Engineering Director · Deloitte Australia
Nick Airey
An experienced engineering director and solution architect specialising in large-scale software platform design and implementation, application transformation using cloud technologies, infrastructure architecture, data centre migrations, and AI.
Over 25 years in technology — as developer, development manager, solution architect, and director — across Financial Services, Retail, Media, Government, and Telco.
Experience
Present
Director of Deloitte Engineering. Responsible for engineering leadership, large-scale project design and delivery, specialising in application modernisation, cloud infrastructure and AI to turbocharge delivery and outcomes. Deloitte Engineering has 50k+ engineering professionals across 35 countries.
Key Engagements
Q2–Q4
- Led blended (Deloitte/client) team on building AI capability into key development streams
- AI-driven app modernisation of core Java apps using Amazon Q Dev Transform, AWS Bedrock, AWS AgentCore
Q1
- Participated in multi-disciplinary group to evaluate infrastructure, cloud and networking design for regulatory compliance in a key market
- Led blended (Deloitte/client) team on infrastructure modernisation and application microservice decomposition
- Software and infrastructure development, identity management best practice, loosely coupled systems
- Led blended team on domain-driven decomposition and rebuild of monolithic software architecture of core systems
- Designed multi-region AWS cloud infrastructure and networking to enable infrastructure-enforced data regionalisation and regional administration
- Designed associated operational model and DevOps strategy
- Led team to migrate critical systems acquired as part of a business purchase into the bank
- Led system modernisation to redesign and adapt systems for AWS cloud hosting, including migration to native cloud services and internal system integration
- Led team to design and deliver critical public-facing REST APIs for public interaction with government
- Part of the larger myGov initiative
- Delivered a cloud migration to AWS including a full data centre exit, without business disruption
- Migration scope of 130+ applications, 350+ workloads, and petabyte-scale data — delivered ahead of schedule and under budget
Zurich Financial Services, Life & Investments
Technical Lead — Business TransitionTechnical lead on the project to transition the divested Macquarie Life business from Macquarie Group to Zurich Life. Responsible for all technical aspects of project design, solution architecture, quality and timely delivery.
- Successfully migrated the technology, infrastructure and business of the divested Macquarie Life business to Zurich Life across originations, policy management and claims
- Delivered new Macquarie WRAP platform APIs to support new product ownership and trustee structures; delivered integrated AWS cloud archival and retrieval
- Delivered data models, build extract-view model, FK consistency checks, bulk extracts, control file hashes, linecounts, integrated encryption
- Project delivery in 14 months — an APAC record for divestment and integration of a business of this scale
- Line management of team of developers, BAs and testers
Macquarie Bank (BFS) Retail Technology
Technical Lead — Insurance Originations & Claims InfrastructureTechnical team lead responsible for solution architecture, development and operational support of the insurance technology platform supporting new business, national adviser network, claims and underwriting teams.
- Industry awards: 5 Star Adviser satisfaction from Beaton Benchmarks; Innovation Excellence from Canstar
- Delivered scalable, highly available infrastructure within a regulated industry, compliant for managing PII data
- Delivered the full technology stack: vendor application, in-house platform APIs, third-party service integrations, web interface, thick desktop client, mobile app
- Delivered in-house API integrations (REST, MA-TLS) across document management, business workflow (Pega), policy management (Composer) and payment gateway
- Key technologies: service-oriented architecture, network load balancers, TLS, Microsoft SQL Server (TDE and AAG), Java, Linux scripting, encryption in transit and at rest
- Line management: tech lead, architect, BA, 4 devs, 2 testers, automation specialist, operations
- Macquarie Innovation Day Finalist (2016): designed ML system using client transaction history to suggest relevant products with opt-in specialist callback
Macquarie Bank (BFS) Retail Technology
Technical Lead — Wealth Portfolio ManagementTechnical team lead responsible for solution architecture and delivery of new core APIs into Macquarie's 'Wrap' retail portfolio management platform in the areas of partner integration and payment gateways.
- Delivered project on time against hard contractual deadlines, multiple stakeholders, late requirement changes and a complex platform
- Key technologies: service-oriented architecture, REST API design, load balancers, JBoss, Spring Batch, Oracle, Java
- Line management: tech lead, architect, BA, 3 devs, 2 testers, operations
Macquarie Bank Securities Group (MSG)
Senior Developer / Team Lead — Derivatives Pricing & TradingResponsible for delivering enhancements to a real-time risk calculation platform running on private cloud, to support equities and derivatives traders.
- Enhanced resilience: delivered 30% increase in average cloud uptime via automated process-failure detection and self-healing system
- Enhanced throughput: delivered load-independent throughput guarantees for distributed calculations via a fair queuing system for calculation job distribution
- Key technologies: UNIX shell scripting, Solaris OS primitives, Java services invoking C++, queueing algorithms, pure mathematics
Consultancy Roles — Logistics & Government (Australia)
Freelance consultancy and development in ecommerce, retail, infrastructure and government, primarily in web service integrations between corporates and government agencies.
- Lead software developer for NSW Police on Crimtrac integration project (NSW Police to Federal Police criminal records synchronisation) — high-availability Java proxy between inhouse mainframe and Federal Government SOAP API endpoint
- Development team leader on warehouse logistics system for Metcash/IGA
- Key technologies: enterprise Java (WebLogic/J2EE), SOAP, encryption
Roles in E-Commerce & Networking (UK)
Various software development roles in ecommerce and network management.
- e-Commerce developer at Citria (UK) on a CRM system for Barclays Bank
- Network driver developer at Orchestream (UK) — device drivers to control Cisco and Juniper routers
- Key technologies: enterprise Java (WebLogic/J2EE), SOAP, encryption
Alcatel (Australia & Europe)
Software Engineer — Network Infrastructure DevelopmentAlcatel was a major multinational manufacturer of networking infrastructure, responsible for 50% of Telstra's national network. Now part of Nokia Networks.
- Developed strategic software for System 12 telephone exchanges — at that time, half the PSTN telephone exchanges in Australia contained this code
- Worked in Alcatel development centres in Australia (Sydney), Belgium (Antwerp) and Germany (Stuttgart)
- Participated in national rollouts of software upgrades to network infrastructure
- Key technologies: IP networking, scripting, build systems, C++
Education
B.E. Electrical Engineering (Honors II.I)
University of Sydney — Major project in biomedical devices and embedded neural networks
B.Sc. Bachelor of Science
University of Sydney — Double major in Computer Science and Pure Mathematics
NSW High School Certificate (HSC)
Sydney Grammar School — Top 1% of students in NSW
Certifications & Associations
AWS — Amazon Web Services
Solution Architect Professional · Security Specialty · ML Specialty
M. IE Aust. — Engineers Australia
Member of Engineers Australia, the peak body for the engineering profession in Australia
Pro-Bono & Community
Narwee Baptist Church, Sydney
One of the largest Baptist Churches in Australia (1200 attendees, 200 volunteers, 9 staff). Diaconate (board) member; infrastructure and software design and development; IT policy development.
Oatley Public School, Sydney
State primary school in Sydney's southern suburbs. IT consulting and student interest group in technology. Former president and long-term member of the school Advisory Group.