Professional Experience


Richard Allen IT Business Manager

Introduction

IT professional with over 25 years of international experience in systems, development, management and business support roles across a broad range of business environments.

An accomplished IT contractor, consultant and business manager with a scientific background, I have accumulated over 25 years of experience working across a diverse range of disciplines and environments in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. My expertise includes a successful six-year tenure at the Skyline Group in Queenstown, New Zealand to build their IT infrastructure and strategies from the ground up.

In 2016, I took a break from IT to travel the world while remotely managing a tourism business in New Zealand. The global Covid pandemic redirected my path and led me to spend three years near Barcelona.

During this time, I achieved professional specializations in Data Science from Johns Hopkins and Duke Universities, as well as Project Management certification from Google.

Other projects included studying R & Python for data analysis and web development using Django & the Wagtail CMS. The latter I have developed extensively and contribute actively to the open source community. Please see the courses section on my website for more details of recent studies.

I have recently returned to New Zealand, ready to resume my career while embracing new challenges. With my diverse skill set and experience, I am confident that I can make a valuable contribution to any organization.

   


Skill Summary

Information Technology Infrastructure

  • Requirements Analysis
  • Systems Architecture Design
  • Multi-Site Hardware & Software Deployment
  • Problem Analysis and Resolution
  • Documentation of Systems and Practises
  • Performance Analysis
  • RFID Tracking

Application Development & Support

  • Website development (Python, Django, Wagtail)
  • Data Analysis and Modelling (R & Python)
  • Requirements Gathering
  • Functional Specifications
  • Project Management
  • Process Automation
  • Scripting (VB Script, Python, R)
  • Small application development (VB.NET)
  • Interactive web apps for data analysis and reporting (Shiny & Streamlit)

Management

  • Departmental Head and Team Leadership
  • Business/data analysis and reporting
  • Project Management
  • Employee Mentoring
  • Board Reporting
  • Vendor Management
  • Dispute Resolution
  • Client Relationship Management

Sectors

  • Banking & Finance
  • Tourism
  • Engineering
  • Local Government
  • NGO
  • Education
  • Media
  • Telecomms
  • Health
  • Oil & Gas

Education

  • BSc Geology/Geophysics - Victoria University of Wellington
  • Data Science Specialisation - Johns Hopkins University
  • Data Science with R Specialisation - Duke University
  • Project Management - Google

See also course list below.

Languages

  • English – Native speaker
  • Spanish – A2/B1 with the aim of reaching fluency.

Eligibility

Right to work in Spain, UK, New Zealand and Australia. I would be happy to consider other locations as well.


Personal Skills

  • Proven ability to understand and act on client requirements: working in unfamiliar business situations to understand objectives and factors involved, designing a solution, and acting on client feedback to deliver the final product.
  • Competent in designing highly usable and robust solutions and undertaking detailed investigations to find resolutions to unusual problems.
  • Scientific education and technical backgrounds have developed excellent analytical and problem-solving methodologies.
  • Ability to pick up new concepts and begin executing them unsupervised at once.
  • Confidence to undertake all necessary studies and research in order to acquire additional skills in a short space of time.
  • Ability to work independently, undertake tasks on a proactive basis and manage them on a time-effective basis.

Availability

I'm available immediately and potentially able to relocate at short notice. Alternatively, I'm comfortable working remotely and would be happy to consider this option.


Recent Course List


Specialisations and Certifications


June 2022

A programme of six courses covering managing the full project life-cycle: start, plan, and execute a project using both traditional and agile project management approaches; employ effective and ethical leadership to motivate and inspire project teams and stakeholders; use data-informed decision making.

  1. Foundations of Project Management fa-solid fa-award
  2. Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project fa-solid fa-award
  3. Project Planning: Putting It All Together fa-solid fa-award
  4. Project Execution: Running the Project fa-solid fa-award
  5. Agile Project Management fa-solid fa-award
  6. Capstone: Applying Project Management in the Real World fa-solid fa-award

Data Science Specialisation (Johns Hopkins University)

April 2022

A programme of ten courses covering concepts and tools for an entire data science pipeline, including: using R for data manipulation, cleansing and analysis; thinking analytically about complex problems; managing large data sets, deploying statistical principles and creating visualisations; building and evaluating machine learning algorithms; publishing reproducible analyses; and developing interactive data products.

  1. The Data Scientist’s Toolbox fa-solid fa-award
  2. R Programming fa-solid fa-award
  3. Getting and Cleaning Data fa-solid fa-award
  4. Exploratory Data Analysis fa-solid fa-award
  5. Reproducible Research fa-solid fa-award
  6. Statistical Inference fa-solid fa-award
  7. Regression Models fa-solid fa-award
  8. Practical Machine Learning fa-solid fa-award
  9. Developing Data Products fa-solid fa-award
  10. Data Science Capstone fa-solid fa-award

April 2022

A programme of five courses concentrating on the mathematical principles of data science using R: Analyse and visualise data in R and create reproducible data analysis reports; demonstrate a conceptual understanding of the unified nature of statistical inference; perform frequentist and Bayesian statistical inference and modelling to understand natural phenomena and make data-based decisions; communicate statistical results correctly, effectively, and in context without relying on statistical jargon; critique data-based claims and evaluate data-based decisions; and wrangle and visualise data with R packages for data analysis.

  1. Introduction to Probability and Data with R fa-solid fa-award
  2. Inferential Statistics fa-solid fa-award
  3. Linear Regression and Modelling fa-solid fa-award
  4. Bayesian Statistics fa-solid fa-award
  5. Statistics with R Capstone Project fa-solid fa-award


Other Courses


Python and Statistics for Financial Analysis fa-solid fa-award - Jan 2023

The course combines both python coding and statistical concepts and applies to analysing financial data, such as stock data. Build a trading model using multiple linear regression and evaluate the performance of the trading model using different investment indicators.

Creating Interactive Web Apps with Streamlit and Python (3 courses) - May 2022

Using Pandas and Scikit in Python to create rapid-deployment web apps with the Streamlit package.

Mastering Data Analysis with Pandas in Python - May 2022

Five-part guided project detailing data loading, cleansing and analysis with the Pandas package.

Multiple Linear Regression with scikit-learn fa-solid fa-award - May 2022

Project-based course building and evaluating multiple linear regression models using Python using the scikit-learn package to calculate regression, while using pandas for data management and seaborn for data visualisation.

The R Toolkit fa-solid fa-award - January 2022

Learning the fundamentals of the R programming language, applied to statistical analysis, visualisations, and machine learning. Variables, Vectors, Matrices, Loops, Functions, Packages, Plotting, K-means clustering, Decision Trees.

Full-Stack JavaScript fa-solid fa-award - December 2021

Introduction to full-stack web development using JavaScript (ReactJS, LoopbackJS, Redux and Material-UI).

The React Crash Course fa-solid fa-award - November 2021

This course covers installation, folder structure, the App file, JSX Templating, JSX Attributes and Styles, Using Expressions and Events in JSX, using React CDNs, Functional Components, Class Components, Props, Component Nesting, Reusability and State Management.

The Node.js Master Class fa-solid fa-award - November 2021

Node.js from scratch with no frameworks and no dependencies. Build a RESTful API, a web app GUI and a CLI with no external libraries.

JavaScript ES6 fa-solid fa-award - October 2021

Spread, rest, maps, sets, destructuring, template literals, classes, try/catch/finally, promises, fetch, Babel, Webpack, Gulp.

Introduction to Machine Learning fa-solid fa-award - June 2021

Fundamental Concepts of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning as the Next Game-Changing Technology

Learn Wagtail - May 2021

Creating Django websites using Python and the Wagtail CMS with a set of over 50 tutorial videos and a professional course.

Build three complete websites, learn back-end and front-end web development.


Interests

Published Photographer

Published in numerous travel magazines & news sites. Previous exhibition of images of the Kuna Yala people in Panama’s BioMuseo. IG: rich_on_travels.

Outdoor Enthusiast

Accomplished hiker. Completed many long-distance solo-hikes around the world including traversing the Pyrenees from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, hiking the wilderness areas along the deserted south-eastern coastline of Greenland and hiking to and around Everest Base Camp and west from Langtang along the Himalayas for 1000km.

Experienced diver, qualified to Assistant Instructor level. Taught diving in Honduras specialising in mentoring students with phobia of water, guiding them past their fears to become confident divers. This was an aspect I found particularly fulfilling.

Other outdoor interests include cross-country biking (highlight being cycling around Iceland) and snowboarding.

Experienced Traveller

Travelled to all continents to fulfil my passion to explore the world’s diverse environments and experience first-hand many of the cultures to be found there. Overland trips include Hong Kong to Scotland via Mongolia & Siberia, London to Cape Town, Alaska to Antarctica, China to Nordkapp via India & the Silk Road.


If you're an employer looking to fill a gap that you think I might be a good fit for, either for a project or for a permanent role, feel free to contact me here.