Hi. You can call me Kelso.

I joined this group to bring an end-user perspective to the work that Data Services is doing since the data engineers and data scientists from my previous team are huge consumers of Data Services' offerings. Upon joining the group, I quickly identified the need for reorganization. Data Services was structured based on technology, rather than value, so I worked closely with my leaders to categorize the different types of value we produced and to create a mission statement for each. This led to the formation of teams aligned with each type of value, resulting in a more cohesive and impactful organization. To further refine our portfolio, I conducted an evaluation and made tough decisions on which products to keep and which to deprecate.

I work every day to align my teams' work with the overall goals and objectives of the company, allocate resources to maximize impact and minimize risk, and foster strong relationships with stakeholders both within and outside the company. I am committed to effective communication and collaboration, risk management, and continuous improvement, all while mentoring and developing my team members to create a culture of learning and growth. Data Services is supporting massive data workloads across the organization, including over 1.9 million pipeline runs and 65 thousand files transferred between first-, second-, and third-party sources and destinations, all while helping to ensure quality in our pipelines, compliance with privacy regulations, and fostering an ecosystem of shared data products.

I am also working with a group of leaders across 84.51º and Kroger to develop a joint data strategy for Kroger and out two organizations. The goal is to create scalable, self-service tools and establish federated computational governance, resulting in a product-oriented approach to data development and design with a focus on domain-oriented solutions.

• Python, PySpark, Hadoop, Databricks, Azure, Organizational Leadership, Conflict Resolution, Agile (Scrum, Kanban), Power BI

• Self-Service and Managed-Service Data Movement
• Data Quality tooling focused on monitoring freshness, distribution, volume, lineage, and schema of data
• Alation Enterprise Data Catalog
• Managed Airflow
• Privacy Compliance Service
• EDNA: an event-driven notification and action system that empowers users to track and respond to changing states across the company. It functions as a company-wide state machine, allowing users to specify and trigger actions based on specified state combinations

• 1.9M Pipeline Runs per Year
• 65K Files Moved per Year
• 20 Team Size

My previous work as a lead developer on Prism Measurement led to my promotion to leading the group. Our primary focus was to curate digital advertising metrics and identify shifts in consumer shopping behavior resulting from advertising campaigns. I streamlined operations for high-volume data analysis, achieving high-fidelity campaign performance measurement for Kroger and its CPG partners. To enable metrics-driven decision-making, we delivered the curated metrics and consumer behavior shifts through compelling storytelling, leveraging business intelligence tools.

To scale data operations, I played a critical role assisting the entire Prism platform adopt a data mesh approach. I collaborated with various directors, product owners, and tech leads in establishing subdomains within the platform, improving data organization and accessibility. Additionally, I managed the migration of our company's measurement code from a legacy SAS analytics solution to modularized PySpark on Databricks in Azure. This enabled the re-use of code to customize the measurement of campaigns and resulted in a streamlined process and improved efficiency.

In my two-year tenure as the Director of Prism Measurement, our team achieved tremendous success by supporting a 10X/100X increase in revenue year over year, expanding our product offerings, and successfully migrating our measurement code to a more efficient platform. While I'm proud of these accomplishments, I'm especially proud of the opportunity to mentor and lead an exceptional group of individuals who were instrumental in our team's success. Thanks to their hard work and dedication, two of our team members were promoted to director-level roles, a testament to their talent and the culture of growth and development we fostered.

• AngularJS, Python, PySpark, Hadoop, Databricks, Azure, Organizational Leadership, Conflict Resolution, Agile (Scrum, Kanban), Power BI, Tableau, and other BI Tools

• In-Flight Daily Attributable Sales Reporting
• Post-Campaign Reporting including Attributable Sales, Incremental Sales, and Media Metrics
• Exposure Data Mart providing curated log-level exposure data from many third-party partners to the organization
• PySpark measurement modules allowing for bespoke custom measurement of media campaigns

• 10X/100X Year-over-Year Revenue Growth Enabled
• 1 Billion+ Rows of Transaction Data Processed Annually
• 2 Team Members Promoted to Director-Level Roles
• 30 Team Size

This was the role that stretched me the most technically. My first role was as a mobile application prototyper, where I created and maintained prototypes for multiple mobile applications. The one that sticks out most was the work I did on Checkmate. Checkmate was a native mobile iPad application that simplified the testing of printed coupons that would be mailed out to customers. The application was well-received by testers, as it eliminated the need for time-consuming and error-prone manual data entry.

After this, I worked on my first Angular application, Agatha Glass, which served as a prototype front-end for a data science-as-a-service platform. This app was backed by a Spring Boot backend that I also developed. From this work, I moved onto a joint application/data development team that was maintaining NomNom, a coupon intake tool that validated all the necessary fields describing a given coupon in our automated intake systems. This project was my first exposure to data development, and I learned to use Scala, PySpark, and Hadoop as I led the team in maintaining and evolving the application.

Finally, I moved into the Prism Measurement space, working as a team of two with a product owner to develop a reporting system for coupon performance and analyzing shopping behavior shifts in our customers. My previous experience in data development proved to be invaluable here, as I put those principles to good use in building and scaling the platform. As the team grew from just the two of us to around 20 people, I was promoted to director of this and 2 other related teams in the space.

• Java, Spring Boot, Objective-C, Cocoa, Swift, AngularJS, Scala, PySpark, Hadoop, Organizational Leadership, Conflict Resolution, Agile (Scrum, Kanban), Tableau and other BI Tools

• Checkmate: An iPad application paired with a Spring-Boot backend to simplify coupon QA
• Agatha Glass: an Angular front-end/Spring-boot backed application to serve as the prototype for a data science-as-a-service platform
• NomNom: a coupon intake validation app that automated QA processes for our Customer Success Analysts
• Prism Measurement Reporting

Upon rejoining Cardinal Solutions as a Managing Consultant, my skills as a mobile developer had reached industry-leading levels thanks to my experience at Black Pixel and mentoring from experienced organizational leaders. As a result, I was tasked with consulting on the company's highest-profile mobile projects and leading a team of team leaders in the practice.

One of my most notable engagements during this time was working with 84.51º to help them set up their "mobile development factory". In this role, I oversaw the entire process, including figuring out all the necessary elements to develop mobile applications as needed, such as security, training plans, and CI/CD server setup. Although my engagement with them was originally only two weeks, we expanded it to six months to ensure everything was set up properly. During this time, I worked closely with the architecture team to overcome challenges like getting a Mac mini into their data center and debugging low-level Cocoa framework code to figure out why their security software wasn't allowing the iOS simulator to run on their macs.

After completing my work with 84.51º, I moved to Fifth Third Bank to lead the upgrade of their mobile check deposit capabilities. In this role, I introduced the team to Protocol-oriented programming on the iOS side and re-implemented the functionality from the ground-up, fixing a host of user-reported bugs in the process.

• Java, Android Framework, Objective-C, Cocoa, Swift, Organizational Leadership, Agile Scrum

• Native Mobile Android and iOS Applications

When I landed a role with Black Pixel, one of the elite boutique mobile development firms, I felt like I had "hit the big time". The company was known as one of the top places that Apple recommended for mobile app development consulting, and I was surrounded by a team of experienced rockstars who were more than happy to share their knowledge with me. While most of their focus was on iOS, I was one of the first native Android developers that they had hired. As a result, I had the unique opportunity to assist with the Android implementations of apps like ESPN, the NY Times, and many others. One of my most significant accomplishments during my time at Black Pixel was working on the redesign of the front page for the NY Times app.

My experience with the Android platform also proved valuable to the Vice President of engineering, who was new to the platform. I was able to leverage my experience with both iOS and Android tooffer guidance on how to strategize around delivery of Android applications, and I was able to translate key concepts to help him understand the platform even though he was an iOS developer. Working at Black Pixel was a game-changing experience, and it taught me a lot about the power of collaboration and knowledge-sharing in the tech industry.

• Java, Android Framework, Objective-C, Cocoa

• Native Mobile Android and iOS Applications

As Cardinal Solutions began to invest in a native mobile development consulting practice, I was hired as their first dedicated native mobile developer. While working on mobile development projects for various clients, I grew the practice by taking on additional responsibilities, including serving as a team lead responsible for HR management of 5 consultants based in Cincinnati. Along the way, I convinced leadership to hire a dedicated graphic designer, helping them understand that user-centered design requires more than just adding "pretty pictures" at the end of a project. With my efforts, we grew the team to 10 developers and continued to deliver successful mobile development projects for clients.

This experience at Cardinal was a turning point in my career as it turned me into an experienced software developer, with Agile principles ingrained in me. I learned how to drive projects to completion and became an effective team leader. One of my favorite memories at Cardinal was leading a team of 3 developers fresh out of college through the implementation of a "Square competitor" for a large payments company in Cincinnati. As I taught them the ropes of mobile development, they helped me understand new concepts and technologies in mobile development being taught in new University courses. A lot of what I learned at Cardinal shaped me into the technologist that I am today.

• Java, Android Framework, Objective-C, Cocoa, Linux, Spring Boot

• Native Mobile Android and iOS Applications

While working at the Cincinnati Insurance companies, I purchased my first Android smartphone, a Motorola Cliq, and was immediately inspired by the possibilities it opened up for people. This inspired me to start developing an app to track my checkbook balance using the Android SDK (1.5). A graphic designer friend saw my efforts and decided to help out—rescuing me from my underdeveloped design sensibilities, leading to the founding of Vervv LLC and the launch of our first Android app in the Google Play Store.

Buoyed by the success of our first app, Ledgerist, we developed our first native mobile iOS application, Convertr, a unit conversion app, and later ported it to the Android platform. As a side business, Vervv taught me a lot about running a small business, including support, finances, and marketing. Our hard work paid off when we were pursued by T-Mobile, Verizon, and Amazon to be included in their respective app stores, resulting in Convertr and Ledgerist being featured by Amazon as "apps of the day", with each application boasting over half a million downloads. Additionally, we were featured on the Google Play store and as an Apple staff pick in several countries—further boosting those downloads and earning both applications a 4.5/5-star rating.

• Java, Android Framework, Objective-C, Cocoa

• Convertr: A native mobile iOS and Android unit conversion app
• Ledgerist: A native mobile Android budgeting app

• 500K+ Downloads between the Apple and Google Play Stores
• 4.5 star Average Rating

I started my career as a business expert at the Cincinnati Insurance Companies. My training focused on calculating premiums for commercial insurance policies, and I was hired by a development team because of this expertise. At the time, they believed they could teach me to "write a little code" while leveraging my business knowledge. Fortunately, I was surrounded by a group of experienced, intelligent software developers who took me under their wing and showed me the ropes. I learned how to write business rules using IBM ILOG JRules and became passionate about programming. I consumed everything I could find on the subject, mainly through openly available coursework from MIT and Stanford.

As my skills grew, I took over ownership of maintaining all of the development tooling for the business rules development team. Eventually, I even owned the integration between the rules engine and the server-side systems for eCLAS BOP/DBOP. Toward the end of my tenure with the Cincinnati Insurance Companies, I founded my own company with a friend and began working on native mobile Android applications.

My supervisor at Cincinnati Insurance was impressed with my native mobile knowledge and decided to allowed me to develop a native mobile prototype for a flagship application for the company. These experiences fueled my passion for technology and helped me build a successful foundation for a career in the field.

• Java, IBM ILOG JRules, MKS, Eclipse, Android, IBM Websphere, DB2, C#, .Net

• eCLAS BOP/DBOP - A management system for small business insurance policies
• Flagship native Android mobile application prototype