George Cassar

Cloud Infrastructure Development and Maintenance:

• Oversaw the development, implementation, and upkeep of IT infrastructure, aligning team structure for effective service management and cyber security integration.
• Successfully insourced offshore teams and established an onshore infrastructure technology department.

Leadership and Team Management:

• Led and mentored engineers and service management specialists, fostering innovative and collaborative work environments.
• Deployed an engineering framework across the technology group to standardize practices and elevate quality standards.

Financial and Resource Management:

• Managed comprehensive engineering budgets, including personnel, infrastructure, and software expenses.
• Established a FinOps Centre of Excellence, reducing cloud spend by $1 million.
• Achieved $300K+ savings through M365 Licensing optimization.

Project and Operations Management:

• Delivered the cloud migration of applications to an internally managed Azure tenancy and instituted a flagship Dealer Portal.
• Monitored, automated, and optimized systems and infrastructure to enhance scalability and reliability.

Strategic Planning and Compliance:

• Contributed to technological strategy, aligning with the CIO’s vision and objectives.
• Established and maintained a Technology Disaster Recovery Strategy with a comprehensive testing roadmap and Business Continuity Process.
• Led ISO27001 audit and recertification processes, maintaining compliance and security standards.

Performance and Quality Assurance:

• Conducted performance evaluations, set objectives, and provided feedback to ensure team development.
• Implemented the ServiceNow ITIL & HR platform, enhancing operational efficiency and service quality.

Product Engineering Development:

• Established Cloud Foundational capabilities for AWS, Azure and GCP based on NIST cyber security framework and CIS controls.
• Delivered and streamlined a cloud governance capability, providing visibility of compliance to organisational and regulatory policies and controls, resulting in successful engagements with APRA
• Oversaw the delivery of products from inception through to retirement.

Leadership and Team Management:

• Worked closely with cloud vendors in providing the tools, resources, guidance, and advocacy to support IAG in their cloud adoption journey.
• Coaching and mentoring engineers, establishing high performance and psychologically safe culture

Financial and Resource Management:

• Custodian of AWS, Azure and GCP consumption, managed IAG’s relationship with cloud vendors totalling a portfolio spend of $20m.
• Established and led a Cloud FinOps Centre of Excellence resulting in one million dollars in cost reduction

Project and Operations Management:

• Product management – collaborated with cross functional teams to define and deliver to the product and services roadmap.
• Advocacy of Agile and Continuous Delivery work practices, fostering a culture where security and cost optimisation is everyone’s responsibility.
• Established vendor management governance of cloud providers

Strategic Planning and Compliance:

• Defined and delivered a 12 month roadmap of cloud products enabling platform teams to consume cloud securely and efficiently across AWS, Azure and GCP.
• Delivered a compliance as code capability enabling governing bodies to azure cloud governance and security posture.

Performance and Quality Assurance:

• Advocacy of Agile and Continuous Delivery work practices, fostering a culture where security and cost optimisation is everyone’s responsibility.
• Developed standards and processes to assist in IAG’s application migration pipeline and cloud adoption.