LEADER IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Technology leader with a zeal for nurturing high-performance teams and promoting professional growth skilled in transforming development testing and delivery practices with a focus on automation and efficiency. Strong advocate for a collaborative approach to quality security and reliability aligning with business goals. Promoted systems thinking fast feedback and working in small batches to increase throughput and reduce risk. Coached developers on best practices design patterns branching strategies and building quality into work from the start.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

• Transformed the testing practice at a leading hospitality company to an automated testing approach resulting in a 40% improvement in speed to market and a 50% reduction in production defects.
• Championed the inception of a DevOps culture establishing shared services teams that enabled self-service CI/CD capabilities for product teams and delivered an internal developer portal (IDP) which enabled teams to deliver solutions fast and bring 4x more revenue than the most optimistic projections by business leaders.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Bank of the West, Tempe, AZ

Group Manager VP Developer Experience DevOps Platform Teams

May 2021 – Dec 2023

• Pioneered Developer COE established a Developer Portal led agile teams and propelled new technologies and DevOps practices. Created a culture that valued individual contributors and sought to develop them into leaders.
• Established the Developer COE and built a Developer Portal leveraging the Backstage platform from Spotify as an early adopter.
• Effectively built and led a mature Agile team of FTE Contractors and Interns from various technical disciplines to deliver functionality consistently – over 96% success in delivering stories planned in sprints.
• Enabled teams leveraging platforms to deliver new products to market as fast as 36 hours.
• Set strategic direction and continuously pushed the envelope on bringing new technologies into the bank. Introduced a DevOps Dashboard in the Developer Portal to help guide teams on their journey of adopting DevOps practices.
• Mentored and successfully promoted people into both people and technical leadership roles.
• Created a high-performance culture and work environment where talented engineers developed their skills and delivered quality work consistently. Hired and nurtured exceptionally talented people.
• Selected for the exclusive “Leaders for Tomorrow” leadership program at Bank of the West.

Senior IT Manager VP DevOps Platform Team

December 2018 - May 2021

• Led strategic initiatives and agile squads in data analytics strategy and digital innovation for profitable growth.
• Collaborated with Arizona State University and successfully established a talent pipeline through internships. Converted two interns into productive full-time employees over the last two years.
• Led a cross-functional team as a Manager and Product Owner in standing up shared tools enabling CI/CD practices for the rest of the organization. Prioritized highest-value efforts regularly.
• Built value stream maps and evaluated needs for shared tools. Developed a roadmap for installing configuring and operationalizing shared tools for self-service capabilities to Agile teams.
• Assisted in evaluating Agile tools frameworks and practices for the bank as a leader on the Digital Transformation team.
• Kicked off Kanban and Scrum teams and coached new Scrum masters POs and Engineers on Agile. Led the organization by example. Practiced transformational leadership and influenced others without direct supervision to adopt new working methods and achieve great results.
• Coached multiple teams on adopting DevOps technical practices to support their Agile initiatives.
• T-shaped technical skills covering the entire stack from coding testing security containerization deployment automation and cloud technologies.

Best Western International Inc., Phoenix, AZ

Senior IT Manager Continuous Testing Continuous Delivery

June 2016 - December 2018

• Created a strategic roadmap and transformed the entire QA testing practice in multiple phases bringing the capabilities of running automated tests against current versions of browsers running in parallel in the cloud and mobile devices on-premise.
• Developed and executed a training program for employees and successfully converted three manual testers into quality engineers. Recruited multiple talented engineers to bring in capabilities not available on the team.
• Reduced headcount in offshore testers by leveraging test automation.
• Established and led a platform team to drive enterprise transition to DevOps practices developed the CI/CD toolchain and mentored teams in adopting the tools and techniques. Developed a tool adoption roadmap for each team based on current maturity set target dates and followed up on implementation.
• Presented strategic vision and execution plans to senior leaders and team leaders.
• Managed a team of 14 FTEs and 16 vendor contractors. Led two managers multiple engineers architects and manual testers.
• Reduced cost by replacing expensive underutilized tools with open-source alternatives; Collaborated with multiple levels of management and legal team to create an open-source policy and allow the use of open-source tools throughout the organization.

Senior IT Manager Development Manager

January 2015 - June 2016

• Established engineering principles and practices for the team and led architecture decisions. Enforced standards for quality security maintainability and performance. Reduced technical debt.
• Presented findings from value stream mapping with senior leaders from both development and infrastructure on procuring tools addressing scope justification for resources and budget plans.
• Built and managed a high-performing team of engineers that brought complementary skillsets to design and deliver scalable and extensible systems to address complex business challenges.
• Responsible for applications in multiple domains including credit card payment processing security property management and content management.

Senior IT Engineer

January 2013 - January 2015

• Successfully led onshore/offshore teams tasked with a complete re-write of legacy systems from PL/SQL to JSF/J2EE and migrated an application from unsupported OAServer to JBoss.
• Implemented a new application security and identity management model utilizing CA Identity Minder CA SiteMinder and RedHat Directory Server LDAP.
• Partnered closely with vendors to ensure projects were completed on time within budget following industry best practices and quality expectations.

Choice Hotels International, Scottsdale, AZ

Programmer Analyst II

February 2007 - January 2013

• Implemented web services and aided in architecture discussions as a member of the SOA competency center.
• Modified enterprise software application to support production redeployment feature provided by WebLogic ensuring better application uptime.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Programming Languages – JAVA | JSP | React | Nodejs | ChatGPT

Continuous Delivery – Jenkins | GitLab | Artifactory | SonarQube | Jira | Rally | SausceLabs

Containers and Cloud – Docker | Kubernetes | Helm | AWS

SOFT SKILLS

Leadership: Inspiring teams to excel influencing without direct authority empathy

Communication: Clear, concise, and persuasive

Team Building: Cultivating talent and collaboration

Strategic Thinking: Aligning tech with business objectives

EDUCATION

Master of Business Administration (MBA) Dual Degree Program with Thunderbird, Arizona State University, Glendale, AZ

Master of International Management, Concentration: Supply Chain Management | Global Product Development, Thunderbird, Glendale, AZ

Bachelor of Science (BS) Computer Science, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

CERTIFICATIONS

SAFe - SPC (Agile Coach) Certified

DevOps Institute - DevOps Leader

Amazon Web Services (AWS) - Cloud Practitioner