Dusko Susnjar

My journey at Mitel Sweden AB as a Senior R&D Director was about leading end-to-end R&D initiatives for Cloud and on-prem programs for products used by Service providers and Large and Very Large Enterprise organizations where budget responsibility for budgets up to 15 M USD per year was a part of the job. Implementing SAFe Agile methodology was a pivotal move that sparked organizational transformation and innovation not only in Sweden but also internationally. With the help of 8 direct reports, I was leading an organization with approx. 140 people in 4 countries over 3 time zones. Leading the IT operation for cloud-native programs and dev-env was a part of the role too.
One of the highlights of this role was the successful reduction of customer-reported bugs by 10% RoR, accompanied by a strategic cost-saving initiative through the migration of our Development Environment to the cloud which resulted in approx 15% cost saving. After successful re-negotiation of some of the external vendors, achieved cost saving of 5% and 2% for 2021 and 2022 respectively.

Stepping into the role of an IT Architect at Handelsbanken was an exciting phase. Here, my primary focus was on UCC operations, leading a team of 15 direct reports both locally and internationally. Being a certified SAFe Agile cross-domain Architect and acting as a change leader, I contributed significantly to the SAFe Agile way of working. Building and maintaining strong relationships with operators, service providers, and suppliers, locally and internationally, were also part of my responsibilities within the vendor management function, together with SLA/OLA creation and follow-up.

During my tenure as a Global System Manager, I had the privilege of managing global operations for Unified Communications. My role was to optimize scalability, reliability, and performance while ensuring a smooth migration from the legacy UC solution to a virtualized, private cloud-based infrastructure. Team leading (7 persons in Sweden) was also a part of the job.

Joining TDC Sverige AB as a Senior Technical Specialist, I took charge of managing 2nd line support for the Ericsson/Aastra/Mitel product portfolio. Not only did I lead a team of support technicians and actively contribute to product management, but I also had the opportunity to provide technical expertise to major VoIP projects both locally and internationally and served as a member of the Special bid group within TDC Sverige AB (i.e. SEB IP project, NasdaqOMX, Folksam, AVIS, etc.).
One of the greatest achievements during this period was Gartner’s classification as “the best-in-class corporate telephony solutions” for the solution that I made the architecture for, designed and led the implementation of for the Swedish IRS (Skatteverket) in 2009 as well as the first-ever integration of external applications (Microsoft LCS server) with a traditional PBX systems that I have realized during 2006.