Chris Raettig

Over 25 years experience in tech leadership positions for both the public and private sectors. Offers a rare combination of deep technical skills with an ability to communicate and lead. Strong background in software development, high level languages and web technologies; DevOps, UNIX and Open Source; enterprise and cloud technical architecture, especially AWS; and management and leadership, architecture and process design.

Passionate about bringing development, DevOps, and business goals closer together. People-first and empathetic approach to supporting and facilitating technical teams. Extensive experience of project, team, platform, and cross-functional leadership.

Focus on quality of execution, consistent execution over time, and clear communication.

Primary areas of interest: technical architecture and direction (particularly cloud architecture), process and people, communication and management, and compliance, auditing, change management.

Travelling and Consultancy (2025-01 – Present)

Recently engaged in consultancy. For example for CharityLog; A CRM-style cloud software product for charities and local authorities. Brought on board in an advisory position to consult on the cloud architectural direction, resilience, best practices, etc.

The company was in the process of being bought by an investment firm. Role involved creating a multi-year AWS cost optimisation roadmap and to create plans for increasing overall architectural maturity to meet the needs of the new owners. This has particularly involved evaluation and mitigation of risk and of security and compliance issues.

After over a quarter century working in technology took some time off to go travelling on motorcycle and read books. Then been consulting but is looking to find another long term role where can help foster a vision with consistent execution over time and to be part of a team.

Lead Systems & Process Architect at Oak Furnitureland (2014-01 – 2025-01)

Overall responsibility for ways of working within the department, software development lifecycle, and architectural direction.

• Chaired a process stakeholder group to define and iterate on software development and servicedesk lifecycles and workflows
• Modernised AWS architecture and optimised for scalability, resilience, and cost control
• Created build and deployment pipelines and set direction for CI/CD workflows
• Integrated DevSecOps principles including integrating SAST and DAST tooling into the CD workflows
• Agreed a technical direction with the board to move legacy code to an APIs and queues architecture with new codebases based on containerisation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Lead project to introduce GDPR compliance and separation of duties
• Steered network security policy across the various technical functions and particularly the cloud environment
• Oversaw third party teams (EG: Working on mobile app)
• Process management and liaison on compliance and regulatory issues
• Lead data retention and data quality initiatives
• Introduction of SLAs, performance metrics and coding guidelines
• Frequent consultation across departments to resolve challenges

Consultant at Six Degrees Group (2013-01 – 2014-12)

Freelance consultant and technical lead on a project to modernise and replace legacy internal systems. This involved consultation on an architecture to best facilitate operational flexibility and codebase rewrites and stakeholder engagement at all levels.

Development Team Leader, OpenEyes Project at Moorfields Eye Hospital (2011-01 – 2013-12)

Lead on a successful project to create an Open Source Electronic Patient Record system from the ground up. Team lead for the collaborative software development. Architectural design for the code and end-to-end infrastructure in an environment requiring conservatism, extreme resilience, and practices to pre-empt issues. If the system failed the entire hospital would have to revert to an emergency paper system.

• Management of a team of software developers
• Responsibility over technical direction
• Liaison with internal and external stakeholders (EG: Including the hospital Medical Director) and third parties

Lead Developer at GPMD (2010-01 – 2011-12)

Lead developer, system administrator, and technical project manager at this web development agency. Responsible for setting overall technical and architectural direction.

Development Team Leader at Hoop Associates (2007-01 – 2010-12)

Responsible for recruitment and management of a team of developers creating an innovative content management system and development of working processes and software architecture.

Lead Developer at Great Ormond Street Hospital (2004-01 – 2007-12)

Lead developer and systems integrator for Great Ormond Street Hospital and the UCL Institute of Child Health.

• Ran a team delivering a project to create a new internal system for managing research projects and grants
• Consulted on other projects and data management challenges

Lead Developer & System Administrator at Plato Learning (2003-01 – 2004-12)

Technical Manager at ShowStudio (2001-01 – 2002-12)

Technical Director at Pumpernickle (2001-01 – 2001-12)

Senior Internet Developer at Pres.co/Foresight/Wheel (2000-01 – 2000-12)

Lead Developer at Bluewave (1997-01 – 2000-12)