About Me

Experienced methodical and practical architect, specialising in cloud services and technology, with a strong security background.

Designing a global compliance and payment processing service, Nick has leveraged AWS Cloud Services to deliver the next generation of Cloud Telephony services for compliance and PCI DSS Payment services. Delivering the first QSA-Validated Global PCI-DSS Level 1 telephony and payment service platform.

Utilising best of breed tools from vendors such as EMC, AWS, and Splunk, the platform is self healing, auto scaling, and highly elastic in its response to customer demands, and the needs of businesses operating in different territories, in different timezones.

A strong understanding of Splunk, and a global deployment of the tool in all the regions where the platform operates, makes me an experienced Splunk architect, and user.

I have presented for Amazon Web Services and Splunk on best practices and sharing my experiences for both on several occasions.

Specialties: Global Architecture, and Cloud Best Practices, Amazon Web Services, Splunk, Security: PCI-DSS, PSN (GCSX) CoCo, Telephony: SIP, TDM, POTS, Class4/5 Switches, Networking:TCPIP, Cisco Switching and Routing, Voice, VPN, 802.1x, BGP

Contact Details

Nick Hills MBCS BSc
e. nick@nickhills.com
m. +44 7031 939550
Lives: East Grinstead, Sussex
Works: Westminster, London
nick@nickhills.com

Experience

VP Technology, Cognia Cloud Ltd

Cloud Architect, Splunk, PCI Compliance in AWS, ISMS, Massivly Global Scalable Architecture September 2013 - Present

Designing and implementing cloud infrastructure to provide telephone voice and data recording for regulatory and compliance and PCI DSS payment services for contact centres and service providers.

The Cognia platform is a fully redundant geo-dispersed self-healing carrier grade telephony platform running across 5 continents.
Key challenges have been:
- Taking the platform through QSA-validated compliance for PCI DSS Level 1, to design and build the worlds first carrier grade, global cloud telephony and payment services platform.
- Designing Splunk infrastructure and applications to enable reporting and auditing for PCI-DSS and other application performance and security enhancements.
- Building a self-managing infrastructure which automatically reacts to changes in usage to bring additional telephony components into and out of service as demand varies, or failures occur.

Chief System Architect, Compliant Phones Ltd

Global Telephony, Splunk, Financial Services 2011-2013

Designing and delivering a Global Mobile Phone Call recording platform across different technologies such as Blackberry and GSM networks.

Call recording in Financial Services demands high levels of security and confidentiality, durability and coverage. The Comliant Phones solution is the only Mobile recording solution which works in any country on any network.

Network Architect, Tandridge District Council

Virtulisation, Compliance, Shared Services Architecture 2002 - 2011

Responsible for Network and System Architecture. Managed the transition from a full physical infrastructure to a virtualized server and desktop environment. Managed VOIP upgrade, and integration of telephony and messaging applications into a converged solution.

Systems Engineer, Kogo Ltd

Firewalls, Exchange, Consultancy 1999

Customer facing support role. Desktop support, telephony & firewall management.

Education

Applied Computing BSc

University of East Anglia 1999 - 2002

Courses including Mathematics, Animation, Network Architecture, Operating Systems, C++, Java, and Media Engineering

3 A-Levels, 1 AS-Level

The Skinners School, Tunbridge Wells 1997 - 1999

Information Technology, Design Technology, Business Studies, and AS Level Electronics

9 GCSEs

The Skinners School, Tunbridge Wells 1995 - 1997

Skills

Volunteering

Trustee for East Grinstead District Scouts

The aim of the Scout Association is to promote the development of young people in achieving their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potentials, as individuals, as responsible citizens and as members of their local national and international communities. District Trustee, Webmaster, technical advisor

Client Testimonials

  • Nick is a phenominal colleague and has transformed the systems archiecture and evolved the Cognia platform into an award winning, world class SaaS platform scaled around the world (on AWS [US, EU, APAC]) all the while achieving some of the hardest externally assessed certifications like PCI-DSS etc. Nick is the core part of my dev/ops team, reliable, intelligent, inventive and collaborative with a great work ethic and awesome sense of humor. I look forward to any opportunity to work alongside Nick, a great guy to have in the trenches.

    Andrew Dunn - CTO, Cognia
  • Nick is *the* best systems guy I have come across and is now permanently in my black book for future engagements. Nothing phases him, and he is equally at home configuring a Cisco router from the serial interface as he is Cloud Forming secure and scalable AWS infrastructure. Very developer centric, highly skilled and GSOH. And he's not just a back room guy - in front of customers he is convincing and thorough. An ace player

    Ryan Shuttleworth - Director of Global Product Strategy, Verizon.

Get In Touch.

Nick Hills MBCS, BSc

e. nick@nickhills.com
m. +44 7031 939550
Lives: East Grinstead, West Sussex
Works: Westminster, London