Dominic Townsend

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This is me

Summary

A highly experienced senior leader with expertise developed across a wide range of hi-tech industries. Passionate about continuous learning, with a career focused on guiding engineering leaders and teams through transformative journeys to build maturity and implement best practices. I describe myself as a Pragilist—a combination of PRagmatic, AGIle, and Lean(ist)—with specialisation in building, leading, and motivating technical teams. My expertise lies in the practical application of agile, lean, design thinking and fostering a continuous improvement mindset.

My Skills & Experience

Skills and Experience

LEADERSHIP
Engaging leadership approach with extensive experience leading teams of cross-functional professional engineers (10 – 65 direct/indirect reports). Excellent interpersonal communication skills with high emotional intelligence. Exceptional ability to identify, develop and motivate professionals, building up high performing teams from scratch.
STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Vast experience maturing departments and organisations through development of Career Development Frameworks, using OKRs, coaching Executive Leaders in strategic, tactical and operational thinking and managing outcomes to set teams up for success. Capable CIO/CTO/CPO.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Experience creating CI frameworks, mindset and tools. Using experimental change, retrospectives, lean principles, journey mapping, lean coffee, kaizen events, gemba walk, TIMWOODS, 5S’s. and many more… Using tools for problem type identification, fishbone, 5 whys, etc.
PROJECT & PROGRAMME MANAGEMENT
Exceptional organisational and planning skills, working within Stage-Gate, Waterfall, Lean | Agile | Kanban, and ISO accredited environments, including medical imaging and industrial control manufacturing. Understanding and experience of PMP | PRINCEII approaches.
AGILE COACHING | DEVELOPMENT
Significant experience of Agile Development: tools and processes, including successfully introducing and fixing Agile implementations. Excellent understanding of how to apply agile-lean in a variety of industries through a pragmatic approach which fully embraces people-process-product.
BUSINESS ANALYSIS | PRODUCT OWNERSHIP
Extensive experience analysing and documenting user stories to meet the business requirements for various functions and applications. Assisting with product planning, product backlog formulation and grooming, and customer journey mapping.
LEAN START-UP AND CHANGE
From Design Thinking through to Lean Change, experience of coaching teams from IT, software, firmware, hardware and integrated systems. Understanding People-Organisation-Culture. Experience leading agile transformations.
Extensive experience with departmental & company restructures.
SOFTWARE | FIRMWARE | HARDWARE SKILLS
Managed Teams building SaaS products encompassing Architecture, microservices, CI/CD, DevOps, Test Automation, AWS .NET, Android and iOS Application Development
Extensive computer programming experience primarily using C and assembly languages, PHP, HTML, CSS, MySQL, Powershell and Python scripting languages.

My Work Summary

Work Summary

 
Detail Position (reports)Company (area)Department/SubsidiaryHeld (yrs) [reason for change]
➽Associate Director - Software
(50+ direct/indirect )		Verizon Connect
Fleet Management SaaS		(Head of) Compliance Business Unit2023 – 2025(2 Yrs)[NZ Business Closed]
➽Software Practice Lead
(10 – 14 direct/indirect )		Voyager Internet Ltd
(Voice/Broadband/Internet)		Software & Test Practice2021 – 2023(2 Yrs)[Opportunity]
➽Delivery Lead | Agile – Lean Coach
Principal CSI Manager (2 direct)		Computer Concepts Ltd
(IT Services)		Leaven (Cloud Transformation)
Continual Service Improvement		2020 – 2021
2018 – 2020 		(3 yrs)
 		[Opportunity]
[Position redundant]
➽Director of Engineering
(20 – 26 direct/indirect)		ARANZ Medical Ltd
(Medical Imaging)		Engineering Department2017 – 2018 (1 yr)[Position redundant]
➽Controls Team Leader
(6 – 8 direct)		Cavotec
(Industrial Controls)		Cavotec MoorMaster™2014 – 2017 (3 yrs)[Opportunity]
➽Senior Manager – Radio Firmware
(13 – 20 direct/indirect)		Samsung
(Silicon/WiFi/BT/GPS)		Samsung Cambridge Solutions Centre2011 – 2014 (3 yrs)[Returning to NZ]
➽Principal Engineer
(3-8 direct)		WhisperTech Ltd
(Stirling Engine – environ)		Electronics & Software Department2009 – 2011 (2 yrs)[Earthquake]
➽Software Department Manager (65+ direct/indirect)
Software Team Manager | Engineer (12 direct)		Allied Telesis Labs
(Networking Equipment)		Software Department2006 – 2008
2001 – 2006 		(8 yrs)
 		[Time for growth]
 
➽Research & Development Engineer   –Lincoln Ventures Ltd
(Technology Consulting)		Lincoln Technology Group1996 – 2001 (5 yrs)[Time for growth]
 Consultant | Owner   –Mnemonics Ltd
(Technology Consulting)		Agile | Lean | PjM | BDMContinuous
inactive

My Passion

You can quote me on that

Case Studies

Career Insights & Highlights

  • All
  • Agile & Lean
  • Business Analysis and Product Ownership
  • Continuous Improvement
  • Leadership
  • Project & Programme Management
  • Strategic Management

My Hobbies and Interests

Spare Time Here

Woodworking & Cabinetry

I have built my own cabinet and woodworking workshop, including movable workbenches, and have used it to make bedroom furniture…
Electronics & Software

Built home automation projects for RFID Cat-flap, remote controlled Home Alarm, Remote Garage Door operation, Beer Fermenter controller, PID controlled…
Sports

playing soccer, table-tennis, golf, tramping, running, cycling, card tricks (is that a sport?), and taking my kids to their sporting…

Pursuits

Painting (pictures not walls)

I have always loved to paint and draw with a special passion for watercolours, but also pen, pencil and acrylics.…
Craft Beer Brewing

Fully automated brewing set-up using a 3 kettle approach. Built a temperature controller for the fermentation to precisely controlled fermentation…
Other Stuff too…

Psychology, designing websites and company logos, reading, playing the guitar, Taskmaster (for the kids), cooking, coffee roasting. And some fun…

See more detail and pictures

My Education

Qualifications

MEng

Master of Electronic Engineering University of Hull, 2000

DipEng

Postgraduate Diploma in Environmental and Ecological Electronic EngineeringUniversity of Hull, 1994

BEng (Hons)

Bachelor of Electronic EngineeringUniversity of Hull, 1994

Contact Me

Contact Details

dominic@pragilist.com

Cell: +64 21 365 077