Daniel van Heerden
Newcastle,NSW
Summary
As CTO at BISCIT Pty Ltd, I've led the strategic scaling of our technical team from 3 to 33 across 5 teams, supporting 4 product offerings, a bespoke solutions team, and a support team. I successfully drove the adoption of agile development methodologies, resulting in the growth of our flagship product from its initial product release to over 10,000 licenses across 600+ companies in 40+ countries.
I am particularly proud that through the development practices and QA processes I implemented, we significantly reduced critical production defects while achieving a fortnightly release cycle for our app. These improvements directly enhanced product reliability and customer satisfaction.
Recognising the importance of security, I established a security-minded development culture, introduced a least privilege security policy, and made significant strides towards implementing the OWASP SAMM Maturity model within the organisation.
With over 20 years in the technology space, including 10 years leading software development teams across diverse industries and global markets, I bring a broad, pragmatic, and strategic approach to technology and product development.
I am committed to staying at the forefront of technology trends through continuous learning, active networking, and engagement with the broader technology community. This allows me to bring innovative solutions and best practices to strengthen our teams and align technical direction with business objectives, working closely with the executive team.
Overview
22
22
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
CTO
BISCIT Pty Ltd
11.2019 - Current
- Company Overview: BISCIT is an ISV and implementation partner for Epicor, a large ERP solution provider located in the US but with branches all around the world, including Australia. BISCIT is primarily known for its Mobile Warehousing app, which has become the standard app for Epicor customers who have any kind of warehousing, manufacturing, or proof of delivery requirements as part of their business.
- Grew the team from 3 to 33 members over 6 teams and various product offerings and bespoke solution development.
- Enabled the growth of our flagship product to over 10,000 devices across 600+ companies in 40+ countries, significantly expanding our market reach and revenue streams. This growth was made possible by a combination of team expansion, streamlined processes, and strategic planning.
- Building, Training and Managing my development management team
- Implemented technical strategy and quarterly roadmaps to enable alignment with a greater company strategy.
- Worked towards an OWASP security model for the company, significantly improving our security posture.
- Structured and developed a team strategy with 3 development managers running 5 technical teams.
- Oversaw roadmap and strategic adoption across the Product and Bespoke solution teams.
- Setting and driving different models for working in the various teams based on their maturity.
- Mentored and built development practices, agile methodologies.
- Enabled visibility of the work and pipeline and helped with planning and realistic Sprint goals
- Introduced Quality assurance processes, including automation and DevOps, but also manual testing where needed.
- Enabled alignment between the software development and consulting departments through alignment meetings and processes to enable us to communicate requirements effectively.
- Significantly grew my professional network in the Newcastle area.
- November 2019 — Current — Development manager, promoted CTO of Biscit in July 2023
Developer Lead (Promoted)
RAC insurance Business Systems team
11.2017 - 11.2019
- Company Overview: RAC Insurance is one of Western Australia’s largest insurers of motor and home insurance, but also various other minor insurance projects. The business systems team deals with all aspects of IT, including development of solutions, operations and production support.
- I managed a team of 7 Developers (50%)
- Key Achievement: After taking over the Developer Lead role, the NPS score of the developers improved by 19 points.
- I enabled career development, training and performance management for many of my team to architecture and Senior positions.
- Hiring of the technical team built high-performing teams who were key in rewriting and uplifting the RAC insurance member portal technical stack.
- Managing back-fill developers from consulting companies to cover short-term capacity issues.
- Run Developer forums to help create shared standards across the delivery teams in Business Systems
- Senior Developer (50%) I was responsible for:
- Maintaining and expanding the main B2C website solution of RAC insurance, including changes required for regulatory changes.
- Building integrations using Azure functions to do batch quote generation for marketing campaigns.
- Production maintenance of the previous products delivered by my delivery team.
- Mid 2018 to Current - Developer Lead (Promoted)
Technical Lead for New Data Analytics Data Lake (Initial Post at RAC Insurance)
RAC Insurance
11.2017 - 05.2018
- We managed to build a Data lake as a basis for RAC Insurance’s data analytics using AWS S3, Databricks(Spark) and Scala. We did this on time and on budget, exceeding all expectations and producing a platform that was immediately useful to the business
- As Technical Lead, I had to collaborate with various other technical teams to help enable the secure transfer of the data between the lake and our databases.
- Facilitate and drive technical practices in the team and make sure we adhere to them.
- Final say on technical task allocation in the team. Though usually this was a team activity.
Head of IT, Scrum Master, Technical Lead, Developer
studentedge.com.au
02.2013 - 10.2017
- Company Overview: Student Edge is a student membership that provides discounts and assistance to students to enable them to make great life choices. I worked in the Development Team responsible for building and maintaining the Student Edge websites.
- Management of Technical Team. Providing growth opportunities for the technical team and providing mentorship for technical challenges, as well as hiring of skilled people for the team
- Working with the leadership team to come up with strategies for new products and services for the company
- Help to build product release strategies for a new product, and create guidance documents explaining it to management and my team
- Senior Developer responsibilities include building, upgrading, ongoing maintenance and quality assurance of the Student Edge Member website and other Student Edge apps and services.
- Our technology stack consisted of C#, MVC4 Razor, AngularJs, Web API, jQuery, Azure, Autofac, and Fluent NHibernate
WildNet
07.2012 - 12.2013
- I contracted for 6 months while finalising my VISA to Australia at companies like Eviivo, building online booking systems and insurance companies to build premium calculators.
Vodafone
07.2008 - 11.2011
- Company Overview: Vodafone UK is one of the largest telcos in the UK. I was working in the Field Service Management Business Services Department, helping Vodafone’s business customers enable their fleets with some of the first field service technologies, leveraging off-the-shelf mobile devices and PDAs for companies like Virgin Trains and large financial companies. I soon became a lead developer and a named resource in various engagements.
Nashua Mobile
04.2006 - 06.2008
- Company Overview: Nashua Mobile is a large telco reseller organisation that also has a web development capability. I was working in the web development department, writing various in-house and customer-facing web applications in ASP.NET for Nashua mobile customers.
NYT Group London
10.2004 - 02.2006
- Worked at a small IT company in London during my gap year, building Windows services in .NET for SMS based solutions.
HLB/NGA International
06.2003 - 10.2004
- This was my first role out of university, building data analysis solutions for large government and medical insurance companies in South Africa.
Education
BSC - Information Technology (Mathematical Sciences)
University of Johannesburg
Johannesburg, South Africa01.2003
Skills
- Executive Management: Implementing new processes and technologies I pushed for strategic initiatives like knowing our customer and enabled it by including Quarterly roadmaps, Company Strategy and driving an alignment of a technical direction with business goals Introducing a Horizons model for product development, enabling us to behave appropriately depending on the maturity of our products This enabled moving faster in our less mature products and more carefully in our product where we had a lot of customers
- Development Management: Staff development, mentoring, and promoting best practices in Agile and Scrum methodologies Working on creating consistent and effective staff review processes Introducing DevOps, QA and automated testing disciplines
- Team Leadership: Coordinating teams for optimal project outcomes, mentoring technical staff, and promoting from within
- Stakeholder Management: Aligning expectations with upper management, managing client relationships, and defining technical solutions Solution Architecture and technical consulting for complex and bespoke technology problems
- Recruitment: Identifying and hiring top technical talent
Certification
- 2019 – Effective People Management – Australian Institute of Management
- 2016 - Scrum Master training
- 2010 - Consulting and Advanced Consulting Course – Vodafone
Other Experience
Software Developer for 15 years - Primary using C# and Angular stack more recently and ASP.NET in various forms before then. Often building solutions in the Azure Cloud, utilising many Azure Services to enable product offerings.
Timeline
CTO
BISCIT Pty Ltd
11.2019 - Current
Developer Lead (Promoted)
RAC insurance Business Systems team
11.2017 - 11.2019
Technical Lead for New Data Analytics Data Lake (Initial Post at RAC Insurance)
RAC Insurance
11.2017 - 05.2018
Head of IT, Scrum Master, Technical Lead, Developer
studentedge.com.au
02.2013 - 10.2017
WildNet
07.2012 - 12.2013
Vodafone
07.2008 - 11.2011
Nashua Mobile
04.2006 - 06.2008
NYT Group London
10.2004 - 02.2006
HLB/NGA International
06.2003 - 10.2004
BSC - Information Technology (Mathematical Sciences)
University of Johannesburg
Similar Profiles
Mekondjo JohannesMekondjo Johannes
Human Resources Superintendent at Blue Sea Fishing Company (PTY)Ltd, Pereira Seafood Company (PTY)Ltd, Hatutungu Fishing Company (PTY)Human Resources Superintendent at Blue Sea Fishing Company (PTY)Ltd, Pereira Seafood Company (PTY)Ltd, Hatutungu Fishing Company (PTY)
Mekondjo JohannesMekondjo Johannes
Human Resources Superintendent at Blue Sea Fishing Company (PTY)Ltd, Pereira Seafood Company (PTY)Ltd, Hatutungu Fishing Company (PTY)Human Resources Superintendent at Blue Sea Fishing Company (PTY)Ltd, Pereira Seafood Company (PTY)Ltd, Hatutungu Fishing Company (PTY)
Cathrine FryCathrine Fry
Swim Teacher and Operations Manager at Kiramal Pty Ltd / Daltrla Pty LtdSwim Teacher and Operations Manager at Kiramal Pty Ltd / Daltrla Pty Ltd
Melissa RobertsonMelissa Robertson
Child and Family Health Nursing / Registered Nurse at Hunter New England HealthChild and Family Health Nursing / Registered Nurse at Hunter New England Health
Issabella BerganIssabella Bergan
Assistant Store Manager at Hype, Accent Group LtdAssistant Store Manager at Hype, Accent Group Ltd