Richard Michael Hodges

Senior Technical Architect & Development Director
📧 richard@hodgesfamily.co.uk
📱 07714235457
🌐 LinkedIn
📍 Buckingham, MK18 1FG, UK

Summary

Highly versatile, hands-on Technical Leader with over 25 years of progressive experience in a wide range of technologies. From start-ups to £3bn financial platforms, I architect systems that deliver business value while leading teams to achieve results. Knowledgeable in cloud platforms, microservices, and modern development practices, with a track record of successful digital transformations across financial services, healthcare, and technology sectors. My approach combines architectural vision with hands-on implementation, ensuring solutions are both strategically sound and practically deliverable.

Key Achievements

  • Lead Designer/Engineer that architected a new Wealth Management solution designed for a leading US Custodian to successfully run a £3bn book of business for Barclays Wealth
  • Successfully developed and delivered multiple applications for Newton, including an online ISA/OEIC application
  • Successfully led the development team to deliver a new Integrated Children's Protection System for local councils and social workers
  • Designed, developed and released the Blinkbox music service for Sonos devices
  • Migrated an eCommerce SAP platform to the new Cloud Commerce environment offered by SAP
  • Set the future direction of cloud development and micro service infrastructure on a cloud platform for Office Depot
  • Achieved TOGAF certification while maintaining hands-on technical leadership, bridging strategic planning with practical implementation

Experience

Senior Technical Architect

July 2024 - Present
Highbourne Group
Leading enterprise-wide digital transformation initiatives, spearheading the strategic redesign of microservices architecture and API gateway implementations across the operational data exchange platform. Collaborating with 3rd party vendors to architect and deliver cutting-edge sales automation solutions leveraging Google Cloud Platform and Vertex AI capabilities.
  • Drive strategic technology decisions as architecture lead on the company's change advisory board
  • Architect scalable solutions within agile Platform SCRUM teams, delivering technical designs that enhance system performance and reliability
  • Define and execute multi-phase architecture roadmaps, delivering process optimization and critical infrastructure improvements
  • Engineer robust B2B API ecosystems and integration frameworks, improving partner connectivity and data exchange efficiency
  • Lead vendor partnerships and technology evaluations to modernize the enterprise technology stack
  • Conduct comprehensive operational risk assessments and architect remediation strategies to ensure system resilience
Technologies: Docker, Java, Spring Boot, NodeJS, Python, Gradle, Microservices, REST, GraphQL, LeanIX, AWS (RDS, EKS, EC2, SES, S3, ElasticSearch, Lambda), GCP, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Keycloak IAM

Technical Architect / Development Director

January 2023 - July 2024
Impero Software
Led enterprise application architecture strategy while directing cross-functional development teams to deliver scalable educational technology solutions. Architected comprehensive technical roadmaps aligned with product vision and business objectives. Successfully promoted to Development Director role, combining strategic technical leadership with hands-on architecture responsibilities across cloud-native infrastructure.
  • Directed multiple SCRUM teams, providing strategic technical leadership and architectural guidance on high-impact development initiatives
  • Managed and mentored senior development personnel, orchestrating systematic technical debt reduction programs that improved system performance and maintainability
  • Designed enterprise-grade technical architecture solutions with detailed cost-benefit analysis and implementation roadmaps
  • Provided critical incident response leadership, collaborating with cloud infrastructure teams to resolve mission-critical system outages
  • Established enterprise-wide development standards and CI/CD processes, enhancing code quality and deployment efficiency across all development teams
  • Delivered innovative proof-of-concept solutions that validated new product capabilities and drove strategic technology adoption
Technologies: Java, C#, Docker, NodeJS, PostgreSQL, GitLab, AWS (RDS, EC2, SES, S3, ALB, Lambda, Fargate, ECS, ElastiCache, CloudWatch), Azure (AKS, DevOps, ACI), WebRTC (STUN/TURN server), REST API, Data Dog, Redis

Senior Technical Architect

November 2021 - January 2023
Inspired Entertainment
Worked within a small team to spearhead strategic platform evolution initiatives, architecting scalable extensions to core entertainment technology products and microservices ecosystem. Led the design and implementation of an innovative automated product sandbox environment, enabling seamless customer onboarding and accelerated partner integration workflows.
  • Architected and delivered critical platform extensions that enhanced core product capabilities and expanded market reach
  • Directed global offshore development and QA teams across multiple time zones, ensuring quality delivery of next-generation entertainment solutions
  • Collaborated with Enterprise Architecture leadership to conduct comprehensive technical estate assessments, delivering strategic improvement recommendations that optimized system performance
  • Provided governance oversight and technical direction within agile product SCRUM teams, ensuring architectural consistency and best practices across all development initiatives
  • Designed automated sandbox infrastructure that reduced customer integration time and improved developer experience for new market entrants
Technologies: Docker Swarm, GCP (VM), Java, Spring Boot, Microservices REST/WebSockets, JavaScript, React, Redis, SQL Server

Technical Architect

November 2017 - November 2021
Office Depot EU, Milton Keynes
Worked within a collaborative four-person architecture team, driving digital transformation across European operations. Achieved TOGAF certification (Certification ID: 132844) while maintaining hands-on technical leadership in complex solution delivery.
  • Architected enterprise-grade solutions with comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, securing governance board approval for multi-million-pound technology investments
  • Conducted strategic vendor evaluations and led technology selection processes, establishing architectural standards and principles that guided organization-wide system implementations
  • Co-defined enterprise technology strategy and vision, shaping the future state architecture for integrated retail operations across European markets
  • Championed cloud-first initiatives and modern platform adoption, accelerating digital transformation and reducing infrastructure costs
  • Engineered event-driven architecture transformation for order processing systems, improving system responsiveness and scalability across the supply chain
  • Designed microservices-based infrastructure architecture, enabling rapid capability delivery and improved system maintainability
Technologies: Azure (ACI, AKS, Service Bus, ACR, Cosmo DB, MySQL), Azure DevOps, Docker, Helm, Terraform, Java, React JS, SAP Commerce, Salesforce, Oracle, Confluent.io for Kafka Services

Architect & Technical Lead

April 2015 - November 2017
Research-Research Ltd, London
Led the technology strategy and development operations, directing a high-performing team of 5-7 developers within an agile Scrum framework. Drove design and architectural requirements while fostering team growth and delivering scalable solutions for market research technology platforms.
  • Defined comprehensive architecture strategy and technology roadmaps for next-generation products while systematically addressing legacy technical debt to improve system performance
  • Architected robust, future-proof solutions aligned with strategic business objectives, ensuring scalability and maintainability across the product portfolio
  • Delivered critical feature development and maintained code quality through rigorous review processes, while leading incident response and complex issue resolution
  • Mentored junior developers through hands-on pair programming and technical coaching, accelerating team capability and knowledge transfer
  • Orchestrated end-to-end DevOps processes and product delivery pipelines, ensuring reliable and efficient deployment of new market research solutions
Technologies: AWS (EC2, RDS, ElasticSearch, SES, CLB), Ansible Scripting, Java, Spring, DropWizard, Groovy, ReactJS, Cassandra, Postgres, Jenkins, GitLab, Maven

Senior Development Engineer

April 2013 - April 2015
Blinkbox Music, London
Technologies: Java, Spring-WS, SOAP, Tomcat, JavaScript, jQuery, RequireJS, HTML5/CSS3, Karma, Jasmine, Jenkins, Grunt, Maven 3, ANT, Git/GitHub, Windows 8 Phone Development in C#, Visual Studio, Blend, XAML

Senior Technical Lead

September 2011 - April 2013
Cognito Mobile, Newbury
Technologies: Java, Spring and Hibernate, JBoss Application Server, RabbitMQ, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, MySQL (InnoDB), Enterprise Architect for UML modelling, IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, Mercurial, Subversion, Maven, Jenkins, JIRA, GreenHopper

Systems Design Team Leader

September 2009 - September 2011
Bupa, London
Technologies: Java, JBoss AS, EJB, JMS, Web Services, Clustering, Caching and High Availability, Oracle, IAM suite, MySQL, UML modelling through Enterprise Architect and Borland Together

Senior Design and Development Consultant

November 2007 - September 2009
Bank of New York, London
Technologies: WebSphere application server (UNIX and Windows), JavaScript with Ext-JS libraries, JSON and AJAX, WebSphere MQ/JMS, JavaServer Pages, Java, Spring framework (WS and MVC), Oracle database, UML modelling

Earlier Career Positions

2006 - 2007 | Senior Technical Developer (Java) | Kuehne + Nagel, Milton Keynes
2005 - 2006 | Development Team Leader (Java) | Anite, Milton Keynes
2002 - 2005 | Senior Software Developer (C#/.Net) | Activiti, Maidenhead
1999 - 2002 | Software Engineer Consultant (C++/Java) | Parsec Systems Ltd, Aylesbury
1998 - 1999 | Systems Developer (C++) | Electronic Data System (EDS), Telford
1996 - 1997 | Software Engineer (C++) (University Placement) | Novartis, Switzerland
1991 - 1994 | Software Engineer | Molen Industrial Weighing Ltd, Redditch

Education

BSc (Hons) Computer Science, 2:1

1994 - 1998
Staffordshire University

B-Tec HNC, Distinction, Computer Studies

1992 - 1994
Northeast Worcestershire College, Bromsgrove

B-Tec OND, Distinction, Computer Studies

1990 - 1992
Northeast Worcestershire College, Redditch