Richard Parkins

Personal Profile

Technical Director with 20+ years’ experience progressing from developer to architect to technology leader. I align technology strategy with business outcomes, build high-performing teams, and deliver secure, scalable, cloud-first services. As a servant leader, I remove blockers and grow people; as a visionary strategist, I set clear roadmaps and steer transformation across public and private sector programmes.

Core Areas of Expertise

Technology Strategy & Vision

Defined quarterly leadership plans and 6–12–36 month roadmaps at Talent Consulting, aligning technical delivery with organisational growth.
Partnered with leadership to shape business priorities and support hiring a Director of Sales, directly linking technical vision to commercial strategy.
Set long-term migration strategy from monolith to microservices at CompareTheMarket to drive flexibility, speed, and resilience.

Architecture & Systems Design

Led architecture for Pricing Platform & Partner Risk Mapping at CompareTheMarket, enabling daily deployments and reducing downtime by ~30%.
Designed a secure, diagnosable AWS-based platform scaling to >10 TPS with strong observability and resilience.
Unified candidate entry portals at OCR, improving reliability and reducing downtime through better design practices.

Engineering Leadership

Built a ~20-person capability (architects, developers, DevOps, QA) at Talent Consulting; introduced structured 1:1s, progression reviews, and quarterly offsites.
Mentored developers and defined career paths at CompareTheMarket to strengthen the talent pipeline.
Established Communities of Practice and chaired the Technical Forum to uplift standards collaboratively.

Delivery & Operations

Implemented unified Grafana dashboards across the DfE portfolio for business & technical visibility.
Standardised GitHub Actions for CI/CD to reduce cost and lead time.
Introduced real-time quotability services at CompareTheMarket, cutting time-to-fix from days to minutes.
Delivered silent deployments at OCR to minimise disruption and increase release confidence.

Security & Compliance

Led cloud security reviews, presented to DfE Deputy Directors, and passed multiple IT Health Checks.
Implemented WAF/NSG patterns and protections against OWASP Top 10 and DDoS.
Developed safety-critical systems for ICS Triplex (Oil & Nuclear) under rigorous external audit.

Vendor & Cloud Management

Hands-on with Azure and AWS (PaaS/IaaS/SaaS), selecting platforms based on business need.
Optimised pipelines by adopting GitHub Actions as a cost-effective alternative to heavier tooling.
Balanced vendor solutions (Grafana, ServiceBus, Event Grid) with in-house approaches to manage cost and risk.

Innovation & R&D

Introduced Azure AI search to unlock knowledge reuse for social workers and delivery teams.
Deployed AI-assisted reporting with automated RAG alerts to surface contract risk early.
Pioneered camera-to-quote iOS journeys and rebuy portals at CompareTheMarket to improve retention.

Stakeholder Engagement

Contributed to ~£50m in public-sector wins (DfE, MoJ, ESFA) via technical proposals and senior presentations.
Translated complex cloud architecture and security into clear business narratives for boards and DDs.
Partnered with product owners at Tesco Entertainment to shape consumer-facing search & e-commerce improvements.
Engaged with senior leadership boards to strengthen supplier relationships and consult on best practice adoption.

Governance & Risk

Chaired the Technical Forum at CompareTheMarket to align standards and practices across teams.
Introduced contract testing and a self-populating service catalogue to govern dependencies and reduce MTTR.
Established Architecture Review Boards at Talent Consulting to ensure consistency, security, and maintainability.

Work Experience

Technical Director Talent Consulting (2021 – Present)

Defined leadership plans and multi-year roadmaps; built a ~20 person team with structured career development.
Unified Grafana observability; standardised GitHub Actions for CI/CD; introduced AI-assisted risk reporting.
Led cloud-security reviews and passed IT Health Checks; contributed to £30m in contract wins.

Applications Architect CompareTheMarket (2017 – 2021)

Owned architecture for Pricing Platform & Partner Risk Mapping; migrated to microservices, enabling daily deployments.
Reduced downtime by ~30%; introduced contract testing and service catalogue.
Chaired Technical Forum; implemented real-time quotability with Grafana dashboards.

Technical Lead Developer / Architect CompareTheMarket (2016 – 2017)

Designed AWS-based Pricing Platform (10+ TPS), secure and diagnosable.
Defined Swagger/OpenAPI contracts; mentored engineers and mapped growth paths.

Consultant Lead Developer CompareTheMarket (2013 – 2016)

Pioneered camera-to-quote iOS journey and launched rebuy portal to lift retention.

Consultant EasyJet (2012 – 2013)

Delivered airline seat-selection service (MVC, KnockoutJS, Azure); built ServiceBus integrations.

Consultant Tesco Entertainment (2011 – 2012)

Built Android MP3 prototype; enhanced Endeca search; implemented pricing event sourcing across 400k+ products.

Consultant Cambridge University (OCR) (2008 – 2011)

Unified candidate entry portals; introduced code reviews, unit testing, and silent deployments.

Director TouchScreenData (2004 – 2008)

Founded consultancy delivering .NET and LAMP solutions; owned pitching, tendering, and delivery.

Software Engineer Thomson Reuters (1994 – 2004)

Built financial apps, pager back-ends, and SMS/WAP services including a World Cup messaging system.

Software Engineer (Safety-Critical) ICS Triplex (1994 – 2004)

Developed safety-critical embedded systems for Oil & Nuclear; delivered under external audits.

Embedded Software Engineer Emerson Liebert (1994 – 2004)

Developed embedded software for UPS systems; collaborated with hardware engineers for safety and reliability.

Closing Statement

I lead with a servant mindset—removing blockers and empowering teams—while steering technology strategy that delivers measurable business value. My track record spans scaling teams, modernising platforms, embedding security, and driving innovation across high-stakes public-sector and enterprise environments.