Thomas Wharton

Experience

• 

  Waitrose

  Oct 2005 - Jan 2016

  Team Leader

  In this role I developed an awareness of customer relationship management, compliance with health and safety and food hygiene practises, improved my team working skills and expanded my food product knowledge. I worked on different departments to improve my knowledge base which improved my customer service skills, learning the different ways of getting maximum output from staff. I trained on all the various systems at Waitrose. Managing to work my way to Assistant Section Manager (in training), utilising my skills and knowledge to stand out. Show less

• 

  HSBC

  Nov 2013 - now

  Responsibilities:Key point of contact for all new Finance Cloud Engagements, providing consultancy and guidance on environment strategy and best practiceDefines and monitors the technical standards and OKRs for the Finance on the Cloud platform, actively identifying technical debt. Makes recommendations and negotiates with the prioritisation forum to get items added to the delivery roadmap.Monitors the platform level risks and controls, working with the application teams to put in place adequate mitigation and liaising with 2LOD on any platform or application level risks.Drives, monitors and maintains the overall environment provision strategy for Finance, working with application teams, the Environment provision team, architecture and project managersWorks with the Finance on the Cloud Application teams, Cloud Services and Finance Service Resilence to monitor and report on any platform level compliance issues.Works with Value Stream Release Managers and IT Platform leads to feed into Govnernence meetings including Finance on the Cloud Technical Steerco, Cloud Services Manco, Cloud Execution Committee and where requested the Global Cloud Steerco,Sets standards and shares best practice across all Finance IT teams adopting cloud Show less Responsibilities included: -Cloud Lead for IT Disaster Recovery.-Reducing risk and increasing compliance within Cloud Services by leading the onboarding of Cloud Governance for IT Disaster Recovery.- Annual UK Group Data Centre Tabletop, walking through the various stages of failover to the alternate data centre. Facilitating the discussions between Global Business Functions, Infrastructure teams and IT Operations to ensure processes could be applied in a real event. - Administer the annual DC Loss Exercises for Germany, France and Switzerland. Coordinating multiple services, IBMz environments and third-party services with my colleagues in their countries. Achieving 100% compliance for Data Centre Recovery and conforming to the country’s banking regulators.- Created and executed Mobilisation exercises to achieve at least 80% compliance for the response rate from Senior Management to ensure call bridges could be effectively and quickly used in a real event.- Organise and lead large scale platform Disaster Recovery Failovers for IBMz, IBMi, Distributed.- Engineered the Runbooks for HSBC, M&S and France IBMz Production and Development failovers in the UK.- Ensure 100% compliance to UK Bank Regulators by leading the annual failover of HSBCs largest IBMz environment (97% of HSBC traffic and a third of UK economy goes through this environment). Achieving zero service outage to customer facing services, by keeping these live as we migrate to the alternate data centre.-Orchestrated bespoke monthly reporting for COO and CIOs of HSBC UK and HSBC Europe for Disaster Recovery compliance, ensuring that detailed information is clear and concise.-Created Service Continuity Testing Tracker (SCOTT) to ensure that we could track and govern all Disaster Recovery Testing that was being completed globally against KCIs.-Supported the smooth transition and adoption of future ways of working through change champion coaching for the Sheffield office migration. Show less Responsibilities include Disaster Recovery planning and agreement, resource management; risk and issue identification, mitigation and remediation; stakeholder management, reporting, creation and maintenance of the Service Continuity Testing Tracker (SCOTT).• Data Centre UK Mainframe MigrationLead Runbook Manager for Routine Mainframe migrations between data centres of multiple services varying from Tier 0 to Tier 2, ensuring that business and regulatory compliance is adhered to. Responsible for rolling out the routine process so that we can Roleswap the mainframe routinely every year. Coordinating Technical, business and management resources so that the Runbook was correct and we had the correct resource for the weekend migrations, ensuring we had no customer impact by keeping services live throughout the migration. This was successful and we have used these processes successfully in 2017 to Roleswap the UK Mainframe with no service disruption.• Service Continuity Testing Tracker (SCOTT)Gathered requirements and had discussions with global teams regarding functionality of the previous Testing Tracker tool and how it could be improved upon. Analysing results and various regional requirements to create the SCOTT tool. Implemented in January 2017, whilst also developing a process for recording, reporting and updating for senior management to view. Organised training around new procedures and created relevant forums for global teams to enquire about additions/new requirements to SCOTT. Wrote weekly processes to ensure information is most recent and maintained.• Non Functional Requirement (NFR)–Service ContinuitySort agreement from Global Heads in Service Continuity to streamline and globalise NFR–Service Continuity by gathering requirements from global teams, accessing their needs and structuring an NFR which we could use globally, utilising me previous experience from a project management view. Streamlining the process for the project managers acquiring this NFR. Show less Responsibilities included plan creation and agreement; resource management; risk and issue identification, mitigation and remediation; stakeholder management and reporting. Managing matrix based project teams of up to 10 individuals spanning multiple technology areas and departments, located in the UK, HK, India and France. Successful deliveries include: • Asset Class Data Centre Migration ProgrammeProject Manager for the migration between data centres -and infrastructure refresh- of a Tier 1 & 2 IT Services. Implementing multiple servers within the UK and in HK, delivering the latest application functionality on the latest vendor supported infrastructure. Technologies include VMWare virtual servers; Windows and UNIX OS; Oracle and SQL databases. Managing end to end delivery and a project team of 10 whilst also ensuring compliancy. Additionally I coordinated the failover of non-standard Apple Mac servers, which was never completed before, the migration of the physical servers from the old data centre without customer impact. • Data Centre UK Mainframe Migration Programme (Phase 1)Project manager for the Mainframe migration between data centres of multiple services varying from Tier 0 to Tier 2, ensuring that business and regulatory compliance is adhered to. Responsibilities included are:- Ownership and maintenance of the programme’s Service Inventory, ensuring this is up to date As part of this, I ensured the bank databases were updated. - Ownership and maintenance of Business service slides which are shared with COOs, Executive ITO Regional Managers. Preparation and presentation of critical reports presented to the HSBC UK CCO and the UK Bank Regulators. Detailing the services utilising the UK mainframe system, specifically service use and the potential impact a systems outage could have to the business and its customers. - Utilising the IBM RTC tool for service verification reporting, building views for major migrations, training the test managers Show less I joined the bank as part of the 2013 Apprenticeship scheme. This was the first year HSBC took on apprentices. This was assessed through assignments and through NVQ vocational skills which applied to your job role. Despite joining a month after the initial intake, I was first of the 90 apprentices to graduate from the scheme, six weeks ahead of the rest of the year. I achieved this through pro-active and diligent planning of my own professional development and training. During my time as an apprentice, I felt it was important to develop myself both inside and outside of my day to day role and seize as many opportunities as I could to showcase my talent. For example, In addition to my day job, I volunteered as team leader overseeing the Brathay Apprentice Challenge 2014, the goal of which was to raise the profile of apprenticeships within the work place and the local area. This included presentations at local schools, attending showcase events and also taking part in a community project with Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice all of which I personally co-ordinated. My efforts were recognised with a ‘Rising Star’ award.Additionally to completing my apprenticeship I mentored two new apprentices as ‘Study Buddies’. This would mean they had someone to engage with and bounce ideas off. I spent time with them assisting them with any issues they have with the apprenticeship and where they can get help. I continued to do this after the completion of my apprenticeship. This was done whilst balancing my work committments/targets. As part of acheiving this and with great feedback from management; I was nominated for ‘National Apprentice of the Year 2015'. Show less

  • Finance Cloud Platform Lead

    Sept 2022 - now

  • IT Data Centre & Service Resilience Platform Lead

    Mar 2020 - Sept 2022

  • IT Service Continuity Management SME

    Apr 2016 - Mar 2020

  • IT Project Manager

    Nov 2013 - Apr 2016

  • IT Trainee (Apprenticeship)

    Nov 2013 - Mar 2015