Kathy Hyde

Experience

• 

  Warwickshire County Council

  Jul 1990 - Aug 1991

  Analyst Programmer, Industrial Placement

  Foxpro analyst programmer involved in all stages of the development lifecycle.

• 

  Warwickshire County Council

  Sept 1992 - Jul 1998

  Provided lead support for specific departmental systems and backup support for others. I was responsible for two major Oracle, Unix and hardware system upgrades, investigating and proposing replacement servers, performance investigation of a client server system and implementation of the solution and a Vax implementation. Foxpro analyst programmer involved in all stages of the development lifecycle. My greatest achievement was developing an Election Results System used to display real-time election results for the Members and Press on local election night.

  • Unix Systems Administrator and Oracle DBA

    Aug 1994 - Jul 1998

  • Analyst Programmer

    Sept 1992 - Aug 1994
• 

  The Law Society of England and Wales

  Aug 1998 - Feb 1999

  Oracle DBA

  With a contract DBA based in London, provided all support for The Law Society’s databases on Sequent and NT4. Weekly visits to the London office to progress Y2K upgrades of the Unix and Oracle infrastructure.

• 

  Warwickshire County Council

  Mar 1999 - Dec 1999

  Oracle DBA contractor

  Returned to WCC with responsibility for planning and working on the Y2K financial systems upgrades. Upgraded a number of production systems on Netware and provided direction so a trainee could assist. Assembled an IBM RS6000 with SSA disk subsystem for a Y2K test environment. Developed and presented five one-hour Introduction to Unix/Unix Refresher hands-on sessions for developers.

• 

  CSC

  Dec 1999 - Jun 2006

  DBA Manager

  After joining as an Oracle DBA, I quickly became deputy team lead then team lead providing technical expertise and management to the team which grew to include a graduate trainee and two contractors. I gained my Oracle 7 OCP, took an active part in graduate recruitment, became involved in new business, as well as becoming a Customer Care Champion, running Customer Care Workshops for the technical community in the Midlands. I returned from maternity leave part-time, so reverted to a more technical role. After two years, I felt the need for a new challenge and returned to a full-time position as team lead for a large group of DBAs, spread across multiple locations, supporting a single customer. With significant financial and other challenges to meet I reshaped the team, removing six contractors, bringing support of a critical set of systems back in-house, transferring support from a third party to a newly-formed group of CSC DBAs in India, while trying to make a team of a group of DBAs who had traditionally worked for two separate companies. A company restructure based on technology and region, took place in the summer of 2005 and I gained responsibility for a number of other DBAs in the Central region. This changed the emphasis of my role from both team and account lead, to one primarily responsible for people management, with account leads responsible for the day-to-day account focus providing support to me.My experience exposed me to resource planning, appraisals, personal improvement plans, contractor reduction, off-shoring with associated knowledge transfer, financial challenges, recruitment and staff retention. I was very account-focused and built a good relationship with the customer. Being a point of escalation, I was available 24x7x365 and provided a management focus during out-of-hours problem escalation. I have a technical background with an aptitude for problem solving and am always happy to challenge assumptions by asking the ‘stupid’ questions. Show less

• 

  Career Break

  Jun 2006 - Sept 2006

  N/a

  After taking voluntary redundancy from CSC, I took an extended summer break with my children.

• 

  University of Birmingham

  Sept 2006 - Sept 2024

  Managing a small team of Oracle DBAs and Unix systems administrators, supporting the University’s Oracle-based business systems. By building a good relationship with my team, section, others in the department, internal customers and external suppliers, I have gained a reputation for impartiality, diplomacy, tenacity and providing constructive feedback, to suppliers in particular. I have also achieved Prince2 and ITIL qualifications and been involved in procurements following European tender rules.Various projects have included an HP Serviceguard proof of concept, then subsequent implementation; hardware maintenance and software support tender; SAN infrastructure renewal. Involved in various EU procurements.After consolidating the section’s hardware maintenance and software support contracts into one contract by obtaining competitive quotes, I eventually went out to tender for a five year contract for the department as a whole. I have continued to manage the contract with the supplier.Managing my team I have been involved in recruitment, staff development reviews, work prioritisation, reprioritisation following changing business requirements, coordinating the team’s contribution to a major data centre power outage. Show less

  • Core Infrastructure Business Support & Information Team Manager

    Mar 2021 - Sept 2024

  • Core Infrastructure Programme Manager

    Oct 2016 - Mar 2021

  • Infrastructure Team Manager

    May 2012 - Sept 2016

  • DBA and Unix Team Manager

    Sept 2006 - May 2012
• 

  At home

  Sept 2024 - now

  Retired