Curriculum vitae
Simon Telford BSc (Hons)
Lead Platform Engineer | Principal Consultant | Technical Leadership | Azure Cloud Architecture | Platform Engineering
Nottinghamshire, UK
Professional summary
Lead Platform Engineer and Principal Consultant with over 12 years' experience delivering enterprise Azure platforms, Platform Engineering, Infrastructure as Code and cloud architecture across consultancy and in-house leadership roles.
Currently responsible for the technical direction of enterprise Azure platforms, defining engineering standards, Infrastructure as Code strategy and DevOps practices across multi-supplier engineering teams.
Strong technical background across Azure Databricks, Terraform, Azure DevOps, MongoDB, C#, Azure Functions and event-driven architectures, combined with technical leadership, mentoring and stakeholder engagement.
Technical skills
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Cloud and platform
- Microsoft Azure
- Azure Databricks
- Azure Functions
- Azure Event Hubs
- Azure Storage
- Managed Identity
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- AWS Lambda
- Amazon S3
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Platform engineering
- Azure Cloud Architecture
- Platform Engineering
- Technical Leadership
- Engineering Standards
- Event-driven Architecture
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Infrastructure as Code
- Terraform (primary)
- ARM Templates
- Bicep
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DevOps
- Azure DevOps
- YAML Pipelines
- CI/CD
- Jenkins
- Octopus Deploy
- AWS CodeCommit
- AWS CodeBuild
- AWS CodeDeploy
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Development
- C#
- .NET
- PowerShell
- REST APIs
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Data
- Azure Databricks
- MongoDB
- SQL Server
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Containers
- Docker
-
Monitoring
- Azure Monitor
- Application Insights
- Log Analytics
- Seq
- Amazon CloudWatch
Professional experience
Short summaries of each role. See the PDF for more detail .
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Lead Platform Engineer (Azure)
December 2020 - Present
CGI UK Ltd (formerly BJSS)
- Own the technical direction of the Azure Platform across a 20+ engineer, multi-supplier Platform Engineering team.
- Lead engineering across Azure Databricks, Azure Functions, Event Hubs, Terraform and Azure DevOps.
- Design Azure architecture with Terraform as the primary Infrastructure as Code technology.
- Mentor engineers and support recruitment, interviews and capability development.
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Director and Principal Consultant
April 2021 - Present
SJ Telford Consultancy Ltd
- Founded and lead a consultancy providing Platform Engineering, Azure Cloud Architecture and Technical Leadership services.
- Architected an Azure event-driven platform processing up to 2 million messages per day.
- Reduced Azure hosting costs to under £100/month through platform redesign and serverless architecture.
- Provide Principal Consultant services directly to clients and through subcontract engagements.
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Lead DevOps Engineer / Infrastructure Team Lead
September 2018 - December 2020
Impero Software
- Led Infrastructure and DevOps across Azure, AWS and AliCloud.
- Introduced Terraform as the strategic Infrastructure as Code platform, and Azure DevOps CI/CD while migrating from Jenkins.
- Embedded DevOps and Platform Engineering practices across Agile delivery teams.
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DevOps Engineer
February 2016 - September 2018
Dr Foster
- Redesigned enterprise deployment platforms supporting 40+ products across 50+ targets.
- Introduced Infrastructure as Code and automated Docker-based deployment pipelines.
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Early Support Team Leader and Junior Software Developer
August 2013 - February 2016
Dollar Financial UK
- Led an Application Support team and designed live monitoring across a 300-store estate.
Professional certifications
- Databricks Platform Architect
- Databricks Platform Administrator
- Linux Foundation - Green Software for Practitioners
- Certified Carbon Literate
- MongoDB for .NET Developers
- Agile SCRUM Project Management
Education
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BSc (Hons) Physics
University of Nottingham
Interests and community
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Renewable energy
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Green software
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Nottingham EV Owners Club
Co-founder, working with Nottingham City Council to promote electric vehicle adoption and sustainable transport.
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Church bell ringing