About Me - Andrew Waterhouse Portfolio

About Me: Empowering Success with Entrepreneurial Endeavors

From coding to crafting campaigns, I’ve followed my passion from IT to Marketing, now orchestrating success as an Operations Manager with a knack for leadership and getting things done right.

Take a look through my past and you’ll find a first-class honors Computer Science Graduate, who has a knack for creating projects in my spare time and managing projects at work. Let me take you on a journey…

Embarking on my first venture beyond the confines of my day job, CraftedGenius emerged as a gaming YouTube channel. Currently with over a million views, it transformed my passion for video games into an engaging hobby. Through this endeavor, I honed my skills in video editing, Photoshop, and various technical aspects to craft captivating content.

Subsequently, I initiated That’s Your Best Bet, marking my inaugural foray into web development. Since 2012, I’ve been self-teaching web development and design. Delving into affiliate marketing, I uncovered a new facet of the online realm. Over time, That’s Your Best Bet evolved into a lucrative secondary revenue stream.

Driven by a desire to cultivate my expertise, I’ve diligently pursued diverse projects to contribute value. While in early IT roles, I found myself adding value with the web development skills I had honed. From providing Travel Counsellors with a service center hub to alleviate call volume for the IT Helpdesk, to SharePoint-based intranets that were implemented at two previous employers. I always add value and love structure. As an experienced Operations Manager now, I navigate the intricacies of both realms, leveraging my entrepreneurial spirit to drive success.

After I graduated with a first-class honors in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, I dedicated two summers to volunteering with Camp America, a pivotal experience that propelled me beyond my comfort zone.

This immersion in independence and wholehearted dedication to a noble cause proved transformative. Providing children with unforgettable experiences enriched my own life immensely. Inspired by these experiences, I authored “There’s No Place Like Summer Camp,” a heartwarming account now cherished by many.

Building upon this momentum, I recently released my second book, “The Fly Who Flew Too High,” further exploring themes of resilience and ambition.

Current Situation

Looking for roles

Career Path

Courageous – Operations Manager

• Managed a diverse set of staff across remote locations and in house. Worked alongside CMS’s like WordPress, Shopify, BigCommerce, Strapi and Magento for our clients.

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Dates: April 2023 – February 2024

Reason for Leaving: Company collapse/widescale layoff

Greenlight Web – Operations Manager

      •   Guided a team of seven, overseeing projects and weekly meetings.
•   Enhanced website performance, achieving a 200% increase in lead conversions via security, speed, and SEO.
•   Orchestrated the modernization of Greenlight Web’s website, overseeing content creation, design specifications, and agile team collaboration.
•   Secured £65,000+ profit by winning project bids, including a £12,500 office refit, while actively pursuing Blue Orchid projects.
•   Balanced workload, acted as a client liaison, and facilitated sales, managing escalations and fostering team growth.
•   Directed hiring processes, integrating two Kickstart program hires into the permanent Greenlight Web team and upskilling staff.
•   Served as a liaison between Greenlight Computers and Greenlight Web, implementing Asana and Harvest for enhanced project management.
•   Optimized services, streamlined subscriptions, and managed company finances, saving £5000+ annually and implementing the first rate increase.
•   Spearheaded SharePoint rollout, creating a new intranet for business and as a sales asset for Greenlight Computers.
•   Introduced and managed new products like social media advertising and LastPass within the company’s offerings.
•   Presented growth opportunities to senior management and actively engaged in securing new leads at business networking events.
•   Organized company events and earned respect as a valued member of the organization.

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Dates: March 2021 – April 2023

Reason for Leaving: Career growth

Engage Web – Web Designer

· Responsible for designing and building websites and marketing funnels for clients, setting up and updating social media accounts, social media ad campaigns and updating existing websites.

· I liaise with Account Managers and directly with clients, am involved in client meetings, work on the formation of web design briefs and build websites to an agreed specification.

· HTML, CSS and WordPress form a core function of my role where I create and amend website builds. I am the point of contact for any customer queries for their websites.

· I create other media like Infographics, presentations, social media assets and brochures for customers as well as internal use. To create such media, I use tools like Adobe Photoshop and the Microsoft Office Suite.

· Back-end website support, supporting customer with a WHM configuration setups and their cPanel to manage server-side settings like DNS Management, quotas, and package upgrades.

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Dates: September 2020 – March 2021

Reason for Leaving: COVID Redundancy

ebb3- Second Line Engineer

Working in a small team, I helped create a service desk from scratch. When I joined ebb3, there was no service desk, computers or even chairs! I was one of their first employees, supporting the exciting prospect that graphically enhanced VDI has to offer. I helped create procedures, company policies and guides on how to best start an IT service desk from nothing.

We created policies and procedures in line with ISO 27001
Sales CRM migrated from Salesforce to Autotask with new reporting in place
Service desk ticketing system migrated from Salesforce to Autotask
New monitoring systems implemented
I created a newly developed Company intranet now live via SharePoint
Redesigned ebb3.com
I became ITIL certified, VMware VCA-DBT certified amongst many other certifications – see accomplishments.

All while supporting a world-famous manufacturer in Citrix XenDesktop. I used tools like Citrix Director and Citrix Studio to support users and perform maintainance on the VDI platform.

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Dates: March 2019 – September 2020

Reason for Leaving: Career move

Adept4 – Second Line Engineer

Managed virtual and physical machines for a number of clients. Technologies supported include Hyper V, Azure, vSphere and physical servers. Managed domain controllers, terminal servers, file servers, printer servers for a wealth of customers. Maintained monitoring on servers too, proactively and reactively working on alert tickets that came into the service desk. Regularly maintained backups for clients and resolved any issues that would come through in our reports. Backup programs I used include Veeam, Azure Site Replication, Altaro and Kiwi Tools. Tickets managed in Autotask, passed up through first line after their investigations made. Issues had a wide variety, examples being Exchange, 365, disk management, VPN and telephony.

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Dates: January 2018 – May 2018

Reason For Leaving: Temporary Contract

SABS Travel Technologies – Application Support Specialist

As an Application Support Analyst, I’d offer my expertise in the Travel industry for SABS. With our bespoke Corporate SABS product, I’d diagnose booking issues, liaise with third party suppliers and raise bugs where appropriate. My database skills, particularly in SQL soared in this position. Managing bookings and users; I’d utilize SQL on a daily basis, performing bulk edits, uploads and DISTINCT searches.

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Dates: January 2018 – May 2018

Reason For Leaving: Temporary Contract

Travel Counsellors – IT Helpdesk Analyst

My first role in Manchester was at Travel Counsellors, next door to the Trafford Center. The role itself builds upon the IT Technician role from the school as I support the technical problems of over 2,000 Travel Counsellors around the globe. It’s a lot of client-facing, juggling workloads and have seen my telephone manner skills soar. Typical issues include migration to Windows 10/Azure, Diagnosing telephony issues and supporting specialist travel booking programs.

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Dates: June 2016 – Jan 2018

Reason for Leaving: Personal reasons

Dame Alice Owens School – IT Technician

My last role in London was working as an IT Technician at a prestigious secondary school in Hertfordshire. I have seen my technical skills flourish as I troubleshoot and resolve a wide range of IT problems encountered by the students and staff. Experience in Active Directory, Apple Configurator and Exchange Management are just a few of the many skills I have learned working in this role.

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Dates: Sep 2014 – May 2016

Reason for Leaving: Moving to Manchester

Drive Software Solutions – Technical Analyst Placement

My placement year was spent at Drive Software Solutions, Stevenage where I was part of a team dedicated to ‘managing the in-between stage’ of software development and testing. The role would see me roll out changes to test environments in Oracle databases and maintain a level of customer support to ensure SLA’s were to be met.

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Dates: August 2012 – August 2013

Reason for Leaving: 1 Year University Placement

Walt Disney – Disney Interactive – Placement

For two weeks I worked at Disney Interactive in Hammersmith. The unpaid role was designed to provide me insight in to the industry. The role encompassed business analysis of Disney’s position in the mobile/casual market along with designing some Club Penguin affiliate material.

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Dates: July 2012

Job Type: Placement

Sainsbury’s – Sales Assistant

My first job was for two years in a part time role working as a Sales Assistant in London Colney to help fund myself through university. Responsibilities would include maintaining stock levels, conducting stock level checks, assist with customer care and occasionally I was relied upon to be a Team Leader and manage our team of 10.

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Dates: January 2010 – July 2012

Reason For Leaving: To Focus on University

Want to know me more? Request my CV!

View My CV

Education

I’m proud to have a first class honours in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence). For more specifics, feel free to contact me and I can provide more info.