Curriculum Vitae
- Name:
- Christopher Mark Buckley M.Sc. (Dunelm)
- Email:
- chris@cmbuckley.co.uk
Summary
An accomplished technology leader and mentor with over 18 years’ experience building and evolving large-scale platforms and leading high-performing teams. Proven ability to define and execute technical strategies, ensuring engineering quality and operational resilience through scalable, fault-tolerant systems using on-premises and cloud-based solutions. Extensive hands-on experience in architecture, engineering and technical operations across financial services, retail and iGaming sectors. Known for creating a culture of collaboration, continuous learning and ownership, effectively communicating with clients and aligning stakeholders at all organisational levels. Keen advocate of open-source technologies and communities.
Professional Experience
Head of Engineering
- Led and scaled 15-person engineering team in a regulated B2B SaaS environment serving 7000+ clients, building a culture of accountability, collaboration & operational excellence
- Assessed team capability & structure, identifying gaps in technical depth and defining hiring & training priorities
- Established clear ownership boundaries across 4 Agile squads, improving delivery predictability
- Responsible for engineering maturity roadmap delivering best practices in software development, quality assurance & continuous integration using DORA & SPACE metrics frameworks
- Partnered with Product leadership to ensure effective planning & execution of product roadmap
- Responsible for technology budgets, forecasting, career progression framework, coaching & mentoring, strategic client/vendor relationships
Principal Consultant
- Defined technical strategy for architecture & engineering capabilities, client engagement & account management with clients across healthcare, financial services & retail sectors
- Mentor for 5 senior architects & engineers supporting individual career paths & capability leadership
- Defined company-wide mission, roadmap & progression plans with heads of capability
- Managed internal technical operations, coordinated vulnerability remediation across 120 user devices and introduced new BYOD policies to satisfy Cyber Essentials Plus audit
- Promoted adoption of DevOps practices, Terraform & management of AWS Partner programme
- Experienced in delivering tech strategy, M&A technical due diligence & ISO 27001 / CE+ compliance
Interim CTPO, Preventx
- Ownership, management and execution of the Preventx technology strategy
- Overall responsibility for technology within Preventx, including the platform, infrastructure, operations & quality management
- Responsible for IT budget, including forecasting, allocation, and expenditure tracking
- Product strategy and alignment of commercial aspirations with technical capabilities
- Senior leadership, mentorship & motivation of a 20-person blended technical team
- Fostered a culture of innovation and collaboration, representing the technical team at board level
Engineering Lead, Scottish Friendly Assurance
- Managed a blended team of 10 engineers distributed across multiple workstreams & locations
- Supported development & assurance testing for a successful multi-year platform upgrade & introduction of Consumer Duty
- Delivered organisation digital modernisation & maturity improvements for SDLC, software governance, continuous integration & ways of working
Principal Architect, Strike
- Architecture lead for Strike during acquisition of Purplebricks
- Technical appraisal of existing technology platforms, services & suppliers
- Defined target operating model, consolidated target architecture, change roadmap & risk assessment, enabling accelerated re-launch under a single brand & proposition within 6 months
Lead Architect, NHS England
- Architect & Account Manager for NHS COVID Pass programme
- Supported creation of target operating model for successful service transition from NHSX to NHS BSA, aligning commercials, policy & technical governance
- Responsible for architecture principles & Technical Design Authority to oversee programme change
- Led the initiative to embed SDLC best practices & release COVID Pass source code to the public
Senior Solutions Architect
- Launched a product-agnostic games content aggregation platform with teams across the Flutter group, saving over £2m annually in third-party platform fees and driving platform independence
- Technical Architect for Platform Engineering team responsible for on-premises Kubernetes cluster, internal tooling, Infrastructure as Code, Developer Experience & SRE practices
- Pioneered use of Kafka to standardise real-time event-driven architecture with Data teams
- Oversaw vulnerability management initiative prioritising & resolving hundreds of vulnerabilities across the gaming estate in under 6 months
- Incident Commander providing measured support to on-call teams during incidents & major events
- Technical contact for third-party suppliers providing supporting services and delivery capability
- Mentor & coach to other architects & engineers in teams across gaming products & services
Engineering Manager
- Provided leadership, management & coaching for 40+ full-stack Software, Test & Platform Engineers
- Built & led Agile engineering teams, growing from 4 to 10 cross-functional squads over 2 years
- Evolved & communicated SDLC, increasing deployment frequency from 10 to over 200 per week
- Managed third-party vendor relationships with Architects and Service Delivery Managers
- Responsible for recruiting and retaining diverse-skill teams, working closely with Talent Recruiters
- Championed corporate open-source contribution and technical community involvement
Principal Engineer
- Technical lead for Sky Poker LAMP development team using Zend Framework & modular JavaScript
- Built & maintained a JavaScript poker application integrating with existing third-party engine
- Technical liaison for third-party supplier integration and overall software architecture
- Defined product roadmap and strategic direction with Director of Product
- Collaborated with Platform and Service Operations teams to ensure high availability
- Worked with Architects to evolve company technical roadmap
Senior Software Engineer
- Delivered multi-channel customer satisfaction survey platform using Zend Framework & ActiveMQ, enabling real-time customer feedback
- Established Agile delivery practices (Scrum, XP, Kanban) & supported organisation in Agile adoption
- Maintained Jenkins continuous integration platform and code analysis tools
- Design authority and development of standards for RESTful Web services
- Supported team recruitment process conducting interviews & technical tests
Developer
- Development of PHP property management system with JavaScript Web frontend
- Refactored existing implementation for cross-browser compatibility
- Maintained the LAMP platform, CVS repository, coding standards and Bugzilla
Qualifications
- Manager HD Programme
- Institute of Leadership & Management, April 2015
- Practitioner in Enterprise & Solution Architecture
- British Computer Society, December 2013
- Master of Science (Research)
- Faculty of Science, University of Durham, 2006–2009
- Bachelor of Science
- College of St. Hild and St. Bede, University of Durham, 2003–2006
- Upper Second-Class Honours (2:1)
- B.Sc. Natural Sciences (Computer Science & Mathematics)
Personal Interests
- Programming (contributions to several open-source projects)
- Rock climbing
- Snowboarding
- Cycling / mountain biking
- Languages (Polish, French)
- Music (guitar, live music events)