British consultancy BJSS hires senior leaders in Australia

British consultancy firm BJSS has been quietly building its local ranks in recent times via a series of senior appointments.

Established in 1993 and headquartered in Leeds, BJSS first landed in the Asia Pacific via an office launch in Melbourne toward the end of 2020. The technology consultancy has a global headcount of approximately 2,500, and appears to now be making a move to expand its regional capabilities.

In addition to the elevation of Damian Coyne as Australia country manager, BJSS has recruited Arunath Kandasamy as AI & automation delivery leader, Simeon Lobo as head of data & AI, and Alistair Wilkinson as head of cloud transformation.

Damian Coyne takes over as Australia country manager after serving as head of business development since mid-2022, prior to which he spent three years at Versent (now a part of Telstra Purple) in growth and strategy leadership roles. Earlier he was Asia Pacific director of partnerships at Contino ahead of its own headline acquisition by Cognizant, and also headed Victoria for Kloud, yet another Telstra pick up.

Coyne is now joined by twice former colleague Simeon Lobo as head of data & AI out of Sydney, with Lobo having spent the last four and a half years as data & insights director and principal advisor at Versent after a preceding one-year stint at Contino. Earlier resume entries include three years at Atos as a managing consultant and a decade between Spark New Zealand and Optus.

Alistair Wilkinson, another brief former colleague of Coyne, has joined BJSS from IBM as head of cloud transformation. Having previously served for over a decade and a half at IBM, Wilkinson arrived back at the global tech giant following its purchase of SxiQ. where he spent close to five years and led its solutions design practice. In between IBM/SxiQ stints, he also spent time in a cloud role at Telstra.

Arunath Kandasamy joined BJSS as AI delivery lead in Sydney after an eight-year tour of the Big Four, including his most recent role at KPMG where he managed the delivery of its generative AI tool Kymchat. Prior to that, he spent a brief stint with PwC in Sydney and five years with EY in Malaysia, having originally kick-started his ICT career in the Kuala Lumpur office of Accenture.