Professional Summary
Accomplished technical leader with 19 years of expertise in
consulting, enterprise architecture, and software development,
consistently delivering scalable, high-performance solutions that meet
complex user needs. Adept at driving innovation through platform
engineering, developer experience optimization, and agile methodologies,
I thrive in shaping efficient systems that empower teams and accelerate
project delivery. My proven ability to understand user requirements and
translate them into actionable, transformational software solutions
ensures successful outcomes for large-scale enterprise projects.
Work Experience
Cisco Systems, Inc. San Jose, CA
Principal
Engineer, CX Engineering Jan 2021 - Nov
2024
Provided technical leadership as a member of Cisco’s Senior Technical
Talent (STT) organization, driving high-impact decisions, setting
architectural standards, and aligning solutions with business goals.
Mentored engineers, guiding them through complex challenges and
supporting long-term career growth. Collaborated with cross-functional
teams, including product managers, engineers, and architects, to ensure
technical solutions aligned with business goals. Tackled complex
problems, introduced innovative tools and methods, and strategically
planned for long-term scalability and system evolution. Actively
contributed code to critical areas to set a high standard for quality
and influence technical culture across teams, driving the engineering
organization’s long-term success.
Key Accomplishments
- Led the migration of critical CX Cloud components to a
next-generation Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and CI/CD (CircleCI)
platform, improving deployment efficiency and cloud infrastructure
scalability by developing custom, reusable Terraform modules for
containerized deployments.
- Responsible for CX Engineering’s CI/CD Pipelines, successfully
migrated Terraform state within a critical 2-week deadline.
- Chaired an architecture review board to foster a culture of feedback
on technical decisions, aiming to enhance technical alignment across
engineering teams through a Request for Comments (RFC) and Architecture
Decision Record (ADR) process.
- Led the architecture design for Cisco’s “Hardware as a Service”
offering, creating a REST and Kafka Stream-based interface for data
exchange. Collaborated with IT and engineering teams to ensure seamless
integration, meeting critical business requirements with urgency.
- Pioneered the development of an on-prem Application Platform to
standardize and automate the building, deployment, and operation of
microservices, overcoming existing fragmentation and enhancing Developer
Experience.
Salesforce / Heroku San Francisco, CA
Director,
Customer Solution Architect, Heroku Nov 2018 -
Jan 2021
Served as the primary technical liaison for 10 of Heroku’s largest
enterprise clients. Leveraged expertise in diagnosing and resolving
technical issues to navigate critical challenges, such as performance
degradation from large data transfers and outages due to improper
architectures.
Key Accomplishments
- Contributed to Heroku Support’s Leadership team by shaping proactive
customer engagement strategies, including designing and leading the
development of tools to identify at-risk customers and deliver
preemptive support, effectively mitigating the risk of production-down
incidents.
- Established efficient incident and escalation protocols, reducing
resolution times during major outages.
Director,
Customer Success Group, Lightning Cloud Practice, Salesforce Feb 2018 - Nov 2018
Collaborated with CXO-level executives from Salesforce’s top 25
accounts, delivering tailored recommendations for Lightning Platform
migrations, resulting in improved customer engagement and satisfaction.
Responsibilities included gathering detailed business requirements,
analyzing customizations within each Salesforce Org, performing gap
analyses, and collaborating with Salesforce Technology & Product
teams to address functional gaps.
Key Accomplishment
- Led customer enablement initiatives with a focus on change
management to ensure smooth transitions, contributing to a rise of over
40,000 monthly active users (MAU) on Salesforce Lightning within six
months.
Served as the subject matter expert in custom applications,
integrations, open-source development, and enterprise architecture,
specializing in Heroku. Leveraged hands-on expertise in application
engineering, system architecture, DevOps, and product development to
ensure efficient, high-quality solution delivery across multiple
projects. Led cross-cloud, high-risk architecture assessments and deal
scoping, providing strategic guidance on the design and implementation
of scalable, forward-looking enterprise architectures, which improved
client outcomes and mitigated potential risks in complex cloud
deployments.
Key Accomplishments
- Designed the architecture for a Targeted Offer Engine for a major
Canadian financial institution, delivering a scalable, event-driven
system that processed marketing offers based on transactional spending.
This solution, built on Heroku, integrated with Salesforce and leveraged
technologies like TypeScript, Node.js, Kafka, and Redis to power a
large-scale B2C back-end API, resulting in streamlined offer management
and enhanced customer engagement through email/SMS notifications.
- Collaborated with Salesforce’s pre-sales team to define solution
proposals leveraging Heroku, Heroku Connect, and open-source
frameworks.
ÄKTA Chicago,
IL
Director of Web
Engineering Feb 2014 - Oct 2015
Built and led a high-performing team of front-end engineers by
recruiting top talent and establishing robust engineering processes,
resulting in the delivery of high-quality, maintainable web solutions
that met business objectives and enhanced customer confidence.
Implemented best practices with open-source technologies and fostered
close collaboration between design and engineering teams to deliver
custom, scalable solutions tailored to clients’ unique business
goals.
Key Accomplishments
- Led the development of a custom web experience for prospective
students for a major U.S. educational institution. Technologies
Utilized: AngularJS, HTML5, CSS3, Salesforce.
- Directed the development of a prototype for a first-responder
control center experience for a leading manufacturer in government and
public safety infrastructure. The solution, built with Angular, NodeJS,
WebSockets, and Heroku, provided first responders with real-time social
media information, demonstrating innovative technology use and helping
secure future business opportunities for the company.
UX Engineer Feb 2013 - Feb
2014
Joined ÄKTA as an Interaction Designer and Engineer Consultant,
working to help ÄKTA’s clients realize their product vision. Led
interaction design and engineering effort for long-term projects.
Key Accomplishment
- Defined the complete information architecture for a complex mobile
point-of-sale iPad application, authoring two 200+ page interaction
definition documents used by the mobile engineering team for
implementation.
Motorola Mobility Libertyville, IL
Senior
Research Engineer, Applied Research Center July 2008 - Feb 2013
Collaborated on a multi-disciplinary team to transform research
questions into prototypes, comprehensive design specifications, academic
publications, and intellectual property.
Key Accomplishments
- Participated in seven user studies, contributing to research
protocol, conducting interviews, analyzing data using grounded affinity
analysis, and delivering actionable design recommendations for business
units.
- Led multiple design cycles, including concept generation, sketching,
wireframing, and mockups, resulting in three full design specifications
for a television UI and two versions of a tablet companion
experience.
- Successfully implemented the a television UI on EBIF, OCAP, and
HTML-based TV platforms.
- Demonstrated the research center’s television head-end system and
user experiences to senior leadership at industry trade shows including
CES, NCTA, and SCTE.
Motorola, Inc. Schaumburg, IL
Software
Engineer, Center for Human Interaction Research, Motorola Labs May 2006 - June 2008
Collaborated with a cross-disciplinary team of designers,
implementers, and researchers to apply the user-centered design cycle.
Focused on implementing proprietary research technology to create unique
and novel user experiences, or using innovative user experiences to
guide technology research direction. Primarily responsible for the
implementation phase of projects.
Skills
Architecture & Development Expertise
- Rapid Prototyping
- Software Development
- Enterprise Architecture
- DevSecOps
- RESTful API Development
- Highly Available Architectures
- Secure Software Development Best Practices
- Agile Processes
- SCRUM
- CI/CD
Experience Design
- Concept Generation/Brainstorming
- Ideation
- Research Planning/Protocol Definition
- Qualitative Research
- Heuristic Evaluation
- Information Architecture
- Wireframing
- UX Documentation
- Interaction Design
Education
Syracuse University Syracuse, NY
B.S. Computer Engineering, L. C. Smith College of Engineering &
Computer Sciences 2002-2006
Graduated Cum Laude with minors in Electrical Engineering &
Mathematics
Patents & Awards
Distinguished
Speaker Award - Cisco Live 2022 & 2023
Graphical user interface for a display screen
United States Patent D636,782 | Issued April 26,
2011
The ornamental design for a graphical user interface
for a display screen
Graphical user interface for a display screen
United States Patent D636,783 | Issued April 26,
2011
The ornamental design for a graphical user interface
for a display screen
Publications
Field trial of a dual device user experience for iTV
Proceedings of the 9th international interactive conference
on Interactive television, 2011
Authors: Hiren Mandalia,
Santosh Basapur, Gunnar Harboe, Ashley Novak, Van Vuong, Crysta
Metcalf
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2000145
Of social television comes home: A field study of communication
choices and practices in tv-based text and voice chat.
ACM - CHI ’09 Proceedings, 2009
Authors: Elaine
Huang, Gunnar Harboe, Joe Tullio, Ashley Novak, Noel Massey, Crysta
Metcalf, Guy Romano
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1518792