Neil Crow's CV

• Email: crow.neil@gmail.com
• Location: East Sussex, UK
• Website: crowne.github.io
• LinkedIn: neilcrow
• GitHub: crowne
• StackOverflow: 97745/crowne

Executive Summary

Systems Architect / Principal Software Engineer (Financial Services)

Architect / Principal Software Engineer with 25+ years experience designing, building, and evolving large-scale systems within Investment Banking, Capital Markets, and regulated financial environments.

Broad generalist with strong hands-on experience across application design, system integration, distributed architectures, and event-driven systems. Currently delivering containerised microservices platforms running on Kubernetes with CI/CD automation across multiple environments.

Experienced technical leader combining architectural ownership with hands-on delivery. Comfortable leading engineers, mentoring through pairing and design reviews, and working closely with Product to shape and prioritise roadmap delivery while maintaining high engineering standards and robust simplicity.

Education

University of South Africa, Information Technology and Computer Science

BSc

Nov 2011

Software Engineering Stream

University of South Africa, National Certificate in Data Metrics

NC

Oct 2006

• cum laude

Certifications

Sun Certified Java Programmer

June 2002

National Diploma in Structured COBOL Programming

Nov 1994

Courses

Tibco - EMS301 Enterprise Messaging Service

June 2007

Tibco - BW611 BusinessWorks Integration

June 2007

Informatica - Data Integration (ETL)

Sept 2007

Platinum Education - SQL Programming for DB2

June 1996

IBM - CICS Command Level Coding

June 1995

IBM - CICS Advanced Application Coding

June 1995

Cobol Programming - Advanced Structured Cobol

Nov 1992

Experience

Apex Group (MJ Hudson), System Architect / Staff Engineer

London, UK

Oct 2021 – present

4 years 5 months

IQ Application Suite & ESG Platform

• Lead development of containerised C# and PHP applications along with supporting microservices deployed to Kubernetes across multiple environments, and docker compose for local dev environments.

• Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines supporting automated build, test, and deployment workflows with authorization.

• Collaborate closely with Product Managers to shape, prioritise, and deliver roadmap features across iterative releases for the Private Equity focussed ESG Platform.

• Provide leadership on architectural decisions spanning service boundaries, data modelling (Oracle), and integration patterns to downstream systems including Snowflake and an AI partner platform.

• Operate within a SAFe-scaled agile framework, with prior experience across multiple agile methodologies.

• Drive technical excellence by balancing hands-on delivery with design oversight, pair programming, and proactive mentorship.

Standard Bank / Infomet, Senior Software Engineer / Staff-Level Technical Lead

Johannesburg, ZA

Apr 2011 – Sept 2021

10 years 6 months

Pan-African Sub-Ledger Platform

• Designed and delivered a detailed financial sub-ledger platform rolled out across 18 African countries, supporting trading, core banking, credit cards, and asset finance.

• Acted as technical authority for posting engines, data ingestion, and financial correctness across multiple asset classes, including bonds, FX derivatives, loans, and money markets.

• Led incremental evolution of the platform over a decade, including database upgrades, infrastructure modernisation, and build/deploy automation.

• Developed reusable financial and technical components adopted across multiple streams, reducing duplication and operational risk.

• Worked closely with business analysts and finance stakeholders to translate complex financial requirements into robust, auditable systems.

• Improved delivery reliability through automated deployments, environment promotion, and source-control standardisation.

Standard Bank, Software Engineer / Technical Lead

Johannesburg, ZA

Jan 2010 – Mar 2011

1 year 2 months

CIB Treasury Calypso Trading System

• Served as technical lead for the Calypso trading platform within CIB Treasury, owning the technical design and implementation for onboarding new product types, including government and corporate bonds and floating-rate money market instruments.

• Acted as the primary technical authority on Calypso for treasury and capital markets workflows, supporting business analysts and front-office stakeholders in translating complex product requirements into robust system implementations.

• Represented Standard Bank CIB on industry-wide working committees with the Central Securities Depository, contributing to and influencing market-wide interface specifications that were subsequently adopted as the country standard.

• Led significant improvements to the development lifecycle for Calypso teams, migrating builds from Ant to Maven, introducing unit testing, and establishing a standardised build structure adopted across multiple teams.

• Improved technical and business documentation practices by introducing structured, shared documentation via internal wiki platforms, reducing knowledge silos and improving operational transparency.

• Remained hands-on throughout, contributing directly to code, build tooling, and integrations while providing technical leadership across the platform.

Rand Merchant Bank, Domain Architect - Integration

Johannesburg, ZA

Nov 2006 – Dec 2009

3 years 2 months

Lead for Integration Centre of Excellence

• Served as Domain Architect for integration across the RADA reporting and analytics project, owning end-to-end integration and orchestration between 19 upstream source systems and Oracle Financials.

• Designed and implemented enterprise integration architecture using TIBCO integration suite and Informatica ETL, ensuring data consistency, traceability, and reliability across heterogeneous systems.

• Acted as Technical Architect for the Master Data Management platform, designing and delivering a JEE-based application deployed on JBoss to manage shared reference and master data.

• Led integration architecture for a bank-wide KYC initiative, defining interfaces, data flows, and orchestration patterns across multiple systems of record.

• Served as Technical Lead for the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) programme, evaluating commercial and open-source ESB technologies and shaping the bank’s integration strategy.

• Remained hands-on throughout, contributing to Java/JEE development, build tooling, automated testing, and integration components.

• Improved engineering discipline and delivery quality through XP practices, pair programming, automated builds, and shared documentation using Jira and Confluence.

• Developed internal tooling, including an open-source Jira plugin enabling LDAP-based single sign-on with Active Directory, improving developer productivity and platform usability.

STRATE Limited, IT Development Manager / Technical Architect

Johannesburg, ZA

Oct 2001 – Oct 2006

5 years 1 month

CSD & Securities Settlement System

• Progressed from Front-End Team Lead on a mission-critical C++ settlement application to IT Development Manager, with responsibility across Java and COBOL/CICS/DB2 development teams.

• Held overall technical responsibility for application development and integration across STRATE’s core settlement platforms (SAFIRES and UNEXCOR), which settle all equity, bond, money-market, and OTC trades on the JSE and BESA exchanges.

• Led the migration of the SAFE platform from IBM C++ to J2EE, designing the target architecture and delivering a production system deployed across JBoss and WebSphere on Windows and AIX.

• Owned architecture and delivery across a heterogeneous estate spanning Java/J2EE front-end systems and mainframe back-end services, with a strong focus on correctness, resilience, and regulatory compliance.

• Designed and delivered integration and messaging solutions supporting SWIFT, FIX, XML, and JMS-based workflows, including message routing, transformation, and tracking capabilities.

• Planned and implemented web-based reporting and data-sales platforms, defining application architecture, database design, and secure connectivity to DB2 on z/OS via MQ Series.

• Defined and enforced Java engineering standards, architectural patterns, and build practices across teams, improving consistency, maintainability, and delivery quality.

• Represented STRATE on the South African FIX Protocol working group, contributing to industry-wide interoperability standards.

• Managed recruitment, mentoring, and technical standards across a team of approximately 19 engineers, while remaining closely involved in architectural decisions and complex technical problem-solving.

UBS Warburg, Systems Analyst

London, UK

Feb 1998 – July 2001

3 years 6 months

Euro conversion, Y2K and new stock reconciliation system

• Delivered extensive enhancements to a legacy IDMS-based trading and reconciliation platform to support Euro currency adoption, meeting regulatory requirements and an immovable market deadline.

• Led technical upgrades across critical integration components, including CICS and Sybase gateways, to ensure full Year 2000 compliance for high-value financial processing systems.

• Designed, built, and rolled out a global stock reconciliation system, delivering a three-tier architecture with a COBOL/CICS/DB2 back-end and distributed Domino servers accessed via Lotus Notes.

• Implemented reliable, high-volume messaging between mainframe and distributed components using MQ Series, supporting global reconciliation workflows.

• Designed and delivered a SWIFT message retrieval system using MQ Series clients with C++ and Delphi on Windows NT.

• Provided production support and ongoing enhancements for both NT-based stock reconciliation systems and the MVS-based cash reconciliation platform (CORONA) within a high-availability investment banking environment.

BACG / Armature, Analyst Programmer

Johannesburg, ZA & Salt Lake City, USA

Apr 1997 – Jan 1998

10 months

Retail Masterdata Management System

• Enhanced and maintained a COBOL/CICS/DB2 application supporting retail warehouse and distribution operations.

• Used TELON CASE tooling to generate COBOL programs for master data and transactional processing.

• Acted as technical advisor to an outsourced project and coordinated application upgrades to client sites.

• Participated in on-site system implementation with client teams in the United States.

Standard Bank, Programmer

Johannesburg, ZA

Feb 1995 – Mar 1997

2 years 1 month

Branch Banking System

• Developed and maintained a branch front-line banking system built on a COBOL/CICS/DB2 back-end with distributed DB2 databases deployed to branch environments.

• Contributed to the design and implementation of an early Internet Banking platform using COBOL, CICS DLI, and Sybase Gateway integration.

• Provided second-line, 24-hour operational support for mainframe batch processing, ensuring reliability of end-of-day and overnight financial workflows.

Skills

Architecture & Platforms: Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture, Distributed Systems, Service-Oriented Architecture, Cloud-Native Development

Practices & Methodologies: Agile (SAFe, Scrum, Kanban), eXtreme Programming (XP), Test-Driven Development, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery

Languages: C#, JavaScript/TypeScript, SQL, PL/SQL, PHP, Python, Java, Groovy, Powershell, Bash, HTML, C, C++, COBOL

JS Frameworks: React, Svelte-Kit, Vue, Vite

Testing: JUnit, xUnit, NUnit, Jest, Selenium, Postman, Playwright, Mockito, Cobertura, Cucumber

Source Control: Git, GitHub, Subversion, CVS

CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines

Databases: Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL/MariaDB, SQLite, Sybase, DB2, IDMS, Lotus Notes

Messaging & Integration: Azure Service Bus, RabbitMQ, Tibco EMS/BW, Websphere MQ, RESTful APIs, SOAP Web Services

Web Servers & SSL: nginx, Apache HTTP Server, IIS, certbot

Containers & Orchestration: Docker, Docker Compose, Podman, Kubernetes, Kustomize

Infrastructure: Terraform, Cloudformation, Bicep, AWS, GCP

Cloud Platforms: Microsoft Azure, AWS

Cloud Services: Azure (DNS; Container Registry; AKS; Vault), Github Container Registry, AWS (Route 53; EC2; S3)

Collaboration Tools: Azure DevOps, JIRA, Confluence