell EMC Show less I worked as part of a small team to provide a single point of contact for users to facilitate the restoration of normal service as quickly as possible to minimise the adverse impact on business operations, providing a high-quality customer focused service on high availability systems.Resolved, monitored and progressed hardware/software faults and service requests in accordance with ITIL service standards set for the department and to the satisfaction of the user/customer. Assisted in the acceptance testing of new systems to ensure that Force requirements were meeting the requirements of the 'Community Security Policy' for Police Computer Systems, the Computer Misuse Act, Home Office Communications regulations and Force Information & security policies Show less

  • ICT Technical Team Leader - Modern Workplace

    Sept 2022 - now

  • ICT Technical Integration Analyst

    Mar 2019 - Sept 2022

  • ICT Infrastructure Technical Analyst

    Dec 2017 - Mar 2019

  • ICT Service Desk Support Officer

    Jun 2014 - Dec 2017