Management Team
We'd like you to get to know us, these are the people who play a vital role in the overall running of freelancer.com.
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Matt Barrie
Chief Executive Officer
BE (Hons I) BSc (Hons I) GDipAppFin MAppFin MSEE (Stanford) GAICD
Matt Barrie is an award winning entrepreneur, technologist and lecturer. He is Chief Executive of Freelancer.com, the world's largest outsourcing marketplace connecting over professionals from around the globe, and in the top 250 websites globally.
Freelancer.com primarily connects small businesses and individuals from the western world with freelancers in the developing world, empowering entrepreneurs on both sides of the globe. To date, over projects have been outsourced through Freelancer.com.
The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences awarded Freelancer.com the "Internet's highest honour" in the 15th Annual Webby Awards as best Employment Site of the Year, as well as the Webby People's Choice Award for the same category - from a field of 10,000 entrants from 60 countries.
Matt is serial entrepreneur, previously as founder and CEO of Sensory Networks Inc., a vendor of high performance network security processors. Prior to this he founded a telecommunications hardware company. Matt has raised over $40M USD in financing from venture capital, strategic investors and through government grants while running or assisting technology companies.
For the last ten years has been an external lecturer at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Sydney, teaching Network Security, and starting in 2010, Technology Venture Creation. He is the co-author of over 20 US patent applications.
Matt is a prolific speaker and has spoken at or featured in the Summit Series, the New York Times, Bloomberg TV, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, The Atlantic, Switzer, BRW and The Economist. In 2012 he was selected out of a field of 600 presenters to be one of 20 featured speakers at South by South West in Austin, Texas (SXSW), which is one of the world's largest interactive, music, film and technology festivals.
In 2006, he was awarded the State Pearcey Award for contribution to the IT&T industry. In 2010 he was named Alumnus of the Year for the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Sydney. In 2011, Smart Company named him in the 10 most influential Australians in IT. In 2011 he was named inaugural BRW Entrepreneur of the Year, by Australia's most prestigious business publication. He was also named the Ernst & Young Technology Entrepreneur of the Year 2011.
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Darren Williams
Chief Technology Officer
BSc (Hons I) PhD (Computer Science)
Darren Williams is the CTO of Freelancer.com. Formerly, he was the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer at Sensory Networks. As such, he was the principal architect and primary driver of Sensory Networks' technology. Dr. Williams has an extensive background in security, protocols, networking and software.
Prior to co-founding Sensory Networks, Darren lectured in Computer Science at the University of Sydney in a variety of areas to post-graduates and under-graduates. He had previously co-founded network security consultancy Infilsec and developed software & intellectual property for Dilithium Networks, a next-generation telephony start-up. His expertise within the security area is broad and covers protocol, software, embedded and kernel level security. Dr. Williams has authored numerous articles and papers on security vulnerabilities and networking, and has spoken at a number of international conferences.
Dr. Williams holds a first class honours degree in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Computer Science specialising in computer networking from the University of Sydney.
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Neil Katz
Chief Financial Officer
BCom (Hons)
Neil Katz is the group CFO. Neil has over 20 years of of experience in finance, accounting and general management roles across a number of industries During the past nine years Neil has held the positions of CFO with Threatmetrix, Hicom International, Aptrix and Sensory Networks - all being innovative and high growth start up companies in the engineering and IT sectors. Neil has extensive experience in corporate restructuring, capital raising activities and played a key role in the sale of Aptrix to IBM.
Neil holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) degree in Financial Management obtained from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia.
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Saif Bonar
Country Manager - UK
MSc Information and Knowledge Management
As UK Country Manager Saif is responsible for all areas of Freelancer.co.uk operations including marketing, communications and general management. His primary objective is to raise the profile of the Freelancer brand within the UK and ensure it retains its market leading position in the UK and achieving dominance of the UK SME outsourcing market.
Prior to joining Freelancer Saif ran an outsourcing comparison site where he produced quarterly reports analysing the leading outsourcing marketplaces. He has an in-depth knowledge of the sector gained through a combination of his previous experience at WhichLance and over eight years experience working on Freelance marketplaces as both a buyer and provider of services. Saif's former business, Tailor Made Support, founded in 2005 specialised in providing low-cost, high-quality support services for small businesses in the UK and further afield. He was one of the first people to ever crowd-fund a business, by auctioning revenue shares in an Internet Cafe on Ebay in 2005, a feat for which he was short-listed for the Shell LiveWire Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Earlier in his career Saif had experience in the non-profit sector where he was responsible for IT strategy and systems at the UK's largest Youth Charity. Before that he worked variously in advertising, marketing, pr, publishing, finance and administrative roles for businesses ranging from small nightclubs through to multinational conglomerates and organisations including the Health Professions Council and the Metropolitan Police. His first .com SurfLondon was launched in 1997.
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David Harrison
Vice President of Engineering
David Harrison is the Vice President of Engineering at Freelancer.com, and has been responsible for leading the engineering team in its design and implementation of the web-scale features that have allowed it to handle the massive growth Freelancer has experienced, and support the millions of users that regularly use the site. He has led the company's adoption of cloud based technologies and scalable architecture solutions, and is a co-author on a number of patent applications.
Previously David has been the Chief Technical Officer at 3rdSense, an Australian based company specialising in casual gaming and online gaming networks, prior to which he was a partner in an IT security consultancy providing auditing and secured infrastructure management services.
David is a regular speaker and has recently spoken at events including the Sydney Vivid Festival, and the Amazon Web Services Cloud Tour, as well as The Australian, Australian Financial Review MIS, and Sky News.
David holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science from the University of Sydney.
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Shane Stewart
Vice President, Customer Experience
Shane Stewart, Vice President of Customer Experience is responsible for ensuring Freelancer.com users have an exceptional user experience when visiting our site and when interacting with our support team. In addition Shane oversees the global operations management for our Sydney and Manila offices.
Freelancer.com has grown exponentially over the last few years as has our support team. We are focused on continually improving our service, aiming to exceed expectations of the online customer experience. Shane is the architect of Freelancer's support structure, providing staff with an engaging and rewarding workplace. Concentrating on staff development, training and retention we have built and continue to grow a dedicated and very experienced team passionate about the site and its members.
Shane has over 20 years experience in management, sales and customer service in a variety of service industries including technology, energy, finance and hospitality.
He is currently undertaking his MBA (Executive) at the Australian Graduate School of Management (UNSW).