Hello, I'm Oliver Poulter

Digital Engineering Leader & AI Strategist.

Scaling distributed teams & delivering production-grade SaaS platforms.

Get in Touch My Experience
Oliver Poulter

About Me

I am a Digital Engineering Leader & AI Strategist with a proven track record of scaling distributed engineering teams (~70 headcount) and delivering production-grade SaaS platforms in complex enterprise environments.

I specialize in uniting technical leadership with business strategy, utilizing Cloud-Native architecture (AWS/GCP), API-led connectivity, and Ethical AI governance to drive operational efficiency. I am passionate about fostering psychological safety, inclusive innovation, and bridging the gap between complex data and actionable insights.

Experience

Digital Engineering Manager

Vodafone (Digital Networks) Jan 2024 - Present

Spearheading the growth of the Digital Engineering function, overseeing Agile squads and platform operations. Leading cost-transformation initiatives and defining AI & Automation Strategy.

  • Technology Leadership & Strategy: Spearheaded the growth of the Digital Engineering function, managing internal and external development resources to ensure high-quality performance and maintainable codebases.
  • Solution Architecture & Microservices: Led application rationalisation efforts by introducing a new enterprise API capability, resulting in a 10x reduction in integration costs and ensuring scalable, reusable architecture.
  • AI Innovation: Defined the AI & Automation Strategy, integrating Generative AI into workflows to boost productivity and modernize the technology stack. Focused on AI Risk Management and security compliance.
  • DevOps & Delivery: Orchestrated the transition to robust CI/CD pipelines and automated testing, doubling development efficiency while maintaining a 100% on-time delivery record for committed work.
  • Service Design & UX: Championed a "customer-first" technical culture, utilizing user research data to drive platform improvements that enhanced stakeholder satisfaction and service accessibility.
  • Governance & Standards: Established the Centre of Excellence (CoE) governance frameworks, setting design standards and ensuring consistent patterns across digital products and platforms.

Solution Architect & Automation Lead

Vodafone UK Aug 2022 - Jan 2024

Technical authority for Radical Simplification programs. Led discovery and delivery of solutions migrating Home Broadband customers, improving end-user experience and efficiency.

  • Solution Design & Delivery: Led the discovery, design, and technical implementation of digital solutions to migrate Home Broadband customers from legacy technology, directly improving the end-user experience.
  • Agile Methodology: Managed development teams using Agile and iterative methodologies, delivering an MVP in 4 months and deploying continuous improvements to reach 99.9% efficacy.
  • Platform Performance: Drove operational efficiency and technical debt reduction, deploying scalable solutions that mitigated 90 FTE of manual workload.
  • Architecture & Security: Ensured all solutions adhered to enterprise security standards and data privacy regulations while integrating across complex legacy systems.
  • Cloud Infrastructure: Owned Google Cloud Platform (GCP) architecture tasks including instance deployment, load balancing, and networking, ensuring secure and scalable infrastructure.
  • Security & Compliance: Acted as SME for penetration testing and built access control models to ensure compliant handling of PII and secure data.

Automation Graduate Scheme

Vodafone UK Sept 2020 - July 2022

Managed technical architecture for franchisee digitalization (PEGA solution) and developed automation workflows.

  • Managed a pillar of the technical architecture, implementation, and rollout of a complex PEGA solution to digitalise the management of 400+ franchisee stores, providing a £XM revenue uplift and £10s of Millions Cost of Sale reduction.
  • Designed and delivered a standardised franchisee profit and loss format from previously unstructured data, enabling the tracking of KPIs through detailed reporting.
  • Task manager to the team managing the existing BAU performance during the transformation, capturing early data insights to understand seasonality impacts.
  • Developed in Python to automate mandatory regulatory networks reporting, querying and joining 50 datasets.
  • Aided in the strategic comparison between AWS and GCP in collaboration with a 3rd party team.
  • Won the Esri Customer Success Award for the creation of a Photogrammetry Digital Twin capability enabling the inspection of Network Assets with Drones.

Associate Banker

NatWest 2016 - 2018

Gained insight into banking compliance and payment workflows. Awarded for most valuable employee in branch.

  • Gained firsthand insight into banking regulatory compliance and payment workflows, forming the foundation for a career in financial process optimization.
  • Performed a variety of customer-facing roles from front of house to cashier, as well as administrative roles. Provided direct understanding of how backend processes directly impact customer experience, winning an award for most valuable employee in branch.

Technical Skills

Cloud Strategy

AWS, GCP, Multi-cloud, Multi Agent Architectures

DevOps

CI/CD, IaC, Azure DevOps, PowerShell, SSH

AI & Data

Generative AI, Python, SQL, React.js, HTML

Automation

RPA (UiPath), Power Platform, BPM (Pega), Cortex, Workato

Architecture

Solution Architecture, API Strategy, REST, SOAP, JMS

Leadership

Agile Governance, Budget Mgmt, MS Office (Project)

Education

MEng Mechanical Engineering (1st Class)

University of Exeter 2016 - 2020

Specialized in Mechatronics and Computational Engineering.
Dissertations on swarm robotics and military vehicle drivetrains.

Contact

Based in Wroughton, UK. Open to connecting.

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