Timeline

Bogotá / Remote

Returned to Zemoga (now Formula.Monks)  in response to a need to re-establish the strength of the Backend Development practice. I was part of the pitch team for their largest opportunity in their then 17 year history, a ramp-up of 150 team members for Mornigstar to nearshore their offshore dependency with China.

This coincided across the company with increased complexity in engineering projects and a particular focus in the FinTech sector and the associated due diligence and standards such as ISO certification requirements.

 Highlights & Accomplishments

• Growing the Backend Development Team from 7 to 57 Engineers in less than 3 years and all the associated processes and team structure to support the scale.
• In collaboration with my VP we established an additional DevOps Discipline and increased the awareness and skills across disciplines to respond to the demand of Serverless solutions and Native Cloud Engineers.
• Expanded the offering of skills beyond .Net, Java & PHP to also cover  SalesForce, FullStack Engineers, Python, Data Engineers and even clients in the Web3 / Crypto space.
• Focused primarily on FinTech clients (Morningstar, Apex & OneSafe)  building Enterprise products but also on SaleForce CRM / CDPs for the likes of Guinness (Diageo).
• Building and managing  a large development team (13) to work on Walmart.com e-commerce backend orchestration layers. 

 Key Clients

   London

Having engaged previously on two occasions with Hello Daisy I was asked to come on board to cover for their CTO while an A series round was raised. My responsibilities include:

• Creating and presenting a detailed product roadmap to investors.
• Improvements to the prototype. Implementing feedback from customer trails.
• A detailed specification including product concepts, UX, Wiframes, journeys, Architectural technology stack and Product backlog.
• Validating the key building blocks of the stack with proof of concepts on potential hardware devices.
• Establishing 3rd party partnerships for the production build phase including hardware manufacturers in China.

   Surrey, UK

Having been empowered with my experience at Seth Godin’s AltMBA I pivoted Mibstar (formally Mibstar Technologies) to focus on Ventures where I’m able to apply my experience and passion for building Digital Products in start-up environments.
The variety of the ventures is indicative of the importance of spending time on projects I have an affinity towards. Some of them I’ve been able to help ship include:

Venture Building – FinTechnovation incubators

Providing Venture Builder & Consulting Services to a group 5 incubators from SurreyIncubation.co.uk & The Surrey100club.co.uk. All under the hospices of the FinTechnovation Group.

Due to NDA restrictions I can only disclose that these 5x incubators will provide Financial Services to professionals (including a peer-to-peer lending platform) alongside work based Financial Education www.savvney.com using online platforms (learn.savvney.com) and video production services (www.stordeo.com).

Compassion UK – Mobile App

Engaged with the charity who were about to build their first mobile app. Initial review led to my recommendation that they pause the project, take some steps back and revisit the assumptions behind the project.

Facilitated workshops with the Digital Team, Directors and their International Team. We mapped out the objectives that were missing. We developed a concept that would support their endeavours of using Digital as an additional channel that would enable increased touch-points between sponsors and Compassion in addition to the relationship between sponsors and their sponsored children.

• Established a product roadmap with key milestones
• Introduced Agile principles that matched in-house and external build capabilities
• Worked with Branding department, internal stakeholder and 3rd party suppliers
• Developed a product specification including interactive wireframes and technology suggestions.

Diagri – Internet of Things / Mobile Web App

An Internet of Things (IoT) start-up providing smart monitoring solutions for livestock; tracking and detailing animal location and movement.

I was brought in to support the founder and the 3rd party which had been building the prototype for the past year without completion.

Having developed a Product specification, associated roadmap and Technology stack aligned to AWS best practices I was able to introduce and handover to the AWS Activate Start-up team to build a production version.

  Brighton, UK

I was brought in to bolster the Technology team of this independent UX and Design agency, which were increasing their Financial Sector clients as well as expanding to larger and more complex projects.

This required some insight and experience throughout from the pitch process all the way to implementation. Leading and expanding the relatively young team from front-end prototyping projects to full implementation of transactional e-commerce sites with associated integrations. Establishing modern development practices, leveraging new tooling (Atlassian, AWS & fortrabbit), frameworks (Laravel & Drupal 8 CMS) and working collaboratively with client-side Architects (esure).

During my time at The Unit I’m accepted to Seth Godin’s AltMBA (3rd cohort) which is designed to be run in parallel to full time commitments

  London / Cardiff, UK

End-to-end technical consultant working alongside other business strategy and UX consultants, during all phases of delivery of digital strategies for Precedent clients.

My involvement started early at the pitch process supporting new business as well as during discovery and definition phases. I worked to establish technical solutions through client stakeholder workshops in order to define the requirements and subsequent solution design. Gathering input from technical analysts and platform leads, I established best practices within Precedent.

 References

Diego is great to work with, he brings attention to detail and insights into his work from the experience has from working on so many projects. He is keen to bring people together and work as a team to deliver...

I find Diego is hard-working and very keen. I can recommend him as he is great to work with

Hardip Bhamra
Managing Director (UK)

   Surrey, UK

Contracting on several small projects but primarily on a peer-to-peer lending platform (shadow-banking sector) for www.QuidCycle.com. Establishing development lifecycle processes as well as reviewing codebase security and reporting on security penetration testing recommendations.

 Bogotá / NY

In addition to leading the App Development department I took responsibility over the Technology Operations team as well as being active within the Sales support structure previously carried out by the CTO.

Other areas of responsibilities included ownership of the hosting infrastructure (primarily Amazon), PBX systems connecting 3 sites and rollout of various local infrastructure upgrades.

 Project Highlights

• A+E International Television Networks – New Drupal CMS Platform providing a common ‘core’ Global codebase baseline for all international joint ventures to build their digital properties (including www.history.co.uk, www.biography.co.uk, www.tuhistory.com, www.canalhistory.com.br, among many others)
• Abbott Laboratories – iPad Sales Force App used by US sales force team across all franchises. This was developed natively in xCode with an asset management backend in Drupal, both of which integrate with their Federated Active Directory Single Sign-On (SAML) authentication.
• Alcon (Novartis) – Global iPad Sales Force App a substantial upgrade and rollout from US & Canadian based instanced to a single Globalised multilingual app and backend, adding new functionality, International workflows to asset approval and more importantly to support the increase of the existing 600 end users to thousands of users globally.

 References

A very difficult challenge is to find a senior technologist that can lead a team within a creative culture. If you see Diego for the first time you would think he's an artist, but behind his coolness lies technical genius...or technical creative genius I must say.

I witnessed first hand how he successfully managed to deliver high quality projects during high stress circumstances for high level global brands. He proved effective integration with visual design and UI development distributed teams while manoeuvring ever changing client requirements...all without loosing sight of his integrity and leadership character.

If you are looking for technical creative genius, I strongly suggest you don't waste the opportunity to have Diego on your team.

Alejandro Gomez
Founder-President

Bogotá / NY

Lead a multi-disciplinary development team providing support for digital strategies primarily for a US clientele. Diverse projects from campaign specific sites like the NYC Marathon (nyminute.runnersworld.com), bespoke Drupal development, several e-commerce launches, native iOS apps and working with TeamSite ECM on several projects.

Working closely with the US Sales Team on pitches and technical pre-sales support as well as closely off/on-site with clients.

 References

Diego is the technologist that you want on your team. I've forever been impressed with his dedication, quick (and correct) decision-making, dedication to his work and team. To manage development with very short to long timelines, you need someone with the high level of discipline and care that Diego brings to the table.

He handles rapidly changing requirements with the level of agility that is required, yet is also keen on making sure that everything is well considered before moving forward.

Of all the managers I've hired over the years, Diego will always be in the top of the list, and I enjoy watching him advance as time goes on.

Dennis Portello
VP of Technology

    London, UK

Joined a large in-house Applications & Development department which was running a £8m Procedural Data programme to upgrade bespoke business critical systems which support both Houses (the House of Commons and the House of Lords) with many ASPNet MVC, WPF and underlying RESTFul Web Services.

One of the key objectives of this Procedural Data programme was to enrich data closer to the source in order to publish it in digital form in-line with cost saving exercise to reduce multi-million print contracts.

As such I was responsible for defining, presenting and getting approval of the Product & Solution Options papers and their subsequent High Level Designs through the Enterprise Architecture Board. This included the data schema definitions for core data (People, Parliamentary Questions, Written Statements, etc) that would be published on data.parliament.uk. One complex system included the Select Committees yearly expenditure report. 

Read more insights from the Procedural Data Project. 

Go ahead and explore my passion for coffee.

   London, UK

Strengthened and developed a more in-depth technical service offering into this Digital Media Agency to compliment the growing and expanding client requirements. Leveraging in-house skills and near-shore partners using both off-the-shelf products such as Enterprise CMS’s  and bespoke development depending on suitability.

 References

It's been a long hard slog, but sheer guts, determination and proven commercial results have helped Diego to become one of the greatest technical architect's in the business. He's an amazing visionary and I've lost count of the amount of times he's been pipped to the post on technical ideas he's been working on by the heady crew at either the BBC or Apple!

For those who have money to invest wisely, he has a clarity of vision and sparkling understanding that would make even some of the great whites stand up and take notice.

Warren Wysocki
Managing Director

As IT Manager for EurekaStep, my last involvement was a significant one – representing the company in a prestigious competition sponsored by the BBC and offered exclusively to its preferred supplier list on emerging Web 2.0 technologies.

One of my innovative ideas caught the attention of the judges and made it to the finals under the 'Navigating the Long Tail' category. I was granted the time and resources necessary to develop a comprehensive pitch, accompanied by a compelling video presentation.

The culmination of this effort came when I presented my proposal before an esteemed panel of BBC experts, including Ashley Highfield, Director of New Media and Technology, at the renowned Cannes Content 360 media festival. This experience not only showcased my ideas but also highlighted EurekaStep's expertise in cutting-edge digital technologies.

   Sussex, UK

Balanced inward facing responsibilities of Managing IT including management of Sage Accounting alongside the increasingly more important outward responsibilities to ensure the IT needs of clients and their projects were being met.

AUG 2003 — NOV 2004
Web Applications Developer

SEP 2001 — AUG 2003
Web Developer

  Horsham, UK

A-Levels in:

• Electronics
• Design & Technology
• Spanish
• ICT

 Award

Built several hand-coded websites towards which I had began to work on before I had left college. On of the sites won an award from the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA)

   1991 — 1991 American School Colombia: 

   1991 Moved back to Colombia 🇨🇴

   1983 Moved to the UK 🇬🇧

    1981 Born in Bogotá, Colombia 🇨🇴

 Congratulations

You have have scrolled to the Genesis but I can take you back to the top.