Julian Cone

Freelance web development, systems design and operations and product guidance for small scale startups. Also consulting work to help resolve issues with WordPress & Drupal websites for other organizations. Responsible for management of Linux servers, DNS, backup, web server and database software, bespoke websites and websites using Open-Source solutions like WordPress and Drupal.

Co-founder, and Awesomist at the Ministry of Awesome — the starting point for entrepreneurs. Responsible for building and maintaining the initial website using Drupal and managing all things tech (GSuite essentially). Also involved in many of the original events, including Coffee & Jam and the Startup Activator sessions.

• Built and managed the initial website using Drupal
• Managed GSuite for Email and Calendaring

As the Director of Product, responsible for overseeing product development of all Flowingly products. Worked closely with cross-functional teams including engineering, marketing, sales, and customer success to ensure products meet market needs and drive business growth.

• Led the hiring of a NZ senior development team and participated in daily stand-ups and project planning
• Led integration of AI tooling into all team workflows to improve speed and efficiency

Led the Product team to ensure maximum customer enjoyment, digital security and success in their use of the platform. Responsible for researching, prioritising, scheduling, coordinating and implementing maintenance items and improvements across existing and new products.

Product Owner for the Central SaaS product at Seequent. Central allows customers to collaborate on their Geoscience projects generated in the Leapfrog Geoscience desktop modelling package. Responsible for prioritising the development backlog, communicating with stakeholders, and engaging customers regularly to resolve issues and gather feedback.

• Planned and delivered significant platform upgrades — modernising the codebase for greater resilience, faster performance, quicker deployments and lower hosting costs
• Doubled the user base with minimal customer outages

Build Engineer embedded in the Platform Services team. Supported 4 squads of developers to manage the Platform Core and Geospatial development, production environments and deployment pipelines. Collaborated with Verizon Connect teams in Dublin and Atlanta.

• Implemented Octopus Deploy for newer projects; maintained Jenkins and legacy CI/CD pipelines for existing services
• Reached semi-finals in company-wide Love Hack startup competition (73 projects across 3 continents) and won a spot prize for best demo

Maintained and developed the Merchandising Console and managed hosting infrastructure for SLI's SaaS-based site search, navigation and merchandising platform — the most chosen SaaS site search provider to U.S. Internet Retailer Top 1,000 retailers.

• Managed the slisystems.com WordPress website in close collaboration with the marketing team
• Explored application of VR to eCommerce using Unity and WebGL as innovation day projects

The YikeBike is one of the world's first fully electric folding bikes — featured on the cover of TIME magazine and named one of the top 50 inventions of the year. Responsible for the technical design and management of the YikeBike websites using Drupal.

• Designed and implemented initial versions of www.yikebike.com and shop.yikebike.com
• Led expansion from brochure-ware site to full eCommerce store
• On-going management and configuration of site and hosting environment

Co-founder and part of the initial two-man engineering team building a personalised search engine on top of social networks and user-curated Search Wikis (swikis). Partnered with Friendster and the Disney website to provide a personalised search service for their users.

• Developed the initial product and built out the engineering team
• Defined the product development roadmap and managed system operations
• Pivoted to lead developer and R&D focus as the engineering team scaled

A social networking platform allowing third parties to develop applications on top of one social network. Dating website FriendlyConnections.net and jobs site RealContacts.com were the first applications built on the platform.

Software Engineer

NBCi Inc.

2000 – 2001

NBCi was NBC TV's attempt to launch an Internet portal. Worked in the NBCi NZ team on web development across various parts of the website. Seconded to the San Francisco office to support the Systems Operations team, managing the RedHat Unix cluster that provided video hosting for customers.

Migrated from GIS Scientist to Webmaster and web integration role across the company. In 1994 took the lead on setting up the first company website (one of the first in New Zealand). Maintained company websites, assisted with Library and Herbarium databases, and led the Database Integration Project — making Landcare's databases accessible via the Web.

• Attended ausweb95, the first WWW Conference in Australia

Hired as a GIS Scientist responsible for installing and managing a Sun Solaris system running Arc/Info GIS software. Worked across field research, mapping, lecturing, and international GIS capacity-building projects.

• Developed the Banks Peninsula Resource Information System — led to a district plan mapping contract
• Lectured and tutored at Lincoln University's Introduction to GIS and Resource Planning course
• Taught GIS and land use planning to Indonesian and Cook Island planners in New Zealand
• Worked in Fiji to help the Ministry of Agriculture develop a GIS facility and produce the first digital national soil survey
• Visited Papua New Guinea to present results of a Landcare Research land resource mapping exercise
• Worked on GUILD — one of the first web-enabled GIS implementations