CHRIS ALLMARK

Agilist / Architect / Engineer / Strategist / Technologist

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although I'm drawn to working with big brands, I want to work for a distruptive organisation with a compelling mission and a sense of purpose. It has to be a company with an amazing culture. That's not just free beer & colourful beanbags - it's a company filled with a diverse group of creative, passionate people with a shared vision working collaboratively towards a common goal.

I want to be building on a modern technology stack - and for me that's not C#, Java or PHP - I'm happiest working on building distributed, robust & scalable systems based on JavaScript technologies across the entire stack. It's important that company I work have adopted (or are looking to adopt) an agressive continuous deployment approach, are using a cloud-native platform (ideally Amazon Web Services) and have a dev/sec/ops mindset.

Post-pandemic my work/life balance is more important to me than ever. I can't imagine returning to a nine-to-five job where I need to commute three hours a day so I am only consider opportunities with companies that have recognised this paradigm shift and embraced hybrid/remote working.

Whilst I am considering a position as a chief technology officer I'm not looking for something that's 100% strategic so would prefer that role within an fast-paced tech scale-up. For roles as a head of engineering or an engineering manager, regardless of the organisation size, it's important that this has the scope to be heavily involved in the technical detail - the strategic direction, the architectural approach, and all aspects of software engineering.