Endava promotes Chris Carydias and Shelley Beeston to new roles

Following three acquisitions over the past year, global tech consultancy Endava has bolstered its Australian leadership with the appointment of Chris Carydias and Shelley Beeston to new roles.

Chris Carydias and Shelley Beeston both joined the technology consulting firm following its acquisition of Lexicon toward the end of last year. Carydias, the digital consultancy’s founder and former managing director, becomes financial services business manager at Endava, while Beeston has been appointed client partner and venture lead.

Carydias brings two and a half decades worth of IT and consulting experience to his new role, including eight years at the helm of Lexicon.

Prior to establishing Lexicon in 2016, Carydias spent time as head of delivery at Melbourne boutique Fabric Group, before which he was a principal consultant with Thoughtworks for five years and a software engineer at Capgemini and IBM.

Beeston was also a principal consultant at Thoughtworks, spending nine years at the consultancy including as its global practice lead for product design before joining Vodafone as head of service strategy. Following a later stint as a general manager at Telstra, Beeston established her own strategic design consultancy before crossing to Lexicon, where she served as head of studios prior to its acquisition last October.

Since then, Endava has picked up two more local companies – design & engineering advisory Mudbath in May, followed by software solutions provider DEK Technologies one month later – rapidly swelling the consultancy’s Asia Pacific headcount to 1,200 after only first arriving with a small team to Australia in mid-2021. Now, Carydias has been tasked with ‘operationalising’ Endava’s global strategy at a local level, while Beeston will focus on growth and innovation. 

“Our significant investment in Australia and APAC is driven by global client demands in the region and the opportunities to integrate great businesses and talent into Endava,” stated Steve Harding, who continues on as Australia managing director and head of delivery for APAC. “After a seamless integration process, we are now fully equipped to deploy all our services and capabilities in Australia, just as we do in other markets like the US and Europe.”

Globally, the UK-headquartered consultancy has a headcount in the region of 12,000 professionals, with a focus on digital transformation, agile development, and intelligent automation services for clients in the financial services, technology, telecom & media, consumer & retail, mobility, and healthcare sectors.

In addition to strengthening its Australian leadership, the firm has also been boosting its nearshore capabilities in Malaysia and Vietnam to provide greater scale.

“The application and understanding of emerging technologies are still maturing both globally and locally, but Endava is well-positioned as a technology partner to bridge the gap between digital demand and reality,” Harding concluded. “We understand how to approach complex situations with bespoke solutions that continuously drive businesses forward, because evolution never stops and the digital journey to stay ahead, never ends.”