Hi! I’m Matt Symes (Are you looking for my Blog? Click here)

The Early Years

I’ve worked in technology all my life - I started coding on a Sinclair ZX81 back in, yes, 1981. It took me 10 years to get over the rejection of my first submissions to Sinclair User tape magazine, but by the age of 15 I had finally developed and sold my first commercial software. After leaving Cambridge with a Computer Science degree I joined PwC for 4 years and worked in their Oracle Centre of Excellence delivering reports and customisations for E-Business Suite implementations.

The Professional

Here is my CV and LinkedIn Profile if you want the dry versions.

Regardless of who I’m working for or what I’m doing there are always some common threads:

• Solutions founded on well-architected principles
• Avoid over-engineering but deliver solutions based on extensible architectures
• I keep your costs down by having sufficient understanding across the technology stack to spot and avoid unnecessary largess.
  • Likewise, I can turn an eye to existing systems and help reduce costs. For example, consolidating systems at Balfour Beatty or selecting the appropriate consumptin tiers for Azure Solutions at Lloyd’s Register
• Apply Domain-Driven Design principles
• A sufficient appreciation of neigbouring domains to work with little friction with other teams with their own priorities. I get the best out of myself, my team and others.
• Plenty of experience working with cloud / hosting companies and 3rd party developers / system integrators.
• Best leveraging the client’s investment in their existing application technology, maximising the use of COTS and restricting custom development to areas where there are no suitable commercial alternatives;
• Designed in accordance with the resource and skill sets currently available to the client and aligned to the competencies that the client is targeting. This reduces TCO by maximising use of these resources and minimizing the need to co-ordinate between teams of disparate skills mindful to protect their own fiefdoms;
• Defining and delivering against often ignored non-functional requirements: performance, audit, operational supportability; and
• Aligned with and supportive of the client’s wider, long term business & technology strategy and EA roadmap.

My time with PwC embedded some strong working practices, in addition to having time to hone my technical skills in the modern workplace I was surrounded by exceptional consultants - and the soft skills I have today are largely a result of watching, listening and learning through those early years. These days I bring those same tools and processes to any engagement, battle hardened through years of practical experience.

As much as possible I follow Agile processes and advocate a “release early; release often” approach to delivery to ensure that immediate effort is always aligned as much as possible to a small, confirmed and prioritised list of client needs rather than expending significant resources over long time periods working towards a large unverified set of perceived requirements.

I spend a lot of time keeping apprised of latest developments in enterprise IT and enjoy taking ideas from the workplace and mucking around with them at home to see where they can go.

• I have over 20 years professional experience across a variety of disciplines. I have extensive experience implementing and extending ERP / HR solutions for clients of varying sizes across many market sectors. I am as comfortable designing modern bespoke web / lo-code solutions as I am getting down deep and dirty with some Oracle Database Tuning or writing performant SQL and PL/SQL.

• I can integrate them into the client’s existing landscape as well as designing and delivering custom applications across various frameworks and platforms. Matt has a combination of deep technical expertise, functional knowledge and commercial sensitivity enabling him to propose and deliver solutions to clients that are right-sized and right-timed for the client’s particular environment. Matt is focused on delivery, always ensuring deliverables are, and continue to be, consistent with the client’s wider enterprise vision and strategy.

My broad skill set & experience provides flexibility that often proves valuable to clients working within the fluid environment resulting from the business change programmes that typically accompany major systems’ implementations. I can provide a variety of services for clients and indeed in my experience clients appreciate being able to reach out to someone who has come to know their business - and have the confidence that I can deliver for them regardless of the nature of the challenge. This has resulted in a very board skill set over the years which I cherish and draw upon constantly regardless of engagement.

• At the moment I’m particularly excited about delivering solution on the Azure platform but would also love to keep my eye in with Oracle database tuning and SQL / PL/SQL optimization. I have my own Azure subscription. In fact, this website in hosted using a single Azure Storage account. You can read more about how I have built this site here.
• I’ve also 15 years experience as a technical solution architect with Oracle E-Business Suite and am ideally placed to work on any technical challenges you have with Oracle E-Business Suite
• I’ve been the technical architect on SAP Cloud implementations
• I’m comfortable delivering solutions based on Microsoft Power Platform,
• I also have some expertise in Identity Management solutions and implementing secure autothentication schemes and single sign on.

Like many people who work largely in solution architecture - I still love to cut code - so please feel free to contact me if you have smaller requirements where I can act as the solution architect and developer (and test manager and project manager and…. you get the picture!)

The man

I live with my wife Kathryn in Woking. I am a father of 2 daughters, 1 son and we have a dog Bongo and are looking after a cat Lulu. I enjoy playing ball and racquet sports and supporting athletics. I am a space nut, fascinated by rocketry and also enjoy a bit of astronomy from time to time - although Surrey doesn’t hold any records for dark skies unfortunately. I have a natural urge to always understand more at the periphery of anything I know and push back the boundaries of the unknown. Most recently, I’ve started exploring the hardware side more. This started about 5 years ago, playing around with microcontrollers