KELVIN EKONOMI
+44 - |-| http://www.linkedin.com/in/kelvin-ekonomi | London
Experienced Engineering Leader with over 20 years of expertise in delivering innovative, scalable software solutions across
diverse industries, including Retail, eCommerce, ERP, Legal Services, Banking, and Telecommunications. Proven track record
of leading high-performing teams of up to 40 engineers, managing £10M tech budgets, and driving engineering
transformations that significantly enhance delivery speed, quality, and business outcomes.
Recognized for building adaptive, customer-focused engineering teams and implementing DevOps and Agile practices that
achieve elite DORA metrics. Skilled in modernizing architectures, unifying complex systems, and reducing operational costs
through cloud-native solutions. Passionate about fostering a culture of collaboration, mentoring talent, and delivering
impactful, sustainable results.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
Ø Engineering Transformation: Led organizational transitions from legacy practices to Agile and DevOps methodologies,
delivering significant improvements across multiple organizations. Achieved up to 88% reduction in time-to-market
and reduced production incidents by up to 98% through cultural and technical transformations.
Ø Technical Innovation: Designed and delivered cloud-native architectures, including the migration of monolithic
systems to microservices and serverless solutions. Reduced operational costs by 65% and test environment costs by
75% through strategic cloud modernization and automation initiatives.
Ø Team Leadership & Growth: Built and scaled high-performing engineering teams across diverse markets (UK, EU,
Albania), managing teams of up to 40 engineers and budgets of up to £10M. Created competency-based frameworks
and mentoring programs that improved retention (90%+) and promoted a culture of excellence.
Ø Impactful Results: Delivered platforms supporting millions of users with 99.99% uptime, driving business growth and
operational efficiency. Contributed to 3x revenue growth at IMB and enabled cross-brand integration for Citation,
unlocking new revenue streams through technical innovation.
Ø Metrics & Operational Excellence: Established industry-leading DevOps practices, achieving elite DORA metrics
performance. Implemented KPIs like deployment frequency, lead time, and incident resolution to drive continuous
improvement and ensure delivery excellence.
SKILLS & EXPERTISE
ROLES. Head of Engineering; Engineering Manager; Senior Agile Delivery Manager; Technical Lead; Software Manager;
Software Engineer.
SECTORS. Legal Services & Online Training & Construction certifications & Background Screening – 2 years; Retail &
eCommerce – 5.8 years; Consultancy ERP – 12.6 years; Research Institution – 1 year | Private Sector Categories –
eCommerce, Banking, Telecommunications, Distribution, Oil & Energy, Retail, Manufacturing, Non-Profit Organizations |
Public Sector Categories – Local Governments, HR Health & Safety, Legal Service, Central Government Ministries (min. of
Health; Min of Intern; Min of Defence; AISM, Prime Minister Office), Government Institutions; National Grid; Public health
Institutions.
KEY SKILLS.
People: Team Building & Training; Engineering Leader; Servant Leader; Experienced Interviewer; Coaching and Mentoring;
Engagement; Stakeholder Management; Supplier Management; Workshop & Meeting Facilitation; Analytical thinking;
Mental Health Champion; Agile Mindset; Team Leader; Quality Assurance Lead; Site Reliability Manager; Incident
Commander; | Process: Adaptive Planning; Incident Management; Application Monitoring; Software Quality; Software
principles; SDLC; TDD/BDD/Pair Programming; Continuous Delivery; Operational Readiness; Statement of Work;
Negotiation; Offshoring; Knowledge Transfer; Reporting; Data Analysis; Risk & Issue Management; Programme Planning;
Change Management; Value Stream Mapping; Incident Management; Customer Support; | Delivery: Software
Management; Product Management; Project Management; Technical Lead; Service Design & Transition; Stabilisation;
Sprint Management; Delivery Management; Budget Management; Risk Management; Release Management; Private Equity
funded companies; Merging and Acquisitions;
EDUCATION & QUALIFICATIONS.
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Google Cloud Certified - Professional Cloud Architect, 2023
PMI-ACP: PMI Agile Certified Practitioner – Project Management Institute, 2022
Incident Responder Certification – PagerDuty, 2022
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Customer Service Operation Certification – PagerDuty, 2022
MHFA Champion – Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England, 2021
MSc in Computer Science – University of Bari, Italy, 2012
BSc in Computer Science – University of Bari, Italy, 2005
TECHNOLOGY. AWS/Azure/GCP; Azure Service Bus, AWS API Gateways; Lambda Functions; SNS; SQS; ECS; Kubernetes;
Azure Functions; Durable Functions; MS SQL; SaaS MS SQL; PostgreSQL; Dynamo DB; Cosmo DB; Mongo DB; Redis;
Typescript; React; Jest; Vue; Angular; Node.js; Docker; Java; C#, .NET core; ASP; Python; Elasticsearch; Terraform; Gitlab CI;
Git; Atlassian – Jira, Confluence; AlphaWEB ERP; GKE; Compute Engine; App Engine; Cloud Run; Cloud SQL; BigQuery;
Pub/Sub;
METHODOLOGIES & FRAMEWORKS. Agile; Continuous Improvement (CI); Continuous Delivery (CD); Adaptive Planning;
Lean; Waterfall; SCRUM; SAFE; KANBAN; Value Stream Mapping; TDD; BDD; SOLID Principles; Pair Programming; Secure
SDLC;
LANGUAGES. English (Highly Proficient), Italian (Highly Proficient), Albanian (Native).
CAREER HISTORY
Citation citation.co.uk | London
ENGINEERING MANAGER – SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
May 2023 – Jan 2025
Leading Software Engineering for three companies of Citation group, SMAS, uCheck and iHasco whilst leading Group
initiatives to improve SDLC and Technical Due Diligence of Acquisitions and Citation group. Responsible for delivering
technical direction for customer-centric platforms. Heading Engineering for Merges and Acquisitions on the Impact Division,
project delivery, roadmap creation and prioritization, leading platform transformation, technical design, change
management, security review, and product quality. Budget Management to £10M, Resource Management max 40
members in 5 teams.
• Delivery. Ensured high-quality product delivery through efficient use of resources, effectively managing budget and
risks to prevent potential delays. Defined and implemented reporting and Agile Ways of Working for an initial of five
Citation Group companies. Delivered on time with uCheck: Sage integration; Royal Mail Christmas campaign; Migration
of the Disclosure Services acquisition. Delivering on time with iHasco Unity integration enabling the group to do cross
and up selling as unified platform; Rebranding of iHasco platform. Delivering with SMAS: Rebuild of the entire platform.
• Engineering Transformation. Built and started executing a plan per each of the platform on how to drive
transformation to achieve lower costs, better performance, increased scaling elasticity and increased resilience.
Designed and implemented a new architecture for SMAS to reduce risks and improve resilience and maintainability.
Designed and started to implement transformation to north star architecture for iHasco and uCheck. As part of
continuous improvement, I introduced the implementation of Application Monitoring and alerting across the Group to
improve and promote proactive incident management. Introduced software quality gates, improved path to live and
better response time to incidents for all engineering teams.
• Stakeholder Engagement. Led stakeholder engagement establishing a shared vision of the projects through outlining
objectives, aligning expectations, and building trust. Active participation in project and company steercos to prioritize
product roadmap.
• Acquisitions: Led acquisition evaluation from engineering perspective including technical design, client migration and
risk management (Disclosure Scotland, Careskills). Led decision on the target application based on feature gap analysis
and engineering architectural review.
• Supplier Management. Managing suppliers for human resources and suppliers for Engineering tooling across the group
like: AWS, New Relic, Pager Duty, GitHub (Microsoft), SonarSource, Atlassian, Jumio, Yoti etc. ensuring we get the right
product and the right implementation while keeping the costs to the minimum and outcome at maximum.
• Building Teams. Built implemented a plan on how the teams need to be transformed to achieve the current roadmaps.
Built the first proposal of a team/platform evaluation framework based on different criteria and KPIs, like: Deployment
Frequency; lead time; time to resolution; change failure rate; cycle time; escape defects; cycle defects; commitment
achievement ration; platform resilience; disaster recovery; platform elasticity; proactive incident response; code
coverage; contract testing; end2end testing; performance testing; tech debt; pipeline hardened (SAST; DAST; artifact
scanning).
• Talent Management. Built an interviewing framework to ensure a consistent talent acquisition across the engineering
roles. Built a competency-based framework to improve the consistency of the engineering roles across the group to be
then also used as a guide for objectives and goal setting.
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Reporting. Delivered enhanced reporting to stakeholders and senior leadership for projects and programs, promoting
transparency and honesty. The reporting is based on Jira Automation and help resolving problems like
interdependencies and prioritization.
• Coaching & Mentoring. Building engineering teams and promoted talent through coaching and mentoring. Ran
coaching sessions for SAST, DAST, progressive planning, and on how to develop elastic, secure, highly available and
high-quality products through Behaviour Driven Development (BDD), Test Driven Development (TDD), Pair
Programming, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), DevOps culture, continues delivery and continuous integration.
Achievement: Designed and implemented a strategic engineering roadmap to transform platforms and the SDLC, boosting
efficiency, scalability, and reliability while reducing operational costs. Led the successful migration of DS into the uCheck
platform, transitioned SMAS to a modernized technology platform while transitioned iHasco into Unity platform to enable
cross sell and up sell. Lead engineering group initiatives like SAST, DAST, proactive monitoring and incident management.
Currys currys.co.uk | London
SENIOR AGILE DELIVERY MANAGER – SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
June 2018 – May 2023
Promoted to lead an average of three software development teams whilst providing support to other Software Delivery
Managers. Responsible for delivering the technical direction for customer-centric and high-volume software solutions. Lead
for agile project delivery, collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to define and deliver requirements, including
technical design, architectural patterns, change management, security, and product quality. Budget Management to £10M,
Resource Management max 40 members.
• Delivery. Ensured high-quality product delivery through efficient use of resources, effectively managing budget and
risks to prevent potential delays. Contributed to creating and implemented reporting and Agile Ways of Working across
Currys Group. Delivered on time key strategic products Connectivity Platform and Commission Engine for Future Mobile
Offer programme.
• Cloud Transformation: Led the migration of a legacy on-premises eCommerce platform to Azure Cloud, contributing
to the roadmap development and delivering the first two phases of the transition. Achieved elastic scaling and
introduced microservices to support adoption of new technologies. Spearheaded the transformation of Currys’
ecosystem to leverage Dockerized applications deployed on a Kubernetes cluster, reducing operational costs by 65%.
Additionally, implemented ephemeral test environments, replacing static ones, resulting in a 70% reduction in test
environment costs.
• 360 Review. Contributed to a 360 Review for Connectivity cloud transformation programme including product quality,
programme management, agile ways of working, release management, and inter-dependency management.
• Design & Build. Designed, led, and built key business roadmaps as part of transforming the legacy systems for
eCommerce solution and engineering roadmap as part of transforming engineering closer to Continuous Delivery.
Implemented a high quality and security controls in SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle), including License
Management, Container Scanning, Dependency Check, Static Application Security Scanning (SAST), Dynamic
Application Security Scanning (DAST), Non-Functional Testing, Monitoring and Alerting. Designed, led, and
implemented Agile change and release management.
• Stakeholder Engagement. Led stakeholder engagement establishing a shared vision of the projects through outlining
objectives, aligning expectations, and building trust. Managed the relationship with BJSS and SoftServe including
creation of Statement of Work, setting a quality bar by building an interview framework and leading interview process.
Created an engineering test for Infosys engineers to evaluate the skills and the knowledge of the engineers. Having a
dotted line management with all engineers from supplier companies providing continuous feedback and guidance on
how to build t-shape skillset in the development teams.
• Coaching & Mentoring. Built engineering teams and promoted talent through coaching and mentoring. Ran coaching
sessions for Agile Mindset and Methodologies (SCRUM, Kanban), progressive planning, and on how to develop elastic,
secure, highly available and high-quality products through Behaviour Driven Development (BDD), Test Driven
Development (TDD), Pair Programming, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), DevOps culture, continues delivery and continuous
integration.
• Talent Management. Built an interviewing framework to ensure a consistent talent acquisition across the engineering
roles.
• Reporting. Delivered enhanced reporting to stakeholders and senior leadership for projects and programs, promoting
transparency and honesty.
Achievement: Led the design and delivery of a cost-effective, serverless Connectivity Platform and Commission Engine in
Azure, ensuring high reliability while meeting budget and timeline targets. Spearheaded Currys’ cloud transformation by
introducing Kubernetes-based Dockerized applications, reducing operational and test environment costs by 65% and 70%,
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respectively. Enabled the transition to Salesforce Commerce through the development of an API abstraction layer, driving
scalability and future-proofing the platform.
TECHNICAL LEAD – SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
August 2017 – June 2018
Moved to the UK to build the e-commerce team and fill the position of Technical Lead and Team Leader. Primary
responsibilities included Technical Lead for an e-commerce solution build, internal stakeholder collaboration and
engagement, mentoring team members and ensuring continuous improvement for coding techniques and software quality.
Team Management 8 members.
• Coaching & Facilitation. Facilitated internal team coaching sessions to support the development of secure and highquality software through BDD, TDD, Pair Programming, IaC, and DevOps culture.
• Recruitment. Interviewed (Technical Architects, Tech Leads, Quality Assurance Engineers, and Software Engineers) for
new roles in the department.
Achievement: Achievement: Developed a highly customizable, mobile-first, multi-tenant e-commerce web application with
a headless CMS, enabling customers to find the best broadband, TV, and phone deals in one click. Empowered the business
to create, modify and publish new pages independently, reducing to zero reliance on the development team.
IMB imb.al | Tirana, Albania
HEAD OF ENGINEERING – SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
September 2012 – July 2017
Led the Engineering Department to deliver large customer-centric ERP solutions. Primary responsibilities included, leading
strategic planning and formulating long-term visions, transforming the organisation to agile ways of working, talent
acquisition and development, mentoring, coaching and technical authority to software development teams. Budget
Management £9M. Team Management 24 FTE.
• Client Delivery. Led build and implementation on >1,000 clients on private and public sector of a AlphaWEB ERP
solution offered as SaaS and on premises. A sample of clients included Vodafone, Antea Cement, Delta Group, Gulf Oil,
Kastrati Group, Reas, Ministry of Defence, KESH, World Bank, Albanian Territorial Reform, AZHBR and KQZ.
• Build & Configuration. AlphaWEB ERP, Alpha Mobile, Alpha POS, Alpha WebGIS, Winline Mesonic, AlphaWEB Utilities.
• Partnership & Collaboration. Delivered joint venture Albanian map projects with TOMTOM and NAVTECH (HERE
MAPS).
Achievement: Built the most successful ERP solution in Albania reaching 65% of the Albanian market, and successfully
transformed the ways of working from Waterfall to Agile Scrum and improving the DORA metrics resulting in increased
overall performance of the software development and business outcomes
SOFTWARE MANAGER – SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
September 2007 – September 2012
Lead Developer and Software Manager of Software Development Team (AlphaWEB). Primary responsibilities included
design and development based on ASP .NET C#, DevExpress, Node.js and MSSQL. Project lead of Winline project (Antea
Cement, Vodafone) and Project lead of AlphaWEB (Procredit Bank, Gulf Oil).
Achievement: Built of a SaaS multitenant Web based ERP solution, a hybrid mobile app for CRM and managerial dashboard
and a cross-platform POS.
SOFTWARE ENGINEER – SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
September 2005 – September 2007
ERP System implementation of Winline Mesonic and built custom reporting for local government in C# (Megatek).
Serlab https://serlab.di.uniba.it/ | Italy
SOFTWARE ENGINEER – SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
September 2004 – July 2005
Software Engineer for Vertical Experience Knowledge Base System for SAP implementations (Exprivia) and build of a
Workflow Management System (WFMS) in “Hygienic Clinic” at Bari Policlinic Hospital for patients’ medical tests
management.
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RECOMMENDATIONS
Irfan Ikram
Head of Software Engineering & DevOps at Clinigen Group
I had the pleasure of working closely with Kelvin for at Currys Group where he was as a Senior Engineering Leader. In
this time, Kelvin demonstrated exceptional leadership, technical expertise, and a strategic mindset that set him apart as a
highly effective and forward-thinking leader.
As a Senior Leader, Kelvin successfully led and scaled multiple engineering teams, delivering high-quality software
through agile methodologies with impressive consistency. His deep technical knowledge, combined with a strong grasp of
agile delivery practices, enabled him to drive projects to completion on time and within scope, while fostering a culture of
collaboration and continuous improvement. Kelvin was instrumental in leading our agile transformation, helping the
organization shift to a more iterative, collaborative, and results-driven approach. His ability to guide teams through this
transition, ensuring buy-in across all levels, played a crucial role in driving greater efficiency and responsiveness to
business needs.
What truly sets Kelvin apart is his proficiency in design thinking. He approaches problem-solving with a user-centric
mindset, ensuring that engineering solutions are not only technically sound but also aligned with the broader business
strategy and customer needs. This combination of technical development expertise and design thinking ensures that Kelvin
delivers high-impact solutions that drive business growth.
Moreover, Kelvin excels in strategic leadership. He is able to see the bigger picture, align engineering efforts with
company-wide objectives, and inspire teams to execute on those goals. Kelvin consistently demonstrates the ability to
balance innovation with practical execution, ensuring his team delivers high-value outcomes while maintaining a focus on
long-term strategic goals.
In addition to his technical and strategic acumen, Kelvin is an inspiring mentor who fosters a culture of continuous
growth and development within teams. He takes the time to understand the strengths and aspirations of each individual,
empowering them to take on new challenges and excel in their careers.
I have no doubt that Kelvin will excel in a Head of Engineering role as a next step. His combination of leadership,
technical depth, agile expertise, experience in agile transformation, design thinking, and business insight makes him an
ideal candidate for any organization looking to scale and innovate in the tech space.
I wholeheartedly recommend Kelvin for any leadership role in engineering and look forward to seeing the continued
impact he will undoubtedly have in the engineering space.
Frank Baddick
Head of Agile Delivery
Kelvin can seamlessly bridge technical and leadership roles within Software Engineering. Having built on and offshore
Teams from the ground-up - his foundational grounding in technology coupled with practical product, agile and financial
knowledge uniquely positions him to deliver high-quality solutions within the bounds of budget and time.
Matt Cottam
Product Manager
“I had the pleasure of working alongside Kelvin at Currys, where he was a senior agile delivery manager. Throughout our
time together, I was consistently impressed by his ability to bring clarity and focus to complex projects while fostering a
positive, high-performing team environment.
Kelvin has a deep understanding of agile methodologies, and he knows how to adapt these principles effectively to align
with business needs and team dynamics.
Kelvin has a great ability to bridge the gap between technical teams and business goals, ensuring development work aligns
perfectly with company objectives.”
Oliver McGibbon
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IT and Business Change Professional
“Kelvin has an excellent combination of technical expertise and delivery acumen. I've worked with Kelvin on very large,
complex and time sensitive deliveries and he has always led the team with professionalism and focus for the tasks at hand.
Kelvin has been a key contributor to adopting Agile principles within our organisation so can also confidently vouch for his
credentials in that space. In summary a pleasure to work with and would highly recommend going forward”
Gary McCready
Commercial Director - iD Mobile at Currys Plc
“I worked with Kelvin on a number of complex strategic change programmes. Throughout Kelvin showed himself as a
professional leader who never failed to deliver. By driving and supporting his team regardless of the challenges he faced.
Excellent technology and business partnering. I worked with Kelvin on a number of complex strategic change programmes.
Throughout Kelvin showed himself as a professional leader who never failed to deliver. By driving and supporting his team
regardless of the challenges he faced. Excellent technology and business partnering.”
OTHER INTERESTS
A keen advocate of having an active and healthy lifestyle to offset the at desk work life I participate in team sports of
Basketball and Football as well as getting great enjoyment out of more solo activities such as Cycling and Swimming
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