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Career Arc: From .NET Delivery and ALM to Distributed Systems and Platform Engineering

The recent portfolio centers on distributed systems, control planes, cloud migration, and production backend delivery. That work sits on top of an earlier foundation in Microsoft consulting, application modernization, test automation, and product engineering.

What Carries Across the Whole Arc

Make delivery feedback operationally real, not ceremonial.

Stabilize inherited systems before trying to modernize them.

Externalize changeable logic so systems stay maintainable.

Design for production constraints, not architecture diagrams alone.

Current Era

This is the present-day positioning of the site and the strongest signal for current roles.

Oracle • 2020 to 2024

Distributed Systems, Cloud Migration, and Control-Plane Infrastructure

  • Designed and operated backend services in large-scale multi-region environments.
  • Built shared workflow and orchestration frameworks for partition-aware asynchronous processing.
  • Led OCI migration work supporting a $2M enterprise deal.
  • Executed Java 17 modernization across 32 global data centers.

Starbucks • 2016 to 2020

High-Scale Platform Integration and Backend Leadership

  • Guided backend teams supporting systems used by 17M+ active customers.
  • Led rewards migration architecture across the U.S. and Canada.
  • Reduced software licensing costs by $200K annually.

Slalom • 2014 to 2016

Cloud and API Consulting Bridge

  • Provided technical leadership on cloud and API projects for clients including Microsoft and Starbucks.
  • Developed Azure pipelines and Cosmos Scope scripts for Microsoft's internal big-data platform.
  • Built REST APIs used by thousands of Starbucks licensee locations to support rewards earning and redemption. Read the case study.

Bridge Era

Before the current distributed-systems focus fully emerged, the work moved through delivery tooling, release engineering, and program-level enablement.

Avanade • 2011 to 2014

Delivery Tools, Configuration Management, and Engineering Enablement

  • Created and scaled an ALM tools course for more than 300 development team leads across global delivery centers.
  • Managed Agile delivery of internal tool sets that reduced costs and improved consistency across projects.
  • Implemented continuous delivery and release management practices for a Fortune 100 big-data forecasting application.
  • Automated packaging, deployment, environment visibility, and acceptance testing across cloud and on-premise delivery environments. Read the case study.

Earlier Foundation

The earlier work explains where the operating habits came from: delivery tooling, application modernization, developer enablement, and systems that had to be practical rather than pristine.

Through 2010

Enterprise Test Automation and ALM Modernization

Integrated business-led UAT into TFS and CI workflows, introduced Lab Management patterns, and helped scale QA enablement in enterprise consulting environments.

Read the case study

Through 2010

Healthcare Application Stabilization and WPF Migration

Stabilized an inherited application, led multi-stream delivery teams, and guided a Windows Forms to WPF transition while remediation and UX work ran in parallel.

Read the case study

Early Career

.NET Product Engineering and Rule-Driven Application Design

Built XML-driven scoring engines, ASP.NET internationalization infrastructure, and test-driven application components delivered ahead of schedule.

Read the case study

Bridging Themes

Feedback Loops

Earlier delivery workflows, release management, and automated delivery work became later operational thinking about observability, rollout control, and production reliability.

Inherited Systems

Earlier stabilization work maps directly to modern migration and platform modernization under real delivery pressure.

Externalized Logic

Earlier XML-driven rule systems and tool-driven delivery patterns connect to current interest in workflows, control planes, and policy-driven system behavior.

Use This Page

If you want the current strongest signal, start on the homepage and case studies. If you want to understand the full arc, this page and the earlier case studies show how the current operating model was built.

Ask Rich about how the earlier .NET and consulting work connects to current backend and platform roles.