Management Software

Sulman F. Raja

***** ***** ***** **** *******, MN 55347

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sulmanraja ******.****@*****.*** M: 612-***-****

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Accomplished IT leader with 10+ years experience successfully leading and delivering on software development projects. Capable of delivering on complex projects on time and within budget, collaborating with project managers, product managers and scrum masters. Expert in agile methodologies and driving the adoption of agile software development practices in organizations. Experienced technical leader capable of leading product requirements, technical design and architecture sessions. Recognized for delivering on software solutions that meet complex business requirements.

EXPERIENCE

TRAVELERS COMPANIES INC. (Bond and Specialty Insurance) Saint Paul, MN

Technical Lead June 2009 – Present

Directing the product implementation and maintenance of an underwriting enterprise application used by 100+ underwriters in the US. Leading a technical team of 10-15 developers in Bangalore, India.

Persuaded management to change course on the technical implementation strategy of products. Presented reasons to senior leadership, resulting in savings of 300+ hours of development work.

Directed the design and implementation of a framework to bring products onboard the underwriting system faster. Reduced cost of custom built screens by 30%; reduced product’s ‘time to market’ by 40%.

Led implementation of performance improvements for the underwriting system. Reduced load times by 40%. Implemented a development environment plugin, reducing configuration time from 5 hours to 2 minutes.

Responsible for delivery of software projects. 3 of 4 long term projects delivered on time and within budget. 12 quarterly releases of enhancements and bug fixes delivered on time and within budget. Delivered the backlog of 163 enhancements deemed top priority by management in 6 consecutive quarterly releases; 0 remaining items as of August 2015.

Assisted in defining the organizations agile adoption strategy incorporating SAFe, Scrum and Kanban practices.

Led discussions with product managers in defining the minimum viable product (MVP) and helped creating and grooming the product backlog of work items.

Assisted Project Management and Scrum Masters in defining and prioritizing tasks for sprint planning sessions.

Facilitated scrum ceremonies such as stand-up meetings, sprint retrospectives, sprint planning and backlog grooming sessions.

Built strong relationships with IT staff, technical leadership, senior management, vendors and consultants.

Interviewed and mentored new team members.

CIBER INC. (Software Consulting Company) Bloomington, MN

Senior Consultant, CERIDIAN (Human Capital Management Technology Company) May 2009 – June 2009

Facilitated the organization’s effort to adopt agile software practices.

Mentored and coached developers on agile practices and development tasks.

Coordinated sprint planning and product backlog grooming sessions.

TALENT SOFTWARE SERVICES (Software Consulting Company) Saint Louis Park, MN

Lead Consultant, GENERAL MILLS December 2008– February 2009

Implemented a marketing customer portal under budget and on time.

Led design sessions with marketing senior managers.

Coached the development staff on best practices. Coordinated code and security review sessions and secured approval from management.

VERSIQUE (Software Consulting Company) Minneapolis, MN

Senior Consultant, EDMENTUM (Educational Software Company) April 2008 – November 2008

Implemented Edmentum’s Plato Courseware product, considered a flagship product.

Recommended senior architects and VP of software development on technical strategy which was approved.

Mentored development staff on concepts of unit testing and patterns of enterprise application design.

Performed architectural analysis on the existing system and recommended improvements to senior architects.

TECH-PRO (Software Consulting Company) Roseville, MN

Senior Consultant, UNITED HEALTH GROUP January 2007 – April 2008

Member of a team of senior developers using latest technology to implement a major healthcare enterprise application used by 500+ users.

Established instant credibility among a team of senior developers with extensive experience.

Provided input on agile software development practices to managers and directors; practices were adopted by our team.

Awarded Tech-Pro’s Presidents Club award for outstanding consulting service.

LAND O’ LAKES INC. Arden Hills, MN

Associate Programmer November 2004 – December 2006

Developed a major enterprise application requiring 24x7 uptime tracking manufacturing in plants in the US. Organized requirements gathering sessions. Transformed the existing build process which eliminated 50% of manual steps.

Redesigned and implemented a sales incentive application responsible for paying out incentives for the retail sales force of Land O’Lakes.

Presented new technical topics to development staff and management.

Mentored new developers on the development environment and applications.

Evaluated enterprise software for the organization and reported to management.

INTERNATIONAL DECISION SYSTEMS Minneapolis, MN

Programmer Intern May 2004 – October 2004

Assisted in development of a lease and asset portfolio management system.

Implemented complex unit testing on different business cases using automated unit testing framework.

Enhanced code to meet good coding practices. Tuned unit test code for faster build.

Developed in Extreme Programming environment.

Fixed code bugs and implemented and tested change requests for users.

SKILLS

Programming Languages: C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Java, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, CSS3, HTML5

Frameworks: .NET Framework, WCF, REST services, Web Services, Microsoft Entity Framework, Microsoft Sync Framework JQuery, ASP.NET MVC, NHibernate, Spring.NET, Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft AJAX, AngularJS, Knockout, and Bootstrap

Cloud: Microsoft Azure, Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Database: Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle

ETL: Datastage, AbInitio

Version Control: Subversion, and Git

Continuous Integration: Jenkins, Cruise Control

Architecture: SOA, N-Tier, Sparx Enterprise Architecture

Project Management: MS Project, Rally

Development Tools/IDE’s: Microsoft Visual Studio, Visio

Testing Frameworks: NUnit, RhinoMock, and MSTest

EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS Saint Paul, MN

Master of Science, Software Engineering December 2004

GPA: 3.72

LUTHER COLLEGE Decorah, IA

Bachelor of Arts, Computer Science and Mathematics December 2001

Member of Student Senate and International Student Association

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Lost over 50 lbs. over a course of 6 months with diet and exercise.

Active member of Asian Diversity Network (Travelers Companies Inc.) with leadership responsibilities including communications, event planning, growing membership base and formulating strategy which includes bringing forth ideas for professional development, cultural awareness and business imperative.

Active runner, weight lifter, golfer and tennis player. Amateur chef and baker. History enthusiast. Film aficionado

Contact this candidate