VP, Software Engineering at Propio Language Services

Nov 2022 to Nov 2024. Overland Park, KS, USA

Led, built, and mentored the company's Software Engineering (Development, DevOps, and Quality Assurance) teams and their practices, processes, and direction. Worked closely with company leadership and other stakeholders to define, plan, and implement the company's software strategy and roadmap.

• Drove the evaluation and adoption of new and cutting-edge technologies, tools, and techniques to deliver rapid development of feature requests, frequent high-quality deliverables, reliable and efficient applications and services, and high customer satisfaction.
• Provided leadership, guidance and mentoring as I grew the software development organization from 8 to 30+ engineers building containerized .NET, JVM, and NodeJS applications, services, and automated test suites on AWS in C#, Java, Typescript, JavaScript, and Python.
• Piloted several AI projects across the business and suite of software products, in particular for AI-driven automated real time transcription of multi-party phone and video conversations and for AI-assisted software development, testing, and documentation of code, tests, and requirements.
• Worked closely with the IT Ops teams in implementing Infrastructure as Code and automation pipelines to help ensure maximum reliability and performance across all products and services.
• Worked closely with the Security and Compliance teams to help ensure a best-in-class security posture across all products and services.
• Participated in Business Development, Acquisition, Client Success, and Client On-boarding efforts across the company.

Principle Industry Specialist at Amazon

Nov 2020 to Aug 2022. Austin, TX, USA

Helped lead and drive the automation and optimization of the worldwide Privacy and Compliance efforts of the Amazon Privacy team by implementing, executing, and monitoring Privacy by Design principles, policies and practices.

• Worked with software development teams, financial teams, legal teams, and privacy and security specialists across Amazon to define and build automated solutions using both internal and external tools and technologies.
• The key technical partner in successfully achieving the CDO Privacy 2021 S-Team (highest level leadership) goal to perform privacy reviews on 600+ high priority services and onboard them to our DSAR and Deletion systems.
• Focused on automation and scalability of privacy auditing and compliance testing tools and their integration with existing security and privacy systems handling DSAR and Data Deletion requests.
• Built the infrastructure and a framework for the automated preparation and distribution of code reviews for privacy-related issues using the AWS CDK and open source and commercial tools such as CodeGuru and PMD.
• Drove privacy and security policy adoption measurement and monitoring, roadmap coordination and integration across multiple development teams, risk assessment, gap analysis, and remediation planning.
• Trained and mentored both internal and contract hires on Amazon privacy and security tools, processes and practices.

VP, Software Engineering at Code Healer Group

Jul 2018 to Nov 2020. Austin, TX, USA

Returned to Code Healer Group to provide expert software architecture, development, security, management, and leadership consulting services to its clients. Key client contracts:

• Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, NY, USA www.hss.edu U.S. #1 in orthopedics 11 years in a row.
• Whole Foods Market, Austin, TX, USA www.wholefoodsmarket.com The world's leader in natural and organic foods.
• Paradigm, Madison, WI, USA www.myparadigm.com Leading technology and services provider for the building products industry.

General activities:

• Leading and participating in the implementation of local and cloud-based DevOps infrastructure using automation and virtualization tools such as Ansible, CloudFormation, Consul, DataDog, Docker, Jenkins, Packer, Portainer, Terraform, Vagrant, Vault, VirtualBox, and VMware.
• Architecting and building Hybrid High Availability Multi-Tier applications in Scala, Java, C#, Python and JavaScript deployed to AWS Fargate, EC2 and RDS instances, Glue and Lambda jobs, KMS, S3, Secrets Manager, and other AWS services using CloudFormation templates, PowerShell, and the AWS CLI.
• Driving architecture and participating in the implementation of enhanced security policies and practices across Cloud-based applications and systems.
• Leading and participating in the implementation of Agile and Scrum driven practices using tools such as GitLab, Atlassian Jira and Confluence for project management, and Jenkins for continuous integration and automated testing and deployment.
• Consulting with customers and partners on Cloud Migration and Multi-Cloud strategies and implementing Agile, DevSecOps, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), PaaS, SaaS, and IaaS principles for the AWS, Azure and GCP platforms.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at TASCET

Apr 2016 to Jul 2018. Madison, WI, USA

Led and drove the strategic technical direction and architectural vision of the company. Responsible for the design and implementation of the TASCET identity resolution infrastructure, as well as solutions delivery and technology operations management.

• Built the company’s mobile, enterprise strength, FIPS and HIPAA compliant, secure, scalable, cloud based software solution and overseeing its deployment in vertical markets such as healthcare, banking and retail.
• Managed and mentored the technical team coding applications in Java, Objective C, Spring, Python, JavaScript, CSS and HTML to run on Apache Tomcat servers and MySQL / MariaDB / SQL Server databases in Docker containers on CentOS servers in Amazon AWS VPC clouds.
• Implemented comprehensive DevOps-based infrastructure using automation and virtualization tools such as Ansible, Chef, Docker, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Packer, Puppet, Vagrant, VirtualBox, and VMware.
• Led the implementation of Agile Development and Deployment practices and tools, enabling rapid development of feature requests, frequent high quality deliverables and high customer satisfaction.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Baton

Jan 2015 to Mar 2016. Baltimore, MD, USA

One of 4 co-founders of Baton. Led all aspects of the technology practices and strategy of the company. Provided technical leadership, guidance, and mentoring as I led and actively participated in the design, implementation and deployment of a system enabling aggregation and updating of patient care information in real time by the care team.

• Built the company's mobile, enterprise strength, HIPAA compliant, secure, scalable, cloud based software solution, and oversaw its successful deployment at a number of major East Coast hospitals.
• Architected and coded in Groovy, Grails, Java, Objective C, Python, JavaScript, CSS and HTML to run on Apache Tomcat servers and MySQL / MariaDB / SQL Server databases on Ubuntu servers in Amazon AWS VPC clouds.
• Implemented comprehensive DevOps-based infrastructure using automation and virtualization tools that include Ansible, Chef, Packer, Puppet, Vagrant, VirtualBox, and VMware.
• Attended and graduated from the DreamIT Health Baltimore 2015 startup incubator as one of only six companies that were selected from a list of more than a hundred national and international applicants.
• Led the successful implementation of Agile Development and Deployment practices and tools, enabling rapid development of feature requests, frequent high quality deliverables and high customer satisfaction.

Director of Software Development at Fulcrum

Aug 2010 to Oct 2014. Centreville, VA, USA

Led the software development practices, strategy and direction of the company's Civilian division. Provided technical leadership, guidance and mentoring across teams, projects and contracts, and drove the evaluation and adoption of new and cutting-edge technologies, tools and techniques. Actively participated in Business Development efforts across the company.

• Led technical efforts for the winning proposal for the company's largest contract, the $64 million technology contract with the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES).
• Built and led the team that designed and delivered on schedule the tablet-based assessment system for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Technology Based Assessment piloted in 200 schools in 2014, and administered to over 130,000 students across the U.S. in 2015.
• Architected and coded in C#, Java, HTML, Python, JavaScript and CSS built on a Microsoft stack of ASP.NET, MVC, IIS and SQL Server and a mobile stack of Cordova using Angular, Bootstrap, jQuery and other JS frameworks.
• Led and participated in teams developing applications in Unity 3D, having personally built the first application from scratch in C# and architected a shared framework library on which the other applications were built.
• Led the successful implementation of Agile Development and CMMI-Dev practices and tools in multiple teams and projects across the company, significantly increasing customer satisfaction and the quality of deliverables.
• Led technical efforts for the winning proposal for the company's largest contract, a $64 million technology contract with the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES).

Software Architect at Chesapeake Capital Corporation

May 2007 to Jul 2010. Richmond, VA, USA.

Led all aspects of the in-house and outsourced IT software development, including systems and software development architecture, standards and quality control, and hiring, training and managing of in-house and outsourced staff. Reported directly to the Chief Operating Officer.

• Transformed the disparate IT software development efforts into a scalable and reliable, enterprise-ready, suite of software applications and development and operating environments.
• Architected and coded in C#, Visual Basic, HTML, PHP, Python, JavaScript and CSS on a Microsoft stack of ASP.NET, MVC, IIS and SQL Server.
• Championed and led the introduction and successfully implementation of formal SDLC, coding and testing standards, techniques and processes, and a range of automated build and deployment tools.
• Led and oversaw the in-house and outsourced software development teams.
• Pioneered the use of virtualized Development, Test and QA environments isolated from production.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Code Healer Group

Dec 1999 to Apr 2007. Richmond, VA, USA

Co-founded Code Healer Group to build software development tools that improved the quality and performance of software developers' source code. Led the management and implementation of all technology related aspects of the company strategy and direction, and co-architected its business strategy.

• Led the creation and development of commercial software development tools such as CodeHealer, a source code analysis and verification tool used by developers around the globe.
• Architected and coded in Java, C#, Object Pascal, Assembler, HTML, JavaScript, CSS and others on a variety of technologies and operating systems that included Apple, Borland, Microsoft and other open source software.
• Liaised with customers, partners, vendors, and distributors to maximize the knowledge, information and viewpoints on which strategy and implementation decisions were made.
• Oversaw software development consulting, troubleshooting and training services.
• Administrator for DUnit, an Open Source unit testing tool for Delphi with more than 10,000 regular users.
• Presented at software development conferences and user groups across North America and Europe.

Other adventures

Imperial College of Science and Technology

BSc Eng. (Hons) in Computer Science. London, UK

Repeatedly rated 3rd in Europe and 8th in the world in the Times Higher World University Rankings, Imperial College London is a science-based institution with a reputation for excellence in teaching and research that provides world-class scholarship, education and research in science, engineering, management and medicine.

Activities: Student member of both Chaps Club and Links Club (invitation-only sports and social clubs).

Karrass Effective Negotiating course

IBM Sales School