Data Scientist Digital Transformation

Location:

Posted:

October 16, 2024

Resume:

Karl Kimball Cloud Application Architect /Developer

*** ******* **** *****, ***** Rock TX 78665 USA Mobile 817-***-**** ****@***********.*** linkedin.com/in/karl-kimball-12a648137

ERP Multi-cloud Digital Transformation:

Experience: 19+ years of experience leading large scale strategic business initiatives, digital transformation, migrations, application development, automations, modernizations, innovations. My roles include multi-cloud architect, ERP/Solutions Architect, Trusted Advisor, Software Engineer, Data Scientist, Data Engineer, and pre-sales architect. I am Azure Cloud Certified, Azure Security Certified, Azure Data Certified, and Azure Data Scientist Certified. My experience includes M&A acquisitions and divestitures.

Digital & AI Transformation: I Facilitate the creation of action plans and solution architectures for boosting revenue, reducing cost, and increasing sustainability through digital transformation with advanced technologies inclusive of cloud, LLMs, GenAI, AutoGen, AI Conversable Agents, Proxies, AI Assistants, API services, AI security, and AI augmented applications. This includes UIX architecture for any person, persona, or GenAI agent via any network on any device (cellphone, tablets laptops, and computer), from/to any data types.

Architecture, Development, & Delivery: I drive business initiatives and guide DevOps teams to produce business value utilizing methodologies like Agile, Scrum, CMMI, MLOps, LLMOps, InfoSecOps, data governance (e.g., Purview & Unity Catalog). My work is centered around CI/CD ecosystems, driven by ticket backlogs, use cases, High/Low-Level Designs, epics, features, stories, and tasks. I leverage my experience and pragmatic approach to define actionable goals & roadmaps, which are delivered on time and within budget, adhering to standards, best practices, using frameworks such as TOGAF, Zachman, Lean Six Sigma, Agile, Scrum, SAFe, Clean Architecture, Vertical Slice Architecture, Event Driven Architecture, and SOA/API services.

Security, Governance, Risk, & Operations Excellence: I drive comprehensive pro-active risk reduction addressing governance, risk, and compliance (GRC/Azure Trust Portal), protection from threats (Defender), secure Identity and access (Entra/Active Directory/IAM), data loss protection and data governance (Purview &Unity Catalog), regulatory compliance, cloud security, event management (Sentinel/SIEM), security orchestration, automation and response (Sentinel/SOAR), resource monitoring (Monitor), and operational excellence, responsiveness, transparency, and resiliency.

Solutioning: I engage in all solution activities, requirements definition, brainstorming, ideation, architecture, design, code development, application refactoring/creation, business processes design, application design, data design, domain ecosystems, and roadmaps. Solutions include App development, Web Apps, Logic Apps, Functions, GenAI, APIs services, ETL/ELT, and data integrations, pipeline development. Solutions are augmented with AI Cognitive Services (Vision, Speech, Language, Decision, and custom). This includes development of new AI/ML models, Generative AI workflows, conversational agents, AI agents, AI proxies, AI assistants, BOTs, RPAs, Copilots, and API services utilizing a vast array of technologies e.g., Azure AI Cognitive Services, open-source tools, “prompt” engineering, comprehensive testing, best practices, design patterns, verification, and documentation. This includes portfolio life cycle management of emerging, core, declining, and end of life for applications, data, and infrastructure. Platforms include Azure Services, Dynamics CRM/ERP, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Copilot, and Office 365, and AI/ML deep learning models.

My AI/ML Technologies portfolio: I'm skilled in programming languages including C#, Java, Python, Blazer, Razer, MVC, CLI, and JavaScript. I'm experienced with cloud and multi-cloud environments for Azure, AWS, GCP, and OpenStack. I worked with SDKs including Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Azure Storage Explorer, Azure AI Studio, PyCharm, AutoGen Studio, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Document Intelligence Studio, and Azure Databricks. I'm knowledgeable about open-source AI/ML tools and many AI/ML models including GPT-4, GPT-1106-preview*, DALL-E *, Llama 2, Mistral, Zephyr, and various NLP libraries/frameworks including data science Deep Learning neural networks. I've built POCs, visualizations, experiments for AI research and have hands-on experience with TensorFlow, PyTorch, MLflow, Scikit-learn, Hugging Face, etc. I'm familiar with LLM technology e.g., defining RAG, hyperparameters, Fine-Tuning, and statistical metrics like Accuracy, Precision & Recall, Sentiment, and Confusion Matrix.

Soft skills: These include experienced thought leadership, published author, experienced writing white papers, videos, speaker/presenter, trusted advisor, project leader, architect, and great listener. I have strong business acumen, extensive leadership experience, and lead efforts through teamwork, consensus, and translating business needs into actions e.g., retail, commodities, finance, capital markets, cotton exchange, OIL/Gas trading, etc.

Industry Verticals Experience:

Retails, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Cosmeceuticals, Financial, Banking, Manufacturing, Oil and Gas, Education, Logistics, DOD, Executive, Chief Technologist/Architect, Trusted Advisor, ERP/Solutions architect, and engineer with leadership roles held in major corporations and multiple venture capital funded start-ups.

Industry Impact:

Industry contributions include founding Board of Director for Corporation of Open Systems, U.S. delegate in the US/Japan Bilateral Trade Talks on Standardization of Information Technology, ANSI Advisory Board member, workgroup leader for ISO-Distributed Transaction Processing Standard (ACID), POXIS Contributor, ISO Digital Tape Standard workgroup leader, and delegate for US Technical Committee ISO JTC1.

Education/Certifications: Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from University of Texas at Arlington.

Certifications: Azure Data Scientist, Asure Security, Compliance, and Identity, Azure AI, Azure Fundamentals, Center for Creative Leadership

eBooks & Articles: Technoforce: Forging A Global Village (ISBN: 978**********), Mitigating Risks with Price Transparency, and authored many published articles.

Work Experience

08/2022 – 08/2024: Softcraft Engineering Inc., ERP Multi-Cloud Architect.

StrataGRC-ERP Architect.

oM&A Analysis and reference architecture: Lead ERP modeling of prospective merging companies, which included digital forecasting models focusing on automation, modernization, innovation, risks, and ROI. Work with investors to brainstorm business process reimagination, infrastructure cost savings consolidation models, and risk (ESG, GRC, Safety, and DEI).

oI produced HLD (High Level Design) documents, organization charts, staffing plans, job descriptions, presentations for investors, and roadmap calendars for current state to future transformations. This was inclusive of refactoring of multiple mobile native applications into a single UIX that is browser based and GenAI enabled.

oProvided data integration plans for mergers e.g., inclusive of AI/ML driven automation, modernization, and customizations for targeted which companies included manufacturing, services, and ecommerce.

oParticipated in business plan production and go live roadmaps, and calendars.

MurphyUSA-Digital Transformation Architect.

oMy responsibility was codified by contractual agreement of ~70 hand-off KPIs, activities, of leadership responsibilities for the disengagement of BCG and Capgemini from an ongoing digital transformation program. My direct responsibility included all development and corresponding “scrum” teams for data engineering, data analytics reports development (Power BI), data science, and other vested groups needed for re-alignment. I addressed disengagement/transition and alignment from discovery to execution phase by producing a business capabilities “DevOps” custom process better suited tracking the business process as it entered the “transformation execution phase”. I conducted re-prioritization of new tickets with old backlog tickets, and restructured DevOps teams to address business/DevOps gaps, pipeline data entanglements, data architecture issues, and transactions flows. I collaborated with business leadership groups through daily and weekly standup meetings, and I lead my own standup Scrum meetings as “lead engineer” for multiple data engineering, data analytics, and data science efforts. I also changed the approval process requiring all “pull requests” to have a mini ticket review with LLD architecture and coding design information.

oMentoring: I also actively established mentoring and team programming activities due to the large number of junior engineers and contractors.

oTriage: Efforts included producing a architecture reference model, master data management schema to a conceptual Unified Data Repository model for databases on prem and in cloud leading to digital transformation issues of broken Jupyter notebooks and needed mitigation refactoring e.g., abundance of SCD (Slowly Changing Dimensions), model processing entanglements, embedded business logic in ETL/ELT ingestion, business process functional inconsistencies, schema data issues, and pipeline failures. Refactored to sync properly and resolve temporal data update data gaps, store sales transaction issues, etc. In general, application architecture and data architecture were refactored to fill gaps, errors, and address new requirements. Best practices, design patterns, finite state machine models defined, process transactions were created to stabilize and address data pipeline inadequacies and failures. Backlog of tickets were refactored into Epochs, Features, Stories, and task tickets were created or revised to address current state for stabilization of operational improvements while new tickets were added creating a combined prioritization of tickets of current state and future state. This resulted in immediate improvements of revised UI, dashboards, reports, ML models, store provisioning, supply chain, and resolution of sales processing issues, and decreasing spoilage.

oEfforts metrics where ~175 Azure Databricks Jupyter notebooks experiencing daily pipeline failures, poor performance, high training/processing costs, and variety of exceptions involving database complexities from multiple, large cumbersome customer tables, interactions of multiple rewards programs, ad hoc promotional campaigns with surveys, and extremely complex store transaction models. Team structure was 6 data engineering teams, 6 data analytic teams, 4 data science teams, and a myriad of governance and business groups.

oFire drill: I participated in a fire drill project with a business team to define real time selection of process for card processing network real time selection to reduce transaction costs. This included an internal model and an external AI/ML model as a service and alternatives.

oFire drill: I participated in a fire drill project for future store geographical site selection AI/ML model.

oI also initiated DS model testing programs to evaluate quality and detection of data drift, data quality, and performance measurements.

Clikserve-ERP Platform Architect.

oVender Service Portal: I lead the architecture and design for a vendor services eCommerce portal and prototype development for a next-gen SaaS services portal for tradespersons, artisans, craftspeople, and special needs people utilizing LLM and agentic (ML) business architecture. Special business model considerations were incorporated from business capabilities models of “insurance club”, “ecommerce club”, and guild that provide addressed access to specialized insurance, risk sharing, cost savings, expertise, and networking for members.

oDesign ecommerce marketing service(s): The prototype site utilized AI/ML to automate product manufacturing and sales pipeline for extremely small enterprises i.e., microenterprises, mom & pop shops, cottage industries, and artisans. Key requirements included facilitation of global ecommerce with multi-language and multi-currency following United Nations guidance covering multi-language contracts, authentication, choice of law, dispute resolution, interpretation, cultural considerations, professional assistance, and review & execution.

Freddie Mac-Principal ERP Architect.

oFinancial Modernization: I lead financial modernization efforts to produce a technical reference architecture based upon a AWS, open source, AI/ML, and current state roadmap to refactor legacy manual procedures to create automated future state that increased velocity, increased volume, regulatory reporting, granular financial reporting, ad hoc reports, and audits required to remain competitive and meet compliance requirements.

oI created a Freddie Mac Business Architecture reference model and defined custom DevOps project template that included all regulatory reporting requirements, financial operational processes, and resolved existing business process complexities, inadequacies, and friction between business process silos. This included refactoring of the conceptual master data management (MDM) model to include a upon Databricks data warehouse, data lakes, Delta tables, multiple data pipelines, multiple staging areas with addition of a QA staging areas.

oOrganizational alignment to business processing models: Legacy organizational processing models, shadow IT, and manual processing were barriers to accurate financial reports and end of month closings. I drove digital transformation focused on automation with Event Driven Transactions (EDA) supporting high performance STP (Straight Through Processing). Additionally, architecture and design patterns for High Availability, Disaster Recovery, and Business Continuity design patterns were proposed.

oLead architect refactoring for buying mortgages and selling mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to increase operational velocity by defining new push (Event Driven) model & wrapping existing operational pipelines with transactions. Architecture included defining a custom microservices “exchange” pattern and decoupling of manual or high touch operational mortgage services pipeline from automated processes for purchasing mortgages, creating MBSs, and selling MBSs pipelines.

oNew pricing engine: To scale mortgage purchases from a manual process to scale-up volume purchasing, I designed a new digital AI/ML assistant model that handled pricing pools of loans with a new Mortgage Purchasing Pricing Engine.

oIncrease MBS sales velocity: To increase MBS sales velocity from weeks to hours, bundling of mortgages with terms previously manually negotiated with customer were automated with a proposed AI/ML agent. I proposed MBS Construction Experiments model (AI/ML assistant) to dynamically construct and predict performance experiments of financial performance of potential MBSs packages based upon dynamic terms, current market conditions, and negotiation tuning. Further, I introduced finite machine models to add rigor and facilitate event driven business multi-stage processes with transactional (ACID properties) for the actual sale and/or re-financing of existing MBSs.

07/2018 – 08/2022: WWT Inc., Strategic Multi-Cloud Architect.

Integral role in helping define business strategy roadmaps for many global companies by guiding them across a diverse technology panorama of legacy and leading-edge technologies for automation (AI/ML), modernization (Analytical models), and innovation. Identifying key initiatives, immediate actions, risk mitigation risk, threat model, and changes to corporate culture. Included M&A, buy vs sell, and integration of key SaaS e.g., Salesforce, ServiceNow, Oracle PPM, Oracle HRMS/HCM, Oracle PCM, MS Dynamics, IoT, call center virtualization, etc.

Key business drivers for all projects were business process modernization of automation (AI/ML) and optimizing of sales, supply chain, manufacturing quality, and retail sales. I performed technologies assessments for buy vs build vs decisions, SaaS COTS, BPM, operational excellence, best practices, threat analysis, security, business continuity, and High Available/Disaster Recovery (HA/DR) including chaos testing & multiple catastrophes.

Develop and deliver competitive cloud solutions (AWS, Azure, and GCP), digital transformations, critical applications, and be accountable for project success, meeting budget goals, delivery schedules for multiple cross functional teams of executives, business leaders, technology leadership, governance, engineering, operations, and architecture.

Evangelized and participated in Agile philosophy and Scrum methodology from high level design through CI/CD DevOps which included modernization of ARB Governance and CI/CD automation.

Data integration, Azure Data Factory, Azure Integration Services, data warehouse, analytics, IoT, deep learning DS, streaming, big data, and data monetization (Data Science) using deep learning were key future state requirements.

Logistics, Customs, Supply chain, and infrastructure: DevOps, Azure DevOps, CI/CD, Terraform, GitHub, etc.

Image processing applications.

Fire Drill: Mobile application for Jersey Mike’s to triage COVID-19 driven catastrophic drop in sales. I performed analysis and recommendations to shift emphasis to online and group sales. Results included mobile app UIX created location-based menus responding to supply chain interruptions and shift promotions to group sales with high profitability.

Application Rationalization: Lead the development, and refactoring of 1000’s of applications to ensure business, organizational, and operational alignment using 6 R’s (Rethink, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair) across full stack, serverless, PaaS, LaaS, CaaS, FaaS, and SaaS. Included e.g., COTS apps. MS Dynamics, Oracle PPM, Oracle HRMS/HCM,

07/2017 – 07/2018: HPE Inc., Cloud Product Leader.

I lead Cloud Architecture, Dev team, and DevOps (175 engineers) in creating a cloud offering based upon hybrid OpenStack Cloud, Azure, and AWS services. Key goal of this effort was transforming HPE HCI data center products and new proprietary applications to be globally sold with firmware updates to increase HPE HCI product sales. Align strategy with CNCF (Cloud Native Computing) goals and principles.

IaaS strategy and tools needed to configure and manage infrastructure deployment with Terraform.

Involved in key partnerships and potential technology M&As including multi-cloud workloads and deployments.

This included risk, threat, business continuity by global channel, data integration, MDM, data warehouse, analytics, and data monetization were key future state requirements. Application Rationalization: Lead the development, and refactoring of 1000’s of applications to ensure business, organizational, and operational alignment using 6 R’s (Rethink, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair) across full stack, serverless, PaaS, LaaS, CaaS, FaaS, and SaaS. Included e.g., COTS apps. MS Dynamics, Oracle PPM, Oracle HRMS/HCM,

07/2016 – 07/2017: GM Financial Inc., Global Cloud Leader.

Lead a global application consolidation/transformation of 8 datacenters with 43 critical applications plus 300+ support applications migration from Europe, Mexico, Asia, and South American countries to a US datacenter. I lead future state infrastructure architecture and critical application refactoring in anticipation of M&A based expansions.

Move applications and data to new environment using containers, IaaS, DevOps tools (Kubernetes, Terraform, CLI, etc.

10/2013 – 07/2016: DXC Inc., Chief Technology Advisor.

Trusted advisor for cloud transformations (AWS, Azure, and GCP) including buy vs build vs acquisition, COTS, and SaaS e.g., MS Dynamics, Oracle ERP, SAP, etc.

Chief Technologist/CTO for major cosmeceutical company Estee Lauder. Estee Lauder included AWS based hybrid cloud architecture and migration roadmap to move 34 brands, hundreds of apps, and 12 global manufacturing plants to be “market agile” for responding to competitors attacks, rogue attacks, and global regional protectionism. Removal of technical debt to support M&A strategy (Estee growth strategy is M&A) and CI/CD using IaC (Kubernetes, Ansible, Terraform, etc.)

Digital transformation and integration for mobile and retail endpoints.

Chief Technologist/CTO for major manufacturing company Raytheon. This included ERP solutions (SAP), SaaS of ServiceNow and Salesforce. Numerous proofs of concept and experiments were conceived and completed. These included IoT with AT&T IoT Lab, a cloud reference architecture for Raytheon manufacturing. Major initiatives were to move Raytheon to handle global sales permitted/encouraged by DoD. Conducted IoT POCs with AT&T labs in Dallas to develop telemetry solutions for monitoring product shipments and storage globally.

Remote/secure management and operations of products globally.

This included risk, threat, business continuity by global channel, data integration, MDM, data warehouse, analytics, and data monetization.

Operational Excellence, governance, risk mitigation measurement and assessment reports.

06/2012 – 10/2013: Bank of America N.A., VP Cloud Architecture.

Define the Business Banking Groups Value Chains and develop technology strategy/roadmaps for elimination of duplicate processing, optimization, and portfolio reductions. My responsibility was full lifecycle responsibility from current state to a delivered future state.

Digital tool development to measure ROI, risk, and quality.

Lead team defining the “new BOA” for decentralization of application, and infrastructure management. Goal is to reduce from ~5000 to 2500 applications and define Infrastructure portfolio management for all business areas in BOA.

12/2011 – 06/2012: DFW Hospital Council Inc., CIO.

I was recruited to create and support main commercial products (provide background check of hospital personnel and process claims information for the 77 hospitals that “owned” DFWHC)

Start-up new revenue ventures to make DFWHC self-sufficient and not dependent upon a set fee but “pay as you go” model.

Created Claims data warehouse repository and analytical reports. Data mart creation for QlikView and Excel users

Developed and supported background check portal.

Development of training certification tracking for medical workers, nurses, doctors, technicians, and admin personnel.

06/2009 – 12/2011: Bank of America N.A., ERP Architect Manager VP.

Responsibilities focused on risk mitigation causing customer failures in mortgage finance. Lead massive, significant outsourcing project to provide scalability for digitizing documents, processing mortgage documents, shared security model, threat detection, user (IAM) identification, and fraud detection and mitigation.

06/2007 – 06/2009: DynCorp Inc., Sr Manager of Development:

Architected solution and lead development for Payment System to replace 13 separate systems in the middle east and 24 separate databases which were handling 60,000 contractors by a single web-based portal application.

Portal included payment expense system, Payroll system, inventory, supply chain logistics, fulfillment, and audit were key models.

Localization for 8 languages.

03/2007 – 06/2007: JWT Inc., Sr. Director Architecture & Development:

Lead development group in JWT, charted by its parent company (WPP), to developed a project tracking management tool tailored for print, digital, and media-based advertising campaigns from inception through fulfillment for hundreds of projects thousands of resources.

09/2005 – 03/2007: TrainUp.Com Inc., CTO:

Hired and lead team the teams that built and delivered the next generation NET based training management system web portal. Additional products that included a learning management system used in a partnership with TEKsystems for outsourcing corporate technical training, a replacement for MTV’s SAP LMS module, and AMEX learning portal in Phoenix, Arizona.

06/2004 – 09/2005: Cortell Health LLC, Vice President Architecture/Development:

Lead Development of business intelligence (BI) and Activity Based Costing (ABC) solution providing hospitals with the ability to see patient episode costs and perform cost management, productivity measurement, capacity utilization, and quality improvement measurements.

12/2003 – 06/2004: First American Inc., Senior Manager Strategic Architect:

This was a turn-around situation for critical foreclosure applications was delayed for 2 years. My responsibility was to diagnose and fix these problems. Highlights of my actions:

Lead group of over 60 people and performed business and IT level analysis, re-engineering and development of five (5) web-based applications that handled inspections and property preservation services for defaulted mortgages.

Identified (out of process) Blaze rules as major performance culprit and re-designed rules.

Fixed network security problems slowing network performance.

06/2002 – 12/2003: Electronic Shipping Solutions LLC, CTO:

As CIO/CTO Created an oil/gas transaction portal in Switzerland that traded oil/gas in transit with an electronic bill of laden.

I gave international seminars on web/ecommerce security, SSO, two token sign-on (supported by ESS via RSA). Also gave presentations and speaking engagement about security for high volume/dollar commodity global trades of oil and gas, electronic documents, digital signatures, automated customs documents handling, and third-party documents such as Letters of Credit, Certificate of Quality and Quantity, Documentary Instructions, lifting instructions, customs, Equity party notifications, etc. Co-inventor of highly specialized document signature system and digital image fraud detection.

Interfaced with ICE (NYSE) and TradeCapture commodity trading platforms.

Application portal also covered container and other intermodal transportation services from any global endpoint to any global endpoint where internet was available.

12/2000 – 06/2002: Necho Systems Inc., COO.

This was a turn-around situation. Necho Systems was 1.5 years late delivering its product to 53 customers, that included fortune 500 and Times 1000 customers. I was asked to come in and get the product delivered, which I accomplished to sell the company.

03/98 – 12/2000: Attachmate Corp Inc., VP of Consulting:

In this role I had 30+ Engineers, programmers, and Architects in North America, Europe, and Asia

Participated in Marketing shows and forums as guest speaker and panelist.

Architect for Identity Management: CareFirst (BlueCross) is an $8 billion health insurance provider losing $200-300MM on $8.1 Billion in sales due to inability to manage identities. I mitigated this issue.

GE Network Services: Created architecture for a suite of applications that allowed GE to market its products as an outsourced service to utilities.

Created a website for Canadian government to accept online incorporation applications and reduce incorporation time.

Contact this candidate