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 modernising complex systems within Investment Banking, Capital Markets, and regulated financial environments.

Broad generalist with hands-on experience across data modelling, application design, system integration, and both distributed and monolithic architectures, including real-time event-driven and batch-oriented systems.

Experienced technical leader, frequently entrusted with delivery ownership and team leadership while remaining closely involved in hands-on development. Known for high engineering standards, a focus on robust simplicity, and driving automation through CI/CD, build pipelines, and enforceable conventions.

Brings a pragmatic approach to modernisation, with a track record of improving delivery practices and reducing risk in legacy-heavy environments.

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 4 months

IQ Application Suite & ESG Platform

• Led hands-on modernisation of a core ESG reporting platform, transforming a legacy PHP system into a modular, containerised architecture using C#, React, and Kubernetes on Azure.

• Drove SDLC maturity improvements: introduced Git-based workflows, peer reviews, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and GitOps-driven infrastructure as code using Bicep.

• Designed and executed incremental architectural migration using the strangler-fig pattern, enabling continuous delivery while reducing platform risk.

• Partnered with business stakeholders to refocus the platform as Apex’s primary ESG capability, balancing regulatory requirements with delivery constraints.

• Designed data integration and reporting architecture, including Snowflake-based data warehousing and PowerBI analytics.

• Remained hands-on across backend, frontend, CI/CD, and cloud infrastructure, pairing with engineers to establish standards and unblock delivery.

• Provided technical leadership across distributed teams without formal line-management focus.

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

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

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