Meet our Head of Practice
Tony Nicol is the Head of Practice for Engineering. Having started his DWP Digital career as a solution architect 17 years ago, he spent the last few years as Head of Data Platforms in Data and Analytics before embarking on his new role.
My first degree was in Electronics Engineering and Computing. My software development journey began in a university computer lab where disk drives were the size of washing machines.
After university I worked as an electronics engineer designing sonar systems for nuclear submarines. I soon realised that the opportunities for software development were becoming far greater with the availability of microprocessors. I thought that’s the direction of the future, so I started to do more software development and software engineering. I later became a firmware engineer as I had experience in assembly language programming. Due to the rate of change in the industry I have used at least 25 programming languages over the years.
I’ve always been driven to develop others, so I moved into academia as a senior university lecturer in electronics and software engineering. During my career I’ve seen the industry evolve in remarkable ways, from my days of writing Fortran ’77 on punched cards to today’s advancements in microservices, cloud computing and AI.
My interests don’t stop at code, I’ve found challenges outside of my professional life to be equally rewarding. I’ve completed multiple marathons and triathlons, including the Three Peaks Challenge with a group of DWP architects. One of my proudest moments was completing an Iron Man event.
Empowering our people
I’ve always believed in the power of continuous learning, something I prioritise both as a practitioner and as a university lecturer. I’ve continued to work part time as a senior lecturer alongside my role as Head of Practice for Engineering.
My current teaching focuses on distributed systems, developing undergraduates and postgraduates into the next generation of software engineers. I develop my own course content and to a standard required for BCS accreditation. Teaching and sharing knowledge are my passions. It’s incredibly fulfilling to see students graduate.
In DWP Digital we have a focus on building our capability and empowering our people. Last year I developed a training course to see if it was possible to turn staff with few digital skills into engineers then solution architects within 12 months. This was very intensive for both them and me as I developed the material, assignments and delivered the training. Staff who took part have successfully progressed and are now working on projects as solution architects. It was also due to the development of this programme and my experience that I was asked to take on the role of Head of Practice.
Using my experience of working in the field and of teaching, I want to develop relationships with universities to influence curriculums and create talent pipelines that better suit the industry. It’s important to me to pass on my knowledge, engage and empower our people in their career development, and inspire them to continue acquiring and sharing knowledge.
Recognising excellence and growing our capability
The role of the practice is to ensure our engineers have the resources, funding and opportunities to develop. The practice aims to create and align standards across the delivery teams regarding programming languages, tooling and deployment processes. This will rationalise the number of different skills needed to work more effectively, enable engineers to acquire more experience by being able to move to different areas more easily, and save taxpayers money by being more efficient.
As Head of Practice, I want to work with senior managers to ensure they have career progression plans for their teams and understand what training is required. I also want to engage with engineers to build stronger relationships with the practice.
Finally, I aim to look at the strategic options to develop bespoke in-house training courses to develop engineers and non-engineers.
Building your future in DWP’s Engineering Practice
We develop and deliver world class digital services that benefit millions of people and will improve the lives of future generations. A career with DWP Digital represents a rare opportunity to work huge, highly secure and complex enterprise systems that you will struggle to find elsewhere. If that sounds like the type of challenge you’re looking for then we want to hear from you.
From day one the career progression, skills and experience of our engineers is continuously developed through hands-on learning, formal training and by being part of the engineering practice.
Engineers who join us will also benefit from flexible working arrangements to support work-life balance, including hybrid working.