James Simpson | Source | Chief Technology Officer at SafetyCulture

James Simpson

Chief Technology Officer at SafetyCulture
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An Executive CTO/CPO, my ambition is to create new products and services in high growth markets.

Gaining leadership strength from a diverse career across the industry spectrum, I have moved between start-up and corporate leadership roles. I’ve consulted for Accenture, built an R&D facility for Microsoft and built profitable CRM/ERP sales unit for Microsoft, and been a hands-on protagonist in the development of product roadmaps that have delivered growth for a range of organisations. The variety of challenge I have experienced allows me to bring both positives and lessons learned to my role as a CTO to increase revenue, profit and market share. What unites my experience is a love for software/product development, and a drive to deliver meaningful impact.

As a leader, I value accountability, positivity and a sense of humour, and strive to develop productive workplaces that are fuelled by laughter. After more than two decades in the sector, I still find technology exciting, and bring this enthusiasm to propel results delivery. Equally, I enjoy the commerciality of business planning and process, defining marketing, sales and operational strategies that maximise profit while enabling scalability. I like joining the concerns of the business with those of technology, creating an end-to-end path that serves the organisation.

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  • "With engineering at SafetyCulture, there are three directional guides that we have. The first one is to develop people, which is really all about the creation of a good environment that helps people become great engineers. The second one is fast and flexible delivery, making sure we convert ideas into software quickly and we’re flexible about it. It means that we don’t get stuck into any particular set of ideas and that we can be responsive to customers quickly, not taking too much time to get it done in a very responsive way.

    The third one is improving the engineering organization, so we want to make it go the way of doing things better today than we did them yesterday. Through this, we could be able to look back across time and see a number of changes that we’ve made to the way we work so that we have a better environment for people where we can deliver more quickly and flexibly.

    We start with these big three goals and then break them down into smaller pieces. Each of our engineering managers has a part of their expectations which is all about developing people, making sure that people have development plans, and that people have challenging and engaging work.

    Our set of expectations around fast and flexible delivery includes making sure that we know what we’re delivering and that we’ve broken it down into milestones with dates and timelines, so there’s a sense of urgency around what we do. Finally, there will be some expectations for our engineering managers to bring in new ideas and new practices to improve the way we work."

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