Stuart Maxwell
Senior Solution Architect at Waka Kotahi.
About
IT Architect with over 10 years’ experience in architecture roles, and a further 13 years’ experience designing, implementing, and managing technology solutions for organisations across a variety of industries. Currently in a Senior Solution Architect role but also have experience in Infrastructure and Enterprise Architecture roles and functions. Excellent interpersonal skills, with the ability to listen to and understand requirements, and then formulate those into a logical and clear-to-understand solution. Ability to relate in plain English to clients on all levels from end-users to senior management.
Work Experience
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency
Wellington, New Zealand
October 2021 – Present
Programme Architect / Senior Solution Architect
Started at Waka Kotahi as a programme architect across the Core Regulatory Systems programme of work. This role was predominantly tasked with developing high level solution architecture and overseeing the development and delivery for several regulatory systems including business applications on Power BI, an Identity and Access Management solution, and then focusing primarily on applications being developed on Pega Cloud.
Pega Cloud was procured as the primary application platform for systems in the Regulatory domain. As part of the initial platform deployment, I developed the initial patterns and standards that would form the foundations of the solution. Over the course of the next 18 months, I was the lead solution architect across several applications that were deployed to the platform including Clean Car Standard, Heavy Vehicle Permits, and several smaller applications to meet requirements for specific business teams and functions.
Clear Car Standard is a government initiative to incentivise importers by providing credits for zero and low emissions vehicles that can be used to offset fees when importing higher emissions vehicles. It is a complex system that allows vehicle importers to manage their accounts, with many integrations to financial systems, the vehicle register, and supporting systems.
The Heavy Vehicle Permits system aims to consolidate all six permit types into a single system. It also has many integrations to registers, financial systems, and other related systems. It includes a mixture of modern, REST-based API integrations as well as legacy file-based integrations.
The smaller applications have been built using out-of-the-box Pega modules to handle specific case types such as investigations, complaints, and actions. Shared components are built in framework layers with enterprise-wide components (e.g. UI templates) built in enterprise layers.
Ministry of Social Development (MSD)
Wellington, New Zealand
November 2019 – October 2021
Infrastructure Architect
As a key member of the infrastructure architect team, there was an emphasis on the development and implementation of technological solutions throughout the ministry's extensive portfolio. This encompassed both consultancy and technical leadership roles, offering strategic guidance to product managers across the ministry.
Key initiatives included leading the "Connected Workspaces" value stream, specifically migrating to Exchange Online and enhancing external collaboration through MS Teams and SharePoint Online. Furthermore, pivotal contributions were made in unified communications, modernising work methodologies, and pioneering hybrid cloud-based identities. The "Identity Modernisation" programme was of particular note, where efforts were directed at modernising on-premises identity solutions and spearheading hybrid, cloud-based identities using tools like Ping Federate and Azure AD.
Other significant engagements involved providing input on the enterprise strategy for identity management, overseeing upgrades in the Objective ECM project, and actively participating in architecture governance boards. Notably, during the Covid-19 lockdown, support was provided for crucial client-facing systems, ensuring timely subsidies for New Zealanders.
Transpower
Wellington, New Zealand
January 2015 – November 2019
Enterprise Solution Architect & Infrastructure Architect
As a member of the Strategy & Architecture team, consisting of domain and enterprise architects, there was a collective focus on crafting portfolio plans, crucial for regulatory submissions to the Commerce Commission. Portfolio planning was complemented by the creation of architecture artefacts, ranging from strategies and roadmaps to standards and reference architectures specific to the infrastructure domain.
Initially onboarded as an Enterprise Solution Architect, a transition was made to the role of Infrastructure Architect following a restructure. This role entailed overseeing the Shared Services Portfolio with a $30m+ budget spanning 5 years. Central to this role was the development of a capability model, aiding in the creation of long-term roadmaps that aligned with the business's requirements and formed the bedrock of submissions to the Commerce Commission.
Throughout the tenure, pivotal projects were undertaken, such as the initiation of infrastructure for Microsoft's cloud services, enhancement of business integration through an API layer, selection and implementation of a new on-premises infrastructure platform to run the critical, real-time systems, and fortification of Transpower's security stance. Additionally, as Chair of the Design Authority, guidance was provided for the design and execution of solutions, and representation was offered for the New Ways of Working initiative, marking the 2017 office relocation.
Ministry of Business Innovation & Employment (MBIE)
Wellington, New Zealand
July 2013 – September 2014
Infrastructure Architect
MBIE was formed through the merger of four government departments: Depart of Labour, Department of Building and Housing, Ministry of Science + Innovation, and the Ministry of Economic Development (MED). The MED network was selected to be the foundation network with the other three departments being merged into this environment. I was tasked with leading the stream of work to migrate the Labour systems into MBIE. This involved developing migration strategies and infrastructure designs to support the migration while keeping the foundation network secure and stable.
The systems that were being migrated were in active use by up to 3,000 staff who were having their desktops migrated to MBIE in small, regional tranches. This meant developing strategies that enabled these systems to be accessible from either network while heeding to the strict security requirements of the foundation network.
This was a challenging role, working to tight deadlines that required solution design and project management skills to ensure the many streams of work were all being attended to simultaneously.
Choice Mobile
Wellington, New Zealand
December 2010 – March 2014
Owner and Co-Founder
Choice Mobile was an Authorised 2degrees Dealer specialising in business-to-business sales and services on behalf of 2degrees. Founded in 2010, we built up a great team of sales and support staff to launch with 2degrees’ business plans in 2011.
We expanded to five offices throughout New Zealand as the 2degrees 3G network expanded to incorporate new areas. At our peak we had 20 staff signing up hundreds of new connections each month. In March 2014, we wound up the business by selling our dealer rights to an interested party.
Choice Technology
Wellington, New Zealand
December 2004 – March 2014
Owner and Co-founder
Choice Technology is the trading name of an IT Services company that I co-founded in 2004. We provided innovative technology solutions and support to companies throughout New Zealand. Customers ranged from small, single-office businesses, to nation-wide organisations in a multitude of industries such as fuel & transport, building, hospitality, legal, tourism, and non-profits.
My responsibilities include managing the Wellington office, technical architecture, account and project management, and providing support to our Auckland team. In March 2014 I exited the business to go back to independent contracting and consultancy.
Ministry of Economic Development (Contract through Fujitsu)
Wellington, New Zealand
April 2012 – July 2012
Senior Technical Consultant
MED were on a tight schedule to migrate their existing server infrastructure into the government’s Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS) environment. The existing servers were a mixture of physical servers as well as virtual servers in a VMware vSphere environment.
My role was to lead the team migrating the servers into IaaS as well as assist with the move of individual services such as the Exchange messaging solution. We used a combination of VMware converter and Platespin to migrate the servers along with various other related technologies as required.
Disputes Resolution Services (Contract through Datacom)
Wellington, New Zealand
October 2011 – January 2012
Senior Technical Consultant
DRSL were in the process of separating from their parent organisation, ACC, into a completely new, stand-alone, environment. My responsibilities for this project was to design and implement the Active Directory migration as well as migrating and consolidating several file servers. The new environment consisted of both Cloud and traditional servers and services.
The project team was given a tight deadline and managed to pull out all the stops to ensure the migration was completed before the go-live date.
NZ Parliament (Contract through Datacom)
Wellington, New Zealand
July 2011 – October 2011
Senior Technical Consultant
I was part of a small team tasked with migrating the Ministerial offices from the Executive Government Services domain to the Parliamentary Services domain. My responsibilities were designing and implementing the Active Directory migration, the migration of file services, as well as migrating the Exchange environment from 2007 to 2010.
This was a sensitive and important project as we needed to ensure that the Ministers were not impacted by the migration process. Migrations were performed at night over the course of a month and the project ran smoothly without interruption.
Department of Internal Affairs (Contract through Datacom)
Wellington, New Zealand
July 2008 – May 2011
Senior Technical Consultant
I was involved in various projects during my time at DIA as part of two large programs of work. Initially as part of a team migrating the department from Lotus Notes to Exchange 2007, and then moving on to various Active Directory related projects in a technical lead capacity.
The Exchange 2007 project involved working with the Microsoft Transporter Suite to migrate several thousand Lotus Notes users. We created PowerShell scripts to automate the migration of the process and used other scripting techniques to analyse the logs that were produced. As the migration continued we were required to monitor the service desk fault queues and trouble-shoot any Exchange/Outlook related issues.
The Active Directory projects were primarily focused on migrating several forests, into a single, consolidated AD forest/domain. This required designing the destination domain including all core technologies – DNS, DHCP, security policies, logon scripts, and replication topology – and developing the migration process.
Ministry of Education (Contract through Datacom)
Wellington, New Zealand
December 2007 – April 2008
Technical Lead
As technical lead on this project, I was responsible for the design and implementation of the Active Directory infrastructure upgrade at the Ministry of Education. This required raising the functional levels of the domains and forests from Windows 2000 mixed level, to Windows Server 2003 level, as well as reducing the number of domain controllers in use. The project also required complex scripting skills to automate the migration of DNS and DHCP servers.
Datacom Systems Ltd
Wellington, New Zealand
August 2007 – December 2007
Senior Technical Consultant
I contracted to Datacom as a Citrix specialist to implement several projects that Datacom had won through their Citrix Platinum Partner status. These included implementation of a new Citrix Presentation Server environment, as well as the implementation and maintenance of several Citrix Access Gateways.
I was also responsible for the implementation of a VMware project which required several ESX servers to be designed, built and configured. These servers were paving the way for a server consolidation project that was being implemented in a large, government department.
Ministry of Justice (Contract through Gen-i)
Wellington, New Zealand
July 2007 – August 2007
Senior Technical Consultant
This short-term contract at Gen-i was based in the operations team dealing with one of Gen-i’s largest government department customers. This was a senior role to assist with several, small projects that were lined up. Skills required for this role included Exchange Server trouble shooting, Active Directory management and the creation and deployment of scripted solutions.
BNZ
Wellington, New Zealand
March 2007 – March 2007
Senior Technical Consultant
I was brought in to BNZ as a Senior Technical Consultant on a three month contract towards the end of a major nationwide rollout and infrastructure upgrade. The BNZ were upgrading all of their desktops across 180 branch offices to Windows XP and were also migrating from Windows NT file servers to Windows Storage Servers.
My responsibilities included application packaging, scripting to aid the deployment process, management of rollout technicians, and overseeing several of the junior consultants. I created and deployed several complex VBS scripts to help manage the migration of file data and user account information.
Datacom Systems Ltd
Wellington, New Zealand
August 2005 – February 2007
Senior Technical Consultant, Team Leader
My initial role at Datacom was as a Technical Consultant in the Net Solutions team where my focus was the design and implementation of Citrix and Microsoft projects. I was then promoted to the position of Senior Technical Consultant and also Team Leader of the Microsoft Infrastructure team. In this position I focused more on the pre-sales and design phases of our projects. This involved consulting with customers and creating statement of works, proposals, and both high-level and detailed architecture designs.
We dealt with customers ranging in size from small and medium sized enterprises, up to large corporations and government departments. I was involved in all aspects of the project phases, from the initial high-level architecture design, through to the detailed design documents which include hardware, software and network provisioning.
I was involved with several high-profile projects in some of NZ’s largest government departments. These projects included Exchange migrations, Citrix implementations, desktop rollouts, and Active Directory migrations and consolidations.
Desktop Technology Services Ltd
Wellington, New Zealand
March 2003 – August 2005
Technical Specialist; Technical Team Leader
As Technical Team Leader, I was responsible for a team of 18 engineers and in this roles I was responsible for all aspects of the team including resourcing, mentoring, training, and performance reviews. I also still provided technical services for some of DTSL's most important customers. In this senior role, I provided consultancy services as well as designing the architecture for customer’s environments.
Ministry of Education of New Zealand
Wellington, New Zealand
January 2003 – February 2003
Rollout Technician
This was a contract providing second-level support to end-users, rolling out new & recycled computers, and other installations. I worked with a small team of technicians providing desktop support relating to software and hardware issues.
Wrightson (Contract through HP)
Wellington, New Zealand
November 2002 – December 2002
Desktop Support Engineer
I was employed as a contractor for HP, working at Wrightson's Porirua office. My responsibilities were based around the installation, configuration and testing of Cisco VOIP phones. This included patching phones and computers into switches, testing connections for reliability, and often re-patching entire patch panels.
E. Aldridge & Son Ltd
September 1999 – September 2002
Computer Systems Manager
I was solely responsible for all levels of support for 150 users that included desktop users and mainframe users in two branches, as well as remote laptop users. There was a mixture of Windows 2000, NT, 98 and XP, on the desktop, as well as mainframe terminals running on a UNIX platform. I provided both desktop support and telephone support with the aid of remote control tools.
Quality Engineer
I was selected for and then completed the Toyota Management trainee process which is a well-respected training path towards management. This gave me the opportunity to experience all aspects of the manufacturing process from panel pressing to final inspection of the completed vehicles. During my time at Toyota I was involved with various high-profile projects including the launches of the new Corolla and Hilux launch.
Education
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1997 1998
Durban Institute of Technology
Diploma (incomplete)
Business Management
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1988 1992
Kingsway High School
Skills
Infrastructure Architecture
Solution Options Assessment
Collaboration Solutions
Identity Architecture
Managed Services
Windows Server
Linux Server
Solution Selling
Citrix
Leadership
Team Leadership
Coffee
Integration
Strategic Roadmaps
Enterprise Architecture
Standards and Guidelines
Active Directory
VMware
Reference Architectures
Infrastructure
Governance
Bacon
Technical Architecture
Telecommunications
Data Center
HP
Microsoft Technologies
IT Strategy
Cloud Computing
IT Strategies
Solution Architecture
Capability Mapping
Microsoft Products
Management
Architecture
Strategy
Business Analysis
Enterprise Software
Networking
Disaster Recovery
Web Development
IT Service Management
IT Management
Storage
Security
Pre-sales
SaaS
Virtualization
Interests
Mountain biking
References
Stuart has done two contracting assignments inside HP and Gen-i and the feedback we received was fantastic. Stuart brings a great customer service ethic along with fantastic IT infrastructure knowledge
Stuart carried out a 4 Month contract Citrix specialist consultant role through Hudson IT recruitment for my client at Gen-i in Wellington NZ. He is an excellent contractor with a strong range of experience in both the Microsoft and Citrix environments with a proven track record of delivering a consistently high level of work. Stuart comes highly recommended.
Stuart is very methodical and very technically capable. He has a very professional manner.
Stuart is communicative and personable who is easy to talk to. He is professionally presented and also has a strong customer-service ethic. Stuart has a strong technical support background, particularly in senior Microsoft support and team lead roles.
I met Stuart as a fellow blogger and conference attendee and started working with him on various projects. I was impressed with Stuarts client focus, analytical thinking and flexible way of working. His knowledge of IT infrastructure is highly impressive!
Stuart has lead several successful infrastructure projects for us that have delivered great outcomes for our clients.