Thunk Ltd.

Working with businesses and organisations across industries. Providing digital product design & research, leadership, strategy, mentoring, hiring design teams, increasing internal design capabilities and design sprint facilitation.
Clients include: Twitter, Reed, NHS, Fine + Rare, Sensat, Babylon Health, Premier Farnell, Forward Partners, Virti Health, FitXR and some other cool start-ups you've not heard of (yet).

Research Partner

NHS Digital

- Design / Research lead for the discovery of a digital prescription concept that was used within the NHS App and in third party apps. 
- Design lead for clinical and data products working in multidisciplinary teams.
- Facilitated numerous co-creation and design thinking workshops, design sprints and profession away days.
- Hosted the ‘Design for Voice’ workshop as part of Leeds Digital Festival 2019.

Senior Interaction Designer

Sky Betting & Gaming

- Implemented Lean UX methodologies as part of the discovery and product design process.
- Established fortnightly user research as standard.
- Persuaded the business to install a £30,000 user research lab.
- Led a team of experience designers.
- Facilitated regular design thinking workshops to generate opportunities spanning the whole sportsbook product.

User Experience Lead

DAZN Group

- Responsible for creating the design and research strategy within the consumer facing business.
- Built a UX team from the ground up.
- Led the team that worked on the responsive redesign of goal.com. Increased key metrics for the live match experience on Goal.com by 48%, whilst notably improving the user experience across multiple platforms.

UX Manager

Senior UX Designer

- Lead UX on an automated home R&D project. Ethnographic research using early adopters of home automation.
- Lead researcher for Home Broadband end-to-end setup experience both on and offline.

Senior Service Designer

Usability Specialist

Orange

- Lead UX researcher of the first batch of Orange apps for release one of the iPhone (in 2007)

- Practicing, evangelising and providing consultation on User Centred Design

- Planning and facilitating usability testing on prototypes for mobile Internet, mobile applications, and web.

- Interaction design, user experience design and information architecture for mobile and web platforms

Design of products and services across mobile and web platforms. Diverse skill-set spanning across all disciplines of UX Design, allowing for cross-functional performance. Core focus was on the design of Orange World mobile portal.

- UI and Interaction designer for Orange Music Player (Symbian App and Web UI).

Product, Interaction & Visual Designer

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

(Short-term contract)

Produced HTML/CSS and Flash content for the Rollercoaster (kids) section of the site. Projects included actionscripting for Cartoon games and creating a media player in Flash.

Web Developer

Timetracer Technologies

Responsible for the design of all on and offline media, including website, company logo and business cards. Acted as usability consultant for the company’s software development team, advising on UI and user experience issues.

Web Designer & Usability Consultant

Brand New Media

Worked individually and in small production teams to design for Web, CD-ROM, Print and Interactive TV media. Working with many large international clients, created and maintained several high profile content managed web sites. Also created company style guidelines and rich media advertising campaigns.

Designer

Designing effortlessly intuitive digital experiences that solve real problems is what drives me. I aim to right the digital wrongs. 

I love analysing the world around us and making sense of how people behave. I use research to inform strategy and design of digital products and services. I have been a multidisciplinary designer & researcher for over 20 years. I have led teams to act as human-centred design evangelists. I focus on collecting insight around user needs to filter to all areas of a business. By balancing business objectives and with the needs of the user, I help design better outcomes. 

My work spans diverse challenges and customers. I’ve built and led design / research teams at Sky Bet and Goal, and in my 23 years in this industry I’ve worked with Orange, NHS, EE, ABC and some pretty cool start-ups (that will soon burst on the scene).

I love making professional acquaintances. Reach out if you want to talk user experience, digital products, design, human behaviour or my personal passions – running and camping. 

► About Thunk –

Thunk transforms businesses with digital product design.

With an ex-Google designer as our founder, we're a bunch of vastly experienced designers and researchers whose focus is the design-led transformation of products and businesses. We deliver true value every day, and form meaningful partnerships with the businesses and organisations we work with. 

We do two things really well:

★ Design world class digital products and services.
Alongside your teams, we create, improve and reimagine the future, using our design-led processes to exceed desired outcomes.

★ Increase the design maturity of businesses and their teams.
With our decades of experience in improving design maturity within organisations, we take teams and companies to the next level.

We've worked with: 
Twitter | Reed | NHS | Farnell | Sensat | FINE+RARE | + Many More

Book a free consultation here https://calendly.com/thunkltd/intro-to-thunk


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Specialties: User Research | Digital Product Design | Creative Innovation | UX | User Experience | Design Strategy | Project Management | Growth | Mentor | Consultant

Paul Hill

APEXX Global

Chief Product and Technology Officer

Independent Consultant and Advisor

Helping startups and scale-ups maximise benefits from their technology investments.
♦ Coach and mentor Tech leaders, fostering skill development and strategic thinking.
♦ Enhance organisational frameworks, driving sustainable hyper-growth.
♦ Standardise teams and systems, ensuring stability post-rapid expansion.
♦ Collaborate with senior leaders to align tech strategy with business objectives.
♦ Facilitating the selection of technology, tools, and frameworks to ensure optimal performance and scalability of both technology and teams.

CTO | CTPO | SaaS | Technology Leadership | Digital Transformation | Hyper Growth | B2B, B2C, B2B2C

Global Savings Group

Global Savings Group (GSG) is Europe’s largest shopping rewards company with an international
footprint in more than 20 markets. Retailers have access to a diverse array of products, complemented by the support of a dedicated SaaS portal.

Established and led the global Technology function spanning multiple brands and business units, consisting of 170+ engineers across frontend, backend, mobile, data, DevOps, ERP and IT Ops disciplines distributed across multiple hubs worldwide. 
♦ Launched the delivery of a unified GSG Platform, utilising modern cloud native, event driven architecture and aiming to replace multiple legacy monolithic systems, reducing waste, and improving stability, scalability, performance and security.
♦ Led implementation of new B2B capabilities, reducing partner integration time by 80% and achieving significant cost efficiencies.
♦ Transformed software and infrastructure development practices to improve efficiency and quality.
♦ Established and renegotiated strategic partnerships with technology vendors, securing favourable contracts and leveraging platforms such as AWS, Kubernetes, Apollo GraphQL, and DataDog.
♦ Initiated, coordinated and delivered a companywide Tech efficiency programme resulting in >4.5m EUR cost savings p.a. 
♦ Defined and tracked key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the effectiveness of digital initiatives and guide data-driven decisions.
♦ Provided guidance and mentorship for team members' professional development.
♦ Designed and implemented a career progression framework for all Software Engineers and Engineering Managers, fostering professional development and growth.
♦ Aligned Tech initiatives with business objectives in collaboration with senior Product and Commercial leadership, driving organisational transformation.
♦ In collaboration with the BaaS vendor, led development of the Payment Card, successfully launching it in a private Beta phase.

Chief Technology Officer

reed.co.uk

Part of the Reed Group, Reed.co.uk is one of the biggest job marketplaces in the country supporting up to 10M unique monthly visitors. As a multi-sided platform, the offering comprises the Candidate Experience web and mobile apps, Recruiter Portal (SaaS), and a comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance the entire recruitment process.

Led the Product, Design, and Engineering function, consisting of both permanent employees and
offshore partners, distributed over multiple locations.
♦ Crafted and implemented a product focused strategy that aligned technology with business objectives to implement a performance based business model, increasing value and profitability compared to traditional subscription based model. 
♦ Leveraged Machine Learning (ML) and Artifi cial Intelligence (AI) to optimise candidate-to-job matching and accelerate the hiring process. 
♦ Established and renegotiated strategic partnerships with technology vendors, securing favourable contracts and leveraging platforms such as AWS, Kubernetes, Braze, and DataDog. ♦ Delivered brand new native mobile apps, driving user satisfaction and uplift in conversion. 
♦ Revamped the Product and Engineering organisation to foster a culture of ownership, accountability and innovation within the agile teams. 
♦ Streamlined offshore partnerships, leading to substantial cost savings, improved operational efficiency, and accelerated delivery timelines. 
♦ Raised the bar across Product and Tech, improving collaboration with other parts of the business and aligning seamlessly with overall strategic goals. 
♦ Revamped and enhanced interviewing practices, recruiting exceptional Heads of Product, Design, Data and Engineering, Data Scientists, and Software Development Managers, raising the bar across the business, and fostering diversity and inclusion.

Chief Technology and Product Officer

RS Components

RS Components is the world's leading high-service distributor for engineers with over 1,000,000 products in its range and operations in 32 countries.

Led technological and organisational transformation of Software and Cloud Engineering functions with 140+ engineers across Frontend, Backend, Cloud, Integration, Quality and SAP disciplines. Managed and organised development initiatives, overseeing multiple product lines including a Retail Website (B2C), a Procurement Portal (B2B / SaaS), and real-time integrations with third-party procurement software.
♦ Co-developed a product-driven Tech Strategy that prioritised customer centric innovations and continuously supported its implementation across engineering teams. 
♦ Deployed smart-monitoring tools, such as DataDog and AppDynamics, for proactive performance and service issue resolution. 
♦ Established and managed CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and deployment processes to ensure rapid and reliable releases. 
♦ Promoted a culture of quality through code reviews, test-driven development (TDD), and continuous integration practices.
♦ Designed and executed a comprehensive Quality and DevSecOps strategy, streamlining delivery, accelerating time to market and enhancing quality. 
♦ Designed and implemented a career progression framework for all Software Engineers, fostering professional development and growth. 
♦ Within a six months period, recruited and promoted three Heads of Engineering and eight Engineering Managers, establishing robust foundations for engineering leadership and delivering a positive message to existing talent. 
♦ Initiated and established nearshore operations enabling the company to on-board great tech talent and deliver higher quality outcomes while adopting new ways of working and introducing significant financial efficiencies.

VP Software Engineering

Zalando SE

Led a group of 100+ engineers, product specialists, and ops, developing Frontend and Backend frameworks, CMS, Customer Communication Platform, Brand Shops (SaaS) and several teams in the company’s next generation Core Platform.
♦ Championed product-led initiatives by leading cross-departmental efforts to redesign frameworks and tools, empowering over 100 teams to develop and deploy customer-facing applications independently and with agility.
♦ Initiated and delivered a global engineering effort unlocking business opportunities of generating €1B in annual sales and improving customer experience. The effort involved 40+ engineers and Product Specialists.
♦ Supported and significantly contributed to the company's successful delivery of Black Friday event enabling multiple price changes during the at the rate of more than 10,000 price updates / sec.
♦ Reshaped the Customer Communication Platform to generate annual revenues of €550+M through transactional and commercial communication.
♦ Implemented Agile methodologies to enhance teams’ efficiency and agility in response to business changes.
♦ Raised the bar in engineering hiring by constantly improving the quality of interviewing processes and decisions on the company level.
♦ Actively participated in scaling the global engineering org by interviewing Engineering Managers, Heads of Engineering and VP’s.

Head of Engineering, Digital Premises and Core Platform

Perion

Perion (NASDAQ: PERI) is a global performance-based media and Internet company, providing online publishers and app developers advanced data-driven solutions to monetize their applications or content.

Managed a budget of $4M and a team of 25 engineers across Frontend, Backend, Mobile, BI and Quality disciplines.  Led successful development from the ground up and delivery of the company's flagship SaaS product, enabling publishers to create, manage, optimise and analyse their in-app and push notification campaigns to engage, retain, monetize and re-engage their users.

♦In a course of 3 months assembled a successful engineering organisation built from multiple cross-functional teams and brought the system to Production with the first customer in 6 months. 
♦ Continuously introduced architectural and technological items into the strategic Product Roadmap, balancing between feature set and preparedness to the extremely big scale performance, stability and scalability challenges. 
♦ Introduced Scrum Methodology and Quality procedures, implementing QA Automation and driving the team to Continuous Integration and Deployment since day one.

Technology stack: Ruby, JRuby, Ruby on Rails, Cassandra, Redshift, ElasticSearch, Spark, EMR, Redis, Elastic Cache, Elixir, Cowboy, Ranch, MySQL, WSO2, Node.js, Angular.js, iOS, Android, Ranorex, BDD, Express.js, LESS, Bootstrap v3, Highcharts, Jasmine, Protractor, Karma, Gulp.js, bower

Director of Engineering, Growmobile by Perion

Led the development of a fully automated, generic, and robust Experimentation platform.
♦ Revolutionised the way business units run experiments moving from 1-2 tests per month per product to 70+ concurrent tests across more than 10 business units. Total of 1,000+ tests in 2 years. 
♦ Provided first working version in Production in less than 2 months with limited resources while applying Agile Methodology. 
♦ Led the architectural efforts connecting to a wide variety of systems, effectively analysing billions of records of extremely diverse data on a daily basis. 
♦ Provided great ROI by optimising headcount costs of BI, business analysts and statisticians in conducting and analysing the AB Tests.
Technology stack: Ruby on Rails, Java, Hadoop, Hive, Oozie, SQL Server 2012 (Columnstore), Sidekiq, R

Engineering Group Leader

DoubleVerify, Inc

DoubleVerify is a digital performance solutions company providing agencies, publishers, and ad networks with real-time audit and verification of online advertising transactions.

Led the development of a novel, very large-scale, and mission-critical Data Analytics system serving as a robust and scalable foundation for DoubleVerify's online advertising verification product lines.
♦Hired and managed a team of 12 Software Developers and BI experts, replacing the outsource with in-house personnel. 
♦ Reduced the report generation time by 70% (from 17 to 5 hours), improving customer experience. 
♦ Dramatically increased the AdOps and Support teams productivity by enabling access to raw data in near real time. 
♦ Applied Agile development methodology.
Technology stack – Python, SQL, Vertica, MongoDB, Cognos, Linux

Engineering Team Leader

Logic Industries

Led architecture and infrastructure development for the Unstructured Text Analysis Tool.
♦ Designed and implemented the product's architecture allowing quick integration and evaluation of 3rd party tools based on several platforms/technologies (C/C++, C#, Java).

Software Architect & Infrastructures Team Leader

Led a mission-critical project of data migration from the customer's legacy Intelligence System to the new one.
♦ Hired, trained, and managed a team of 5 Software Engineers, BI Analysts, and DBAs
♦ Brought complex Intelligence System to successful deployment with minimal downtime by creating a fully automated data migration process
♦ Successfully completed integration in an extremely short time while creating an excellent relationship with the customer and getting their full collaboration

Data Migration and BI Team Leader

Risotech

Provided company's clients with J2EE and architecture design and technology examinations

Senior J2EE Consultant and Architect

Experienced CTO / CTPO / VP Engineering with over 20 years in guiding high-performing engineering teams to deliver innovative, AI/ML-powered software solutions. Proven track record in launching SaaS products and driving digital transformation across B2C, B2B, and B2B2C.
Skilled in balancing quality with speed to market, optimising development processes, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Adept at building and leading global teams of 170+ members, enhancing collaboration, and driving innovation to meet business goals in rapidly changing environments.

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Paul Hill

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