Willem de Joode

Ambitious and results driven "Strategic, Cross‑Functional Technology Leader" who builds high‑performing teams and shapes the conditions for sustainable organisational success. Known for transforming capability through targeted recruitment, talent development, and a culture of intrinsic motivation and accountability. Create enterprise‑level insight and control through real‑time data and dash boarding, enabling faster, more confident decision‑making.

Leadership style is collaborative, empowering, and directionally clear, fostering alignment across diverse stakeholders. Brings a proactive, open‑minded approach to complex challenges, navigating ambiguity with composure and delivering scalable, future‑focused solutions that unlock the art of the possible.

IT Manager - Application Support, Service Delivery, Batch Delivery at Aegon Asset Management (2023-05 – 2026-05)

Led a 37‑person multi‑discipline, multi‑geography team across Application Support (In-house & Third Party), Service Delivery, and Batch Delivery (Batch Job Integration Support). Built strong partnerships to align solutions with organisational needs. Developed team capability and talent pipelines. Strengthened governance, best practice, and software portfolio optimisation. Drove continuous improvement, performance reporting, and root cause resolution using ServiceNow, Agile, Kanban, ITSM, ITIL, and SOC/ISAE frameworks. Hands-on roll out of CoPilot and Amazon Q.

Vulnerability

Management, TechDebt reduction and the upgrade of the office networks in Cedar Rapids, Edinburgh, and Amsterdam. Created and maintained Business Continuity Plans for key systems and applications. IT Risk Management, lead on major Incidents, and annual major incident response exercises. Workflow optimisation, DORA implementation, and reinforcement of Problem Management and Incident Management. Reduced build templates for end user devices from 100 to 3. Creation and control of the IT budget for hardware, software, and system resources related to our end-user footprint.

• Delivered over €1.35 million in efficiencies through Lean A3 initiatives and levering young talent following natural attrition, increasing team capacity by 40%, while reducing people cost by 30%.
• Tapped into the Dutch Intern program, delivering 8 projects, focussing on Tech Debt reduction, and Insight & Control through live PowerBI reporting with a 150% return on investment.
• Drove all Internal and Vendor KPI's from amber to deep green, through persistent, assertive, and collaborative dialogue.
• Provided live and interactive PowerBI dash boarding to SMT with MI and Vendor performance.
• Streamlined the Change Management process to enable same day decision making and ensuring the lock in of a fully documented, dynamic, review step.
• Leveraged multilevel recurring Vendor meetings to significantly improve the quality of Services and securing better value for money.

Head of Technology at VPZ (2022-04 – 2023-04)

Provided strategic leadership that accelerated organisational growth through a clear technology roadmap and targeted investment. Directed day‑to‑day delivery across Data, Network, Cybersecurity, Website, Database, and User/System Support teams, improving reliability and service performance. Partnered with stakeholders to deliver high‑impact upgrades including a new website, EposNow rollout, full network and firewall modernisation, G‑Suite→Azure migration, footfall analytics, and camera‑based warehouse QA—each improving efficiency, insight, or customer experience.

• £150k in efficiencies: Vendor renegotiation and Application Rationalisation, workflow optimisation, and leveraging latent team potential.
• Rapidly implemented corporate ways of working, enabling KPI, SLA, and performance management.
• Kept processes Lean and Service focussed with average response time brought to under 15 minutes, with a same day resolution.
• ITIL Problem Management decreased ticket inflow & capacity redirected to Project Delivery.
• Strengthened the team spirit through social and environmental initiatives, increasing motivation and output.

IT & Service Delivery Manager at People's Postcode Lottery (2020-11 – 2022-04)

Drove and delivered high impact projects, maintained and developed ITSM maturity and IT security. Adopted best practice, aligning to ISO 27001, 27017, PCI, GDPR and ITIL, and standardising on pro-active controls, to enable efficient audits. Managed Service Management, IT support, IT Security, Network, and Cloud engineering. Zero-day vulnerability Management. International stakeholder management in UK, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands.

• Engineer ownership of individual development plans, leveraging the dedicated training budget.
• Placed ServiceNow at the core of our workflow, delivery of the self-service portal.
• Migrated 75% of the on-premises server estate into AWS, updated the office network, adopted brand agnostic end user device management.

Global Service Delivery Manager at Kinly (2019-01 – 2020-11)

Implementation, growth and management of a single point of contact, end to end, multilingual, 24*7 Service Management Team that seamlessly supports Kinly's visual collaboration Services across geographies, leveraging ServiceNow, operating with autonomy, creativity and enthusiasm. The SMT is key to Kinly's ambition in building a leading global visual collaboration company specializing in designing, installing, and supporting physical and virtual meeting room environments for corporate customers with a strategic need for videoconferencing, collaboration and audio-visual solutions.

• Delivered a 24*7, multilingual Technical Support and Concierge team within 2 months.
• Live, automated, human monitored, pro-active monitoring of all audio-visual network end points and elements at our blue-chip customers.
• ITIL process creation, KB and SharePoint development; CSAT up 20%, 10-minute response time, and a 70% FLFR.
• Managed the team through decision subsidiarity, mobilisation of engineer input and delivery of change.

Operations Manager at CodeClan (2018-05 – 2019-12)

Drove growth through enhanced data insight and ERP optimisation (Xero, Zoho). Improved operational coordination and core support systems. Upgraded reporting to strengthen decision‑making. Reinforced governance and risk controls. Served as Data Protection Officer and delivered cross‑business projects that improved operational performance.

• Re-establish the CRM as the source of truth, data cleansing, report optimisation, & real time reporting.
• Ownership of the Project Backlog, centrally tracking and driving initiatives across the organisation.
• Facilitated structured Audio-Visual meetings at all levels.

Resourcing & Reporting Manager at Heineken (2016-06 – 2018-02)

Managing Reporting Coordinators, Resourcing Analysts, and Sales Execution Analysts. Advanced forecasting enabled our stakeholders to make operational, and sales decisions based on a single version of the truth. Implementation and configuration of Genesys Contact Center solution.

• Big picture partnership with the Stakeholders, enabling a conceptually higher quality.
• Improved sales by adopting statistical forecasting, generating stretching yet achievable sales targets.
• Championing innovation, adopting SharePoint, Office 365 Kanban Planner to set Agile priorities.

Cloud Services Customer Support Manager at Oracle (2009 – 2016)

Supported multiple suites of HR applications (Jobpartners, Taleo, Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM) for corporate customers, covering Talent, Recruitment, Learning, and Compensation. Managing a global team of 25 Support Engineers, Developers, and Quality Assurance Analysts.

• Developed SLA's, OLA's, and KPI's, automated reporting and real time Jira and ServiceNow dashboards.
• Built and ran a vertically integrated Support, Development, and Quality Assurance team that operated 24x7, covering 5 languages.
• Developed robust processes for service continuity, software deployment, change, incident, and problem management.
• Handled Major Incidents.