NAB loses Cloud Guild founder to AWS

NAB has lost the founder of its much-lauded internal upskilling program Cloud Guild, which is credited as reversing the bank’s IT hiring fortunes.

Manager engineer and guild founder Paul Silver announced his departure on LinkedIn, and said he will move to an as yet undisclosed role at AWS.

“I have had an incredible time and journey with NAB, and from a personal perspective I have grown and learnt so much,” Silver said.

“I was truly supported in my time with NAB and really appreciate everyone’s help and advice.

 “A big thanks to all those who helped in the NAB Cloud Guild making it a global success. I feel very humbled to have worked with such great teams and passionate people.”

NAB launched the Cloud Guild two years ago, initially to train more than 2000 NAB employees in cloud computing and particularly the use of AWS.

More than 4500 employees had been through Guild training at the last public count, with the bank home to seven percent of all AWS certified people in A/NZ - second only to AWS itself.

Cloud Guild was a critical part of NAB rebuilding internal capability after a long period of IT outsourcing.

Together with other tools and programs, it has helped NAB scale its migration into one of the largest multi-cloud environments in Australia.

The bank announced earlier this year its new end goal is to be 100 percent in the cloud.

NAB championed Silver as its ‘Cloud Warrior’.

“My role in NAB is to train all of our technical staff and all of our business staff to understand what cloud means to them and what it means to the bank, how we can make sure that we're secure and safe, but also how we can do it well and how we can do it right,” he said in a video on NAB’s site.

“I love what I do. This is the first time in any organisation I've ever been at that we can actually really drive massive change culturally.

“Cloud technology excites me the most at NAB at the moment. We are doing some great things.”

Last year, Silver drew a direct correlation between Cloud Guild and NAB’s hiring fortunes.

“From a hiring perspective, I go to meetups quite often, and as a bank when you go to meetups and you say 'we're hiring' it's almost like a laugh, 'I don't want to work for a bank, that's ridiculous',” he said.

“I had that an awful lot, until we started the Guild. Once we started the Guild, now if I say 'NAB's hiring' and I put my hand up, I've got 15-16 people come over and want to have a conversation about the technology we're using.

“We may not hire them all but they've got a real interest in what NAB's doing. It's been great.”

Silver has extensively documented the process of standing up the Cloud Guild in a three part series on NAB's technology blog.