Daniel J Hand

Field CTO | Architect | Technology Leader

Contact

  daniel.hand@bnc.oxon.org

 danieljhand.com

 linkedin.com/in/danielhand

Summary

A senior technology leader with 25+ years experience across products, presales & consulting within disruptive, transformational technology companies.

An entrepreneurial leader with a passion for AI/ML, data and strategy.
                                        
A published author and accomplished public speaker.

Education

MEng, Information Engineering and Computing Science

Oxford University 1994-1998

Machine Learning Specialisation

DeepLearning.ai, 2024

Data Science Apprenticeship

AiSingapore, 2020 

Executive certificate in Strategy and Innovation

MIT Sloan Management, 2018

Level 7 Certificate and Diploma for Executive and Senior Level Coaches and Mentors

Institute of Leadership & Management, London 2018

Skills & Experience

Publications

Introduction to Architecting for the Amazon Web Services cloud - Strategies and Best Practices O'Reilly Media 2015

DevOps A Software Architect’s Perspective: Chapter 12: Implementing a Continuous Deployment Pipeline (CDP) for Enterprise Organisations Addison-Wesley 2015

Professional Experience

 Cloudera

Field CTO, APAC

Singapore

Sep 2020 - Apr 2024

Strategic Leadership

• Advised senior data leaders across the APAC region to leverage data as a strategic asset, driving insights and competitive advantage.
• Acted as executive sponsor for high-profile strategic accounts, including Line Corporation Japan, OCBC Bank Singapore, LG Uplus Korea, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India, KBank Thailand, and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB).
• Provided strategic customers with regular updates on the product roadmap, ensuring alignment with their needs and fostering strong relationships.

Growth Impact

• As a senior member of Cloudera's APAC leadership team, I contributed to double-digit year-on-year growth, achieving multiple record quarters in the past two years.
• Played a key role in growing Cloudera's cloud business by over 100% in the last 12 months, supporting the adoption of hybrid data cloud solutions.
• Contributed to Cloudera surpassing $1 billion in revenue globally, with significant contributions from APAC, including success stories in Singapore, India and Japan.

Thought Leadership

• Represented APAC as part of a four-person Field CTO office, acting as a conduit between product management, product marketing and customers.
• Influenced product direction through customer feedback and educated customers on new technologies and solutions.
• Supported field and product marketing at Cloudera events and customer engagements, including keynote presentations in Singapore, Indonesia and Korea.
• Enhanced corporate communications through interviews, blog posts and media presentations, including presenting at Gartner in Sydney, briefing IDC and conducting live radio interviews with Channel News Asia (CNA).
• Authored thought leadership content on topics such as The Open Data Lakehouse, Modern Data Architectures and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to support Generative AI.
• Assisted Cloudera Professional Services in developing solutions, methodologies and architectural blueprints.
• Supported industry vertical GMs in customer briefings and events, with a focus on Telecommunications, Finance and Manufacturing.
• Represented APAC in Customer Advisory Board meetings (CABs) and organised multiple physical and virtual Executive Briefing sessions (EBCs).

Recognition & Awards

• Awarded 2021 President’s club - Global technical specialist of the year for outstanding performance and contributions.

Mentorship & Leadership

• Mentored and coached members of the solutions engineering organisation, initiating and leading the APAC Solutions Architecture council.
• Fostered a collaborative environment, promoting best practices and continuous learning.

AI Singapore

Senior Industry Mentor

Singapore

Jan 2020 - Jan 2021

• Successfully completed AI Singapore’s data science apprenticeship coursework.
• Guided AI Singapore’s leadership on presales & consulting practice strategy and development of repeatable industry solutions.
• Advised and mentored members of the advisory teams on the customer AI Adoption journey. Helped shape and scope initial industry engagements with a focus on Discovery.
• Led the development of scalable, repeatable processes and frameworks to programmatically include AI into customer digital transformation and innovation initiatives.
• Supported marketing and communications initiatives relating to learnings from engagements, solution delivery frameworks and the customer AI adoption journey.

Red Hat

Director Emerging Technology Practice, APAC

Singapore

Sep 2015 - Dec 2019

• Senior member of APAC Services leadership team.
• Responsible for APAC Services technology & solutions strategy.
• Supported Red Hat’s APAC Services (presales & consulting) business to drive customer success through the adoption of emerging technology solutions (containerisation, virtualisation, CICD, automation, agile development)
• Established and nurtured the development of cloud, application and telecommunications practices and drove the successful adoption of new solutions.
• APAC leader within global emerging technology practice.
• Senior mentor and panel member of the principal review board.
• Contributed to the development of consulting services solutions
• Enabled Services partners around Emerging Technology
• Established regionally distributed cloud, application and Telco presales & consulting practices from scratch within 24 months (30+ consulting solution architects, three practice leaders, one BDM)
• Planned, launched & grew Red Hat Open Innovation labs across five countries in 18 months.
• Effectively introduced a new services delivery framework across the region resulting in a step-change in CSAT and average consulting deal sizes
• Played a lead role in winning and delivering key lighthouse customer success stories across each practice and sub-region.
• Regularly presented at internal and external events. Approved media spokesperson.

Daedalian Pty Ltd

Director & Founder

Sydney, Australia

Jan 2014 - Jan 2017

• Co-founded www.n1analytics.com - a confidential computing platform. It allowed organisations to perform Machine Learning over distributed encrypted data sets. Data61 (previously NICTA)
• Assisted a number of ASX 100 organisations architect or audit their application and infrastructure solution architecture to adopt the AWS platform
• Assisting Atlassian transform their application and infrastructure solution architecture to adopt the AWS platform.
• Developed detailed dynamic cost models used by the CFO of a multi-billion dollar market cap. to accurately predict CAPEX/OPEX on a per customer basis.
• Developed a video training series for O’Reilly Media - Architecting for the AWS Cloud - strategies and best practices
• Co-authored a published case study for Addison-Wesley - DevOps: A software architect’s perspective

Amazon Web Services

Principal Consultant - APAC

Sydney, Australia

January 2013 - January 2014

• Contributed to the successful global Consulting Services business plan.
• APAC representative into the world-wide professional services organisation.
• Scoped and delivered multiple strategic consulting engagements across ANZ.
• Assisted strategic Enterprise organisations adopt AWS to create scalable, reliable & highly available application architectures.
• Provided technical leadership, training and coaching to consultants.
• Interim regional practice manager responsibilities (project management, solution selling, preparation of SOWs, partnering).
• Developed solution assets to support repeatable consulting engagements.
• Assisted in the hiring and on-boarding of consultants across Australia and Korea.
• Provided feedback into product teams on feature and service requests.

Amazon Web Services

Principal Solutions Architect

Sydney, Australia

May 2010 - January 2014

• Provided leadership, training and enablement of APAC Solutions Architecture (SA) team.
• Ambassador and voice of the APAC SA team at world-wide discussions and planning meetings
• Hired and on-boarded SAs across APAC.
• Regularly presented at internal and external events. Approved media spokesperson.
• As one of only two Principal SAs in APAC, I played a lead role supporting ANZ organisations adopting the AWS platform.
• Developed training content to facilitate the effective and efficient enablement of customer and partner resources.

Amazon Web Services

Senior Solutions Architect

Singapore

May 2010 - October 2011

• Joined a small nucleus team as the first Solutions Architect (SA) in APAC.
• Provided help and guidance to businesses adopting AWS enabling them to create secure, scalable, reliable & highly available application architectures. Worked with startups, Enterprise organisations and partner organisations.
• Hired and on-board SAs across the region
• Provided leadership, training and enablement of SAs
• Regularly presented at internal and external events.
• Conduit into the world-wide solutions architect teams and product teams
• Development of training content to facilitate the effective and efficient enablement of customer and partner resources across APAC.

Red Hat

Solutions and Strategy Manager - APAC

Singapore

August 2009  - May 2010

• Responsible for strategic direction of the APAC Professional services business with a focus on defining and delivering repeatable solutions.
• Project managed the development and maintenance of multiple consulting solution offerings
• Managed the training and enablement of APAC consultants, solutions architects, field sales and partner sales on the selling and implementation of solutions.
• Tracking and reporting of the delivery of solutions
• Programme managed a three-day technical summit for several hundred Red Hat and partner technical resources for the APAC region.

Red Hat

Consulting Practice Lead - APAC

Sydney, Australia

August 2008  - August 2009

• Provided leadership and training to consultants and pre-sales across APAC.
• Conduit into the world-wide consulting group contributing to, and repurposing solution content.
• Owned the technical content supporting Red Hat’s Certified Solutions Partner (CSP) program.
• Contributed to several process improvements in how consultants efficiently work with Support to resolve issues. This was a precursor to the role of a customer success manager.
• Delivered Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) training classes to strategic customers.

Prior to this time I held a number of consulting, architect and software engineer roles.