--- version: "6.0" updated: "2026-08-04" name: "Russ Watson-Thomas" role: "Enterprise Platform & Technology Leader" location: "London, UK" email: "jobs@discomcdisco.com" phone: "+44 7967 180 603" website: "https://work.discomcdisco.com" availability: "Permanent roles, advisory and fractional leadership" --- # Russ Watson-Thomas **Enterprise Platform & Technology Leader** London, UK | [jobs@discomcdisco.com](mailto:jobs@discomcdisco.com) | [+44 7967 180 603](tel:+447967180603) | [work.discomcdisco.com](https://work.discomcdisco.com) **Platform Strategy • Governance & Trust • Enterprise Integration • Operational Resilience • AI Assurance** I lead enterprise platforms where customer experience, operations and complex technology have become difficult to steer. Across more than 20 years in retail, ecommerce and SaaS, I have helped organisations make business-critical systems easier to understand, safer to change and more dependable to run. I learnt my craft close to where complex systems fail. Quality engineering taught me that the visible defect is rarely the whole problem; the real cause is often sitting in the architecture, the process, unclear ownership or the gaps between teams. That lesson became the foundation for how I lead platforms today. My work sits beyond a single product backlog. I bring engineering, architecture, product, operations and suppliers together around the whole service, make risk and ownership visible, and turn strategic intent into a route people can actually deliver. At Harrods, that meant leading across mobile, loyalty, digital rewards, assisted selling, checkout and in-store technology. I am now applying the same thinking to enterprise AI adoption. The question is not simply whether an AI capability works. It is whether an organisation can understand it, govern it and trust it in production. My focus is the platform, assurance, human oversight and operating model needed to make that possible. ## 01 / Leadership Focus ### Enterprise Platform Strategy Platform direction, technology strategy, roadmaps and capability decisions across products, teams and suppliers. ### Platform Governance, Quality & Trust Clear ownership, decision rights, guardrails and visible risk around business-critical change. ### AI Adoption & Assurance Practical governance, assurance, human oversight and operating models for responsible enterprise AI adoption. ### Operational Resilience & Delivery Release confidence, service reliability and practical controls that continue working after launch. ### Enterprise Integration & Cross-functional Leadership Bringing architecture, engineering, product, operations and partners together around the whole service. ## 02 / Applied AI & Platform Work - Produced an agentic backlog-management model that keeps Story, Implementation and Test together as one governed delivery record, using AI to reduce hand-offs without losing traceability from intent to evidence. - Developed walled-garden LLM governance proposals that constrain models to approved data, tools and actions, with explicit human approval, auditability and policy controls around enterprise use. - Designed an AI-assisted platform re-architecture approach using LLMs and agents to recover system knowledge, map dependencies and shape modular target-state change, while keeping architectural judgement and release authority with accountable people. ## 03 / Career Highlights - Directed delivery of NFC-based loyalty identification across Apple, payment hardware and several technology partners, turning a complex integration and governance challenge into a simple in-store experience. - Set the strategic direction for Harrods’ In-Store Ordering platform, moving it from a department-specific tool towards a broader enterprise assisted-selling capability. - Built and led a distributed quality engineering capability of more than 60 specialists across the UK and Thailand, strengthening practices, progression and delivery confidence. - Built governance, quality and release practices across complex digital estates, making risk visible before it became a release or service problem. - Connected platform behaviour, customer experience and operational change in initiatives that helped deliver approximately 15% uplift across a revenue channel exceeding £20m. - Contributed to an early machine-learning-assisted image processing platform adopted by organisations including Argos and Thomas Cook, helping turn unfamiliar technology into a service organisations could operate and trust. ## 04 / Employment History ### Harrods *2017 - 2026* **Platform Lead | Enterprise Platforms, Governance & Customer Technology** Led the strategy and evolution of customer-facing and operational platforms across Harrods’ digital estate, spanning mobile applications, loyalty, digital rewards, assisted selling, checkout, in-store ordering and partner services. The work sat between engineering, architecture, product, operations and suppliers. I aligned platform direction, integration, governance and delivery so business-critical change had a clear owner and a workable route forward. #### Platform Lead (2023 - 2026) - Led the evolution of Harrods’ Digital Rewards ecosystem, aligning mobile, identity, loyalty and partner platforms around tier expansion, Apple Wallet experiences and future capability. - Owned the platform strategy for In-Store Ordering (ISO), guiding its move from a department-specific application towards a broader enterprise assisted-selling capability. - Directed delivery of NFC-based customer identification with Apple, payment providers and third-party technology partners, resolving significant integration, supplier, security and governance challenges. - Shaped platform roadmaps and coordinated the integrations connecting loyalty, commerce, mobile applications, payments, customer identity and operational systems. - Made dependencies, decision points and service risk easier to see and manage, strengthening platform governance and operational confidence across customer-facing technology. - Connected platform behaviour, customer experience and operational priorities in initiatives that helped drive approximately 15% uplift across a revenue channel exceeding £20m. #### Test and Release Manager (2017 - 2023) - Established and evolved release governance across Harrods’ digital estate, creating clearer controls, stronger operational discipline and greater confidence in business-critical change. - Used quality and operational insight to surface systemic risk, ownership gaps and architecture dependencies before they became release or service failures. - Brought engineering, architecture, product, operations and supplier teams together to resolve dependencies and improve end-to-end release readiness. - Improved testing, quality and release practices so teams could deliver complex change more safely, predictably and efficiently. - Embedded delivery standards and operational controls that continued to support the platform after individual programmes ended. ### Venda, Bright North, Spindrift Consulting Group & Michael Kors *2007 - 2017* **Quality Engineering, Enterprise Platforms & Delivery Leadership** Progressed from hands-on quality engineering into leadership roles across SaaS, consultancy, retail and startup environments. I did not leave quality behind. It taught me that a defect is often only where a wider system problem finally becomes visible. That way of thinking became a broader platform practice: make risk visible, put useful governance around change and help teams improve complex technology without losing control of it. I applied it everywhere from early-stage products to a SaaS platform supporting more than 170 retailers. ### Venda *2007 - 2014* **Senior Test Manager | Quality Engineering & Platform Leadership** - Progressed from Junior Test Engineer to Senior Test Manager within an enterprise ecommerce SaaS platform supporting more than 170 retailers worldwide. - Built and led a distributed quality engineering capability of more than 60 specialists across the UK and Thailand, improving capability, governance and operational maturity. - Designed an international secondment programme that brought Thailand-based engineers to the UK for hands-on mentoring, ISTQB certification and knowledge sharing. - Expanded quality beyond scripted execution, introducing exploratory, integration, boundary and risk-based approaches that exposed systemic weaknesses earlier in the delivery lifecycle. - Supported major technology change including adoption of Jira, TeamCity, Chef, Puppet and emerging platform engineering practices. - Built release governance, delivery controls and quality practices around a SaaS commerce platform used by more than 170 retailers, strengthening confidence in every change made to it. - Independently configured, launched and supported ecommerce solutions including WonderBra, covering payments, promotions, catalogue, inventory, fulfilment and operational setup. - Worked with engineering, operations and commercial teams to improve delivery reliability, platform stability and customer outcomes. ### Bright North *2014 - 2015* **Senior QA Manager | Machine Learning Products & Platform Innovation** - Helped turn an early machine-learning-assisted image processing platform, covering automated analysis, cropping, enhancement and metadata generation, into an operable service at scale. - Supported adoption by organisations including Argos and Thomas Cook, gaining early experience of the controls, clarity and operational confidence needed to make unfamiliar technology useful in the real world. - Worked across engineering, product and commercial teams to balance technical innovation, operational scalability and customer value. - Contributed to Social Superstore, an early community-led social commerce marketplace developed several years before peer-to-peer platforms became mainstream. - Worked in a startup environment where rapid iteration, experimentation and pragmatic decision-making were essential. - The experience reinforced a lesson that has followed me since: making emerging technology work is only half the job. People also need to understand, operate and trust it. ### Spindrift Consulting Group *2015 - 2016* **Test Manager | Enterprise Commerce Transformation** - Led quality, governance and release-readiness activity for Canon’s entry into B2C ecommerce through a complex enterprise commerce implementation. - Built an approach spanning functional, integration, user acceptance and operational-readiness testing. - Kept technical, commercial and delivery stakeholders aligned across several workstreams through launch. - Delivered a stable launch with rapid commercial performance following go-live. - Made ownership, risk and readiness visible enough for the programme to make decisions with confidence. ### Michael Kors *2016 - 2017* **Test Manager | Oracle Commerce Replatform** - Led a team of five test specialists supporting the international replatforming of Michael Kors onto Oracle Commerce. - Owned quality strategy, release readiness and operational assurance across a major ecommerce transformation programme. - Brought business, engineering and third-party teams together around a workable route through a fast-paced retail programme. - Supported a successful market relaunch with minimal disruption and strong platform stability. - Balanced delivery pace, technical quality and commercial deadlines throughout a high-profile international programme. ## 05 / Interests AI-assisted development and coding experiments; home automation and IoT; games and visual effects; finding excellent food from street stalls to Michelin; and ongoing quality assurance for my brother’s biltong empire.