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Tristan Findley

Leadership Governance & Business Skills

I’m targeting hands-on senior DevOps / platform / SRE work — so think of these not as a pivot to management, but as proof of seniority and breadth: a senior engineer who can also lead, govern, and engage the business. Each is backed by real evidence, because a list of soft skills means little without it.

Leadership & People
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  • Built and led a team from scratch — assembled and developed 4 DevOps engineers (SiXworks)
  • Line / pastoral management — pastoral manager for 4 staff; wellbeing, Personal Development Plans, career progression (UKCloud)
  • Coaching & mentoring — coaching engineers in Linux, automation, and IT best practice (VIB, SiXworks, UKCloud); developing people through directed, stretching work
  • People-first 1-2-1s & PDPs — informal, wellbeing-focused 1-2-1s; interest-aligned development plans (SiXworks, UKCloud)
  • Crisis leadership — protected and re-homed the whole team during company administration (UKCloud)
  • Mental Health First Aider (MHFA England, 2022) — qualified to recognise and support wellbeing

Governance, Risk & Compliance
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  • Process & policy authorship — authored Change, Incident, Major Incident, Risk, Patch, Document Control, and User Activity Investigation policies/processes from scratch (VIB)
  • FitSM Process Owner — Change Management — formal, organisation-wide accountability (VIB)
  • Change Advisory Board (CAB) Chair (VIB)
  • Major Incident Coordinator — led live incident response, including a precautionary emergency Compute shutdown (VIB)
  • Frameworks: ITIL (practitioner → author) · FitSM (Foundation, Process Owner) · ISO27001 (applied as the methodology for NIS2 compliance)
  • Change management arc — from first working within a peer-reviewed process (Surrey), to formal ITIL change control where the instincts formed (UKCloud), to authoring and chairing (VIB): practitioner → advocate → author
  • Audit, documentation, risk analysis, and security investigation

Delivery & Project Management
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  • Agile / Scrum — Scrum Master; two-weekly sprint delivery; MVP-first iterative delivery (SiXworks, UKCloud)
  • Technical project leadership — led delivery as a non-contributing lead (the difference between technical contribution and technical leadership)
  • Board-level advocacy — made and won the case for automation-first to the board of directors (SiXworks)
  • Cross-team delivery — merged standups and shared goals with adjacent teams (SiXworks, VIB)

Business & Stakeholder
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  • Solution architecture — design → delivery → support across infrastructure and client solutions (TFindley, Larch, all roles)
  • Client / SME consulting — running an independent IT & networking practice for real clients (TFindley)
  • Requirements capture & stakeholder engagement — consulting academics, researchers, and business stakeholders to shape services (Surrey, RHUL, VIB)
  • Procurement & vendor management — hardware lifecycle, specification, supplier sourcing (RHUL, Larch)
  • Service mindset — a trusted-partner approach to platform and research teams; researcher onboarding (VIB, SiXworks)

Communication & Enablement
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  • Teaching & training — wrote and delivered an “Introduction to Linux” course; taught MSc Information Security lab elements (RHUL); user training (TFindley, RHUL)
  • Technical authority / SME — code review, risk analysis, technical decision-making (VIB)
  • Documentation & knowledge management — procedures, runbooks, knowledge base (all roles)

Credentials
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  • CMgr (Chartered Manager) — Chartered Management Institute
  • CMI People Leadership — Distinction (Level 3)
  • FitSM Foundation (APMG, 2026)
  • ITIL 2011 Foundation (AXELOS, 2016)
  • Mental Health First Aid (MHFA England, 2022)