Alan M Carroll
Managing Director

Alan founded Ultris in 2002 after 8 years working in senior sales and business development roles with IBM, Unisys and Informix and a further 3 years facilitating Foreign Military Finance information systems programmes into East and Central Europe. In addition to his work with Ultris, Alan is the Senior Independent Non Executive Director at Ideagen plc, a fast growing AIM listed software company operating in the governance, risk and compliance market. In this capacity, Alan was voted Best Non Executive Director for 2018 at the 2019 Money Week Mello Awards ceremony.

Prior to being recruited into IBM Alan spent 24 years in the Army where he served at fast track promotion level throughout his career, leaving in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He has a MSc in Design of Information Systems from Cranfield Institute of Technology and significant experience across the information systems spectrum.

Mike Payne
Technical Director

In his capacity as Technical Director at Ultris, Mike looks to identify, validate and build capability in the new, innovative, business benefit driven technology companies Ultris partner with. Mike also keeps himself up to date and qualified in the platform infrastructure applications such as Microsoft to ensure we have the necessary understanding of the technical context of the environment our end clients in government are using.

Mike regularly gains new professional qualifications in order to ensure he is meeting the most up to date standards and best practices in leading software development and implementation projects.

His technical expertise includes:

- Standard programming languages and frameworks such as C#, C++, .NET, Java, Spring / Spring Boot, Node.js, Visual Basic.NET, JavaScript, Python, PHP, ASP.NET

- Full stack web application development involving different server technologies, including all languages above

- User eXperience design and development using HTML, JavaScript, AngularJS, Angular 4+, React, ECMAScript 6+, Redux, Sagas, WebPack, Babel, jQuery and AJAX

- Database design, development and maintenance with MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, Oracle APEX, Ingres and others

- XML Database Development using XML, XQuery, XSL and MarkLogic Server

- Microsoft SharePoint design and development of entire sites, workflows, web parts and event handlers

- Computer and internet security

- Web design in Adobe Creative Cloud and other similar packages

Daniel Pearce
Senior Developer

With broad knowledge of multiple technical areas as well as a number of specialisms, Dan has extensive experience in various fields. This include proficiency in various programming languages, database technologies and web development tools, as well as experience of leading their implementation in small and large-scale business environments, and Welsh, UK and European government bodies. Dan is constantly updating his knowledge through training courses and honing his skills whilst implementing Ultris projects.

Dan's technical knowledge includes:

- Programming and scripting languages and frameworks including C#, Python, Java, Spring / Spring Boot and VB.NET, for client, client/server, service and web development

- Database and search development around Elasticsearch, Lucene, MongoDB, Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server and Access

- Web development including Node.js, React, Angular, Electron, JavaScript, jQuery, JSON, XML, AJAX, RESTful, PHP, ASP.NET, IIS, WCF, Python Flask, Spring Boot, Apache Tomcat and Amazon Web Services

- Web and interface design using HTML5, CSS, Material Design, D3.js, vis.js and Adobe Creative Cloud, amongst others

- Fluent in Welsh, English, German and Spanish, with a master's degree in translation for software localisation

- In-depth knowledge of Basis Technology Rosette text analytics tools and their implementation

- Knowledge of various other technologies and software including Apache Tika, Imperva Camouflage, NetMotion Mobility, virtualisation, forensic data analysis tools and audio editors

- Oracle and other Business Intelligence (BI) packages

- UK SC and DBS security cleared

- Business, data and architecture/infrastructure review, requirements analysis, design and management

- IT audit: information/data analysis, software, hardware – elicitation, articulation and implementation

- Agile development methods, software testing, writing documentation and providing training and technical support

- Microsoft Certified Professional in SharePoint deployment and configuration

Andy Gray
Senior Information Assurance Architect

Andrew’s career in the IT industry has spanned a number of different roles over the last 20 years. Starting with software engineering and then moving into systems and business analysis through system and enterprise architecture. This has led through to a logical progression to Andrew’s current role as a senior information assurance architect.

Andrew has worked for a number of public and private sector organisations, applying his experience in information assurance underpinned by information risk management. This has ensured that the designs and security architectures that Andrew has been responsible for building meet the client organisations’ information assurance requirements. Clients he has been involved with range from smaller boutique specialist security focussed clients, though to major defence contractors and government clients. Andrew is particularly experienced in complex information domains where varying levels of access to multiple classified sources of information apply.

Chris Hilton
Senior Information Architect

Chris has over 15 years' experience in information architecture development and support of complex systems design for major public sector clients. In recent times, his focus has shifted to also take in the formulation of information management strategy and change management for large government departments. He is also an able ontologist - having undertaken extensive business object modelling using 4d and RDF based approaches to describe highly interlinked data.

Chris's most recent experience in the public sector has enabled him to look at information management from a truly strategic and holistic perspective. He recently co-wrote an information management strategy for a major UK government department with a highly complex information portfolio, relying on an assessment that took in emerging and established technologies, their relationship to the wider business aims of the organisation aligned with a deep understanding of the department's information life-cycle. He has also undertaken extensive modelling of the department’s business domain using ontologies, helping it to become data-driven and lessen the dependency on legacy implementations.

Not afraid to get his hands dirty, Chris is always looking to develop his understanding and skills, whether identifying new and useful ways of applying and extending information architecture-based modelling approaches (describing information types; building ontologies); using soft systems thinking to structure complex problems; or looking to see how an organisation's information management policies and governance regime can be improved.