James Smith

About James

Being a proud Welshman, James based the DevOpsGroup business in Cardiff creating over 70 new jobs.

For James, training the next generation of talent is vital to growing the company and helping to close the skills gap in IT; he has been instrumental in the creation of DevOpsGroup Academy and the strong partnerships with the local universities.

This contribution has been recognised by DevOpsGroup winning two Welsh Start-Up awards, Wales Technology award Best Tech Workplace, Computing DevOps Excellence award, Cardiff Business award and James personally being awarded Wales Technology Leader of the Year and IoD Director of the Year (Wales).

Prior to co-founding DevOpsGroup, James worked as a software development consultant and Chief Technology Officer for over 20 years.

Over this time he led teams that have designed, built and deployed some of the UK’s most popular eCommerce websites for organisations such as Dell, Pizza Hut, KFC and the RAC.

Between them, these websites transact millions of orders worth over £150m in revenue every year. James frequently publishes his opinions on the DevOpsGroup blog and his contributions have been quoted in research by Gartner and Forrester.