Richard Parkins

Executive Profile

Senior technology leader with 30+ years of experience spanning hands-on software engineering, enterprise and solution architecture, and Director-level leadership. Proven track record designing and delivering secure, cloud-native platforms at national scale while building and leading high-performing engineering organisations. Known for combining deep technical credibility with pragmatic leadership, product innovation and commercial delivery, operating comfortably from code and architecture reviews through to executive governance and board-level discussion. Experienced in building and scaling engineering organisations, establishing governance frameworks, technology standards, learning pathways and engineering operating models that improve delivery capability, consistency and long-term organisational maturity.

Technical Skills & Tooling

Detailed, resource-level experience across cloud platforms, data stores, integration patterns, delivery pipelines, security controls and operational tooling.

Professional Experience

Technical Director / Head of Engineering — Talent Consulting (2021–Present)

Technology and delivery consultancy (part of Swipejobs group), operating primarily in UK public sector. Principal client: Department for Education — £58bn+ annual budget, 337,000+ apprenticeship starts per year across 76,000+ employer organisations.

• Built and led a multidisciplinary team of 10 engineering, delivery and business specialists across three client contracts, achieving consistently positive client feedback while maintaining delivery focus across architecture, engineering, DevOps and QA.
• Introduced career pathways aligned to the Government Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) framework, supported by performance planning, mentoring, succession planning and structured development routes for technical team members.
• Created the interview and assessment strategy for permanent technical hires, ensuring candidates demonstrated the right technical capability, delivery mindset and commitment to Talent's collaborative consultancy culture.
• Introduced Confluence and Slack as core collaboration platforms, then automated team workflows using Slack alerts for training requests, recruitment pipeline updates and operational notifications across Google Forms, Trello and internal processes.
• Established a weekly technical Community of Practice, bringing new technologies, AI developments and delivery lessons into the team, with a rotating chair model to give team members experience leading technical discussion.
• Planned and facilitated quarterly face-to-face team events in partnership with Sales and Operations Directors, using team input to shape sessions around technical growth, delivery improvement and commercial priorities.
• Established engineering governance and standards across architecture, software development, data and AI, improving consistency of delivery, assurance and technical decision-making across client engagements.
• Introduced the Microsoft Partner Programme for Talent, driving Azure, AI and data certification pathways to strengthen capability, partner alignment and market credibility.
• Created a three-year technical department business plan focused on AI, data, acquisition strategy and growth of the existing team, securing board agreement and progressing implementation across training, salary banding, performance plans and career pathways.
• Contributed to securing approximately £40m of contracted revenue over four years through technical proposition development, executive relationships, public sector bid responses and hands-on support to sales teams developing new client relationships.
• Conceived, designed and delivered an AI-powered bid management platform integrating tender ingestion, bid response library search, ChatGPT-style querying, task management and response workflow from draft through review, red review and submission readiness; reduced manual bid-management effort by approximately 50%.
• Created operational processes for managing bid contributors, consultants, permanent team members, actions and response ownership, while updating the bid knowledge library with successful submissions to improve future response quality.
• Represented Talent in senior stakeholder forums, including presenting the technical capability and operating model to the CEO of the acquiring company and coordinating technical insight sessions with key clients to add value beyond delivery commitments.
• Principal Architect across DfE programmes, providing hands-on architecture leadership and assurance from discovery through to live, and presenting strategy, trade-offs and risk at Deputy Director-level governance forums.
• Guested in ad-hoc mentoring sessions with DfE apprentices, sharing career experience and the pathway from engineering into technical leadership and directorship.
• Managed sensitive people leadership responsibilities including disciplinary matters, performance issues and redundancy consultations with fairness, structure and alignment to business needs.

Lead Architect — Apprenticeships Service, DfE (2023–Present)

National apprenticeship services supporting employers, providers, apprentices and government users across the apprenticeship lifecycle.

• Lead Architect for the Apprenticeships Service, providing technical direction, architectural assurance and delivery support across nationally significant public sector services.
• Defined and governed target architectures covering identity, integration, service boundaries, data flows, operational tooling and platform resilience across Azure-hosted services.
• Worked across multidisciplinary delivery teams, senior DfE stakeholders and supplier partners to align architectural decisions with policy intent, delivery priorities and long-term service sustainability.
• Embedded secure-by-design and GDS-aligned delivery practices through design reviews, ADRs, risk management, technical governance and clear communication of trade-offs at senior forums.

Principal Architect — CPD & Family Hubs, DfE (2021–2023)

CPD services reach teachers and school leaders across thousands of English institutions; Family Hubs supports vulnerable families across dozens of local authority areas.

• Architectural owner for both programmes — defined target architectures covering identity, API-led integration, data flows, and operational tooling aligned to GDS standards and DfE enterprise patterns.
• Coordinated architectural decisions across an 18-team agile delivery model, including service boundaries, data ownership, and supplier integration patterns.
• Embedded security-by-design (IAM, network segmentation, secrets management, audit readiness) across services subject to government security classification and public data obligations.
• Guided services through discovery, alpha, beta, and live phases via design reviews, ADRs, and delivery assurance; communicated trade-offs and risk to senior DfE stakeholders.

Applications Architect — Comparethemarket (2017–2021)

UK’s most recognised price comparison platform (87% brand awareness); 7+ million customers; BGL Group revenues exceeding £700m per annum. Customer base grew 12%+ year-on-year during tenure.

• Architectural owner for the core Pricing Platform and partner risk services — led multi-year decomposition of a high-traffic on-premises monolith into AWS microservices using API-led and event-driven patterns.
• Introduced resilience engineering (circuit breakers, bulkhead isolation, automated failover), observability (distributed tracing, structured logging), and consumer-driven contract testing — reducing incident detection from days to minutes.
• Drove deployment frequency from monthly to daily; introduced automated security scanning; raised security baseline across an FCA-relevant platform.
• Mentored senior engineers and tech leads; chaired cross-team technical forums across multiple delivery squads.

Consultant Developer — EasyJet, Seat Selection (2016–2017)

EasyJet carried ~74 million passengers annually at the time — Europe’s second-largest budget airline. The digital booking flow is one of its highest-traffic customer touchpoints.

• Built customer-facing seat selection on Azure (MVC + KnockoutJS) as part of the booking journey used by tens of millions of travellers per year.
• Engineered an Azure Service Bus integration for real-time Pluscard validation via REST API during booking; implemented a PHP client for third-party compatibility.

Consultant Developer — Tesco Entertainment (2015–2016)

Tesco holds ~27% UK grocery market share with 20 million+ Clubcard households. Tesco Entertainment was one of the UK’s leading digital entertainment retailers by consumer market share.

• Delivered the “was/now/save” price cross-out feature across ~400,000 products to live release; maintained the Endeca search service powering entertainment discovery.
• Developed a conceptual Android MP3 purchase and download app (Java) within time and budget, alongside ongoing .NET platform delivery.

Director — TouchScreenData Ltd (2004–2015)

Independently founded technology consultancy — eleven years delivering bespoke digital platforms across retail, charity, and consumer sectors.

• Designed and built a greenfield online marketplace for the UK antiques sector (estimated £1bn+ annual market value) using .NET; delivered LAMP projects for clients including Coca-Cola and Children’s Trust.
• Operated as both technical lead and business owner across the full project lifecycle, from client engagement through to delivery.

Education

BEng (Hons) Electrical & Electronic Engineering — Loughborough University (First Class)