Computing is all about the IT leader - whether that's the CIO, CTO, IT director, chief architect or any one of dozens of other titles. Having spoken to hundreds of IT leaders over the last 12 months and beyond, we feel well qualified to produce the definitive rankings for the top 100 IT leaders in the UK.
To produce this list we took into account factors like size of organisation, size of department, annual budget, duration in role and level of transformation achieved. Then, in consultation with industry experts, we undertook the incredibly challenging task of producing the final list - a task which became ever trickier the closer to the top we got.
Do you feel that you should be on this list? Should you be placed higher? Then contact the editorial team, we'll arrange an interview and next year, it could be you sitting at the top.
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Angela Morrison
CIO, Direct Line Group
Morrison was named CIO of the year at the UK IT Industry Awards 2015. She has over 18 years in food retailing and IT, 10 of which were at director level and included being a member of Sainsbury's operating board.
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Steve Capper
Global CIO, Aecom
Recently promoted to Global CTO for Aecom, Capper joined the construction firm in March 2014 following two years transforming IT at Skanska. He was shortlisted for the CIO of the year at the UK IT Industry Awards in 2013 and 2015.
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Ian Patterson
CTO, DVLA
Patterson was seconded from Government Digital Service to lead DVLA's IT digital transformation, and after tremendous success he has been promoted to the Cabinet Office. During his time at DVLA, Patterson completely changed the way the department dealt with Oracle, shifting away from relying on a systems integrator and dealing directly with the vendor to reduce its licence footprint. DVLA was also then able to use non-Oracle products such as MongoDB on an Oracle cloud if it wanted to.
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Christina Scott
CPIO, FT
Scott has been at the FT since May 2012, and in 2015 was given the title Chief Product & Information Officer, reflecting the importance of digital web products the brand now offers. Previously she spent eight months as a programme director at BT, and six years at the BBC. She is a keen champion of business intelligence. In 2014 she oversaw a project to move to a new data warehouse on Amazon Redshift, a cloud-based data warehousing solution, with enterprise business intelligence platform Birst sitting in front handling the reporting requirements.
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David Davies
IT Director, Hargreaves Lansdown
Davies joined the company in 2008, and his risen through the ranks from backroom to boardroom in just a few short years. Completely overhauling an ancient and unstable mainframe system to a fast, clean and paperless way of operating, David won CIO of the Year in Computing's UK IT Awards 2014.
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Graeme Hackland
CIO, Williams F1 Team
Appointed by team owner Sir Frank Williams to implement a full-scale IT transformation, Hackland has overseen delivery of a number of complex projects and brings innovative ideas as to how IT can aid the team's performance. "If we're not at the forefront of technology as a team, we won't win," he told Computing.
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Duncan Stott
CIO, Kier Group
Now more than 4 years into his tenure at construction firm Kier Group, CIO Stott has lost none of the enthusiasm that led him to the role. "I love the adventure and the exploration of going into new places.. We are living in a technology revolution, and frankly, the CIO has got the best job of all," he says.
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Richard Warner
CIO, LV=
Warner was rewarded for his outstanding work at insurance company LV= in 2013 with the CIO of the Year accolade at the UK IT Industry Awards 2013. Warner has been involved in huge IT projects including refreshing LV='s IT infrastructure and rolling out Windows 7. He has been focussed on trying to leverage new and emerging technologies for the insurer and trying out new ways of working, including using agile methodologies.
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James Robbins
CIO, Northumbrian Water
Reporting directly to the CEO, Robbins leads a team of 165 people and has an annual budget of £30m. In this post he has worked with business leaders to deliver £30m+ of capital and operational efficiency.
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Kevin Murray
Group CIO and COO, AXA
Murray joined AXA UK in September 2010 after working at AXA US for six years. One of his key focuses at the moment is how the insurer can squeeze as much value as possible from the data AXA has at its disposal. This included a data-enrichment programme using customer-scoring data to deliver personalised quotes to the broker market.