Software Development Project Management

James Ralston

Phone: 201-***-****

Email: *******.*****@*****.***

Executive Summary

A multifaceted technology professional with skills forged over decades of software development, project management, thought leadership, professional development, mentoring and successfully meeting challenges, clearly demonstrating his ability to: Foresee & Capitalize on trends through strategic planning and execution. Distill & Communicate complex material from board room to development room. Design & Implement sophisticated software in challenging environments. Establish & Satisfy superior and objective quality standards for all deliverables. Manage & Deliver large and complex software development projects. Software Skills

Management SAFe, Agile, SCRUM, Lean Kanban, Waterfall, NASA SEL, Project, JIRA, Assembla, Visio, Subversion and Git

Databases Oracle, PostgreSQL, CouchDB, MongoDB, SQL Server, Access, MySQL, SQLite3

Big Data Hadoop, Flume, R, Avro, Cassandra, HBase, Hive, Pig, Snowflake, RedShift, AWS

Visualization Tableau, D3, ggplot2, gnuPlot, Excel Testing Selenium, Perl Test::, TAP, Data Driven

Languages &

Platforms

Python, Perl (Moose, Catalyst, DBIx, Template, etc.), PHP, JavaScript

(Sencha, JQuery, JNode, PhantomJS, CoffeeScript & AngularJS), Visual Basic & VBA (Excel and Access), C/C++, Java, Qt, Tomcat, JBoss, Ant, Apache, Crystal, VMWare, Demandware Certified Developer Mark-up XHTML, XML, JSON, ERD, HTML, LATEX, DOT, UML OSes Unix, Linux, OS X, Windows (all versions), iOS, Android Career History

DriveTime, Senior Asst. Director, Data Architecture 08-22 – 07-24 Oversaw data architecture, data governance, data observability, implemented data-in-motion through Kafka and wrangling frameworks, advanced data security initiatives, developed data governance practices, secured the expansion of Python use, and was tightly integrated with the data science teams.

James Ralston, Consultant 03-20 — present

Design, architected and implemented a cloud-based clothing retail company for a small startup. The business model required a complex data structure that could not be accommodated directly by on-line shopping platforms, so a custom back-end API was built using PostgreSQL, Python. Integral Ad Science, Program Manager 05-19 – 02-20 Managed strategic initiatives across the company. Programs included competitive innovation, business and technical integration of acquired companies and technologies, reconsidering all metrics for product and engineering to achieve greater efficiency and on-time performance, project and capital accounting, Project Management Organization's reconfiguration and expansion within the firm, bringing the office under the direction of the CEO. Virtusa Corp., Senior Manager 12-16 – 05-19

Managed data engineering and data analytic projects for high profile clients such as IAC, Dow Jones, Cox Communications, New York Life and PatientsLikeMe. Managed complex programs for cloud migration efforts, security related solutions and analysis of business process management data. Guided staff and clients to develop effective management, analytics and data practices.

KPMG (BenchmarkIT), Technical Project Manager, Data & Analytics 03-15 – 12-15 Introduced data-driven methodologies to improve business’ development of requirements, test plans and capabilities of business intelligence and custom analytic software. Designed and developed data requirements for analytic tools, created data-driven, automated, testing proto- types. Created new models for data-driven requirement documents. Mentored management, development and quality assurance staff on these new techniques. Cloud Cruiser, Global Solutions Architect & Data Scientist. 04-14 – 10-14 Delivered pre-sales presentations. Discovered customer requirements to reveal actual usage of IT resources and to provide related financial intelligence. Created design documents for their US and European implementations. As Data Scientist, developed big data, business intelligence and analytic practices and high quality data visualizations for demonstrations and production. Developed best practices for Cloud Cruiser’s customized business intelligence and analytic reports and trained staff on Tableau.

Barneys New York, Senior Web Developer 10-12 – 3-14 Designed, architected, optimized and extended Barney’s award winning, fast growing e- commerce site. Mentored developers to ensure better methodologies and practices. Improved data feeds for taxation, international checkout, inventory, social media marketing and integration with other sites. Conducted analysis on inventory data and social media marketing. Enhanced website interfaces with back-end operations and technology. Worked with technology team and business users to determine project specifications. Triana Solutions, LLC., Software Architect & Developer. 2009 – 2012 Engaged large customers in a wide range of difficult projects to solve problems in application development, testing & quality assurance, interface design, data management, data encoding, financial reporting, business intelligence, big data and complex data and analytic modeling. Clients included: AT&T, Avaya, EMC, SuperValu, Bowker & Nomura Securities The Oasis Group, Ltd., President, CEO & Chief Solutions Architect 1993 – 2009 Developed a corporate structure, strategically selected platforms, created development frameworks which enabled the company to successfully pursue larger and more complex projects and to successfully compete against far larger firms. Transformed company from a sophisticated bespoke development house to a specialist in intelligent public finance solutions. Clients included: City of New York, Deutsche Bank, NA, Deutsche Bank SA, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ann Taylor, AT&T and The Bond Market Association

Portfolio Highlights

KPMG

Dictated by regulatory changes and the calendar, release schedules for the firm’s proprietary auditing software were fixed and the firm found it difficult to deliver on time. Delivery failure exposed the firm and its clients to profit, reputation, operational, legal and financial risks. A new way of discovering and communicating requirements, testing code and measuring deliverable quality were required. I was tasked with “transforming QA.” while improving the data and analytic capabilities of KPMG’s auditing software, including designing new Tableau visualizations. To achieve these goals I developed new data-centered requirements gathering methodologies focused on high-level data modeling techniques to defeat ambiguity and develop clear, functional theories of the application.

I developed new requirement document templates and standards to effectively capture and communicate these newly expressed requirements between business and developers. These artifacts enabled the creation of large meta-indexes of all requirements and data models and introduced methods to properly size testing efforts and to develop reusable, parsimonious data sets for automated, data-driven testing. Prototypes of these systems provided quality testing meta data and web-based reports. These data modeling techniques supported data analytics and new Tableau visualization applications to provide penetrating insights of clients’ data. R, SQL Server, JavaScript, Perl (Test), Python, Hadoop, Flume, Pig, HBase, Tableau, LATEX Cloud Cruiser

Designed and deployed extended analytic data models, analytic dashboards, design templates and the complex demonstration and testing data for the company’s new analytic features. Instructed architects on sound analytic and complex Tableau data visualization principles. As the firm sought to move from its ISP niche to serve large enterprises, its relational data model and dedicated equipment data extractors were challenged by the diversity and complexity of those environments. In my role as Global Solutions Architect, I designed and implemented complex, custom ETL processes as well as functional and analytic data models using technologies such as Perl, Hadoop, Flume and Pig to better meet the increasingly diverse and challenging client environments.

Perl, Tableau, Cloud Cruiser Enterprise, SQL Server, Oracle, R, Python, Hadoop, Flume, Pig, HBase and Hive

Barneys

A premier, award-winning site for luxury goods catering to an exclusive and demanding clientèle pushed the limits of the on-line retailing experience. The quickly growing site was constantly updated and changed. I modeled the data and designed elegant calculations for sales taxes, user accounts, internationalized checkout, data updates and event management. I designed, implemented and verified complex ETL processes for a wide-variety of data. I implemented an automated testing system, and worked on the design of the iPad app and the mobile site. I also used R and ggploot2 and Tableau to analyze inventory threshold data to improve the management of the web store’s inventory and to assist the burgeoning social media marketing efforts. Reporting directly to the Director of Software Development. Demandware, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, PhantomJS, Selenium Perl, Python, PHP, R, MySQL, HTML, CSS, R and ggplot2, Tableau

DMS

An enterprise-class system used by the City of New York to manage public finance and derivative data. Eight years of development and an enormous ETL captured data dating to 1865 and created a large and complex set of logical and physical data models to meet performance, reporting and analytic needs transforming raw data into useful information. DMS provides the City and its underwriting syndicate the ability to efficiently, economically and accurately refinance billions of dollars of public debt for the benefit of the city’s tax payers. DMS manages over $140 billion in municipal debt and is used by dozens of investment banks, city agencies and law firms. The system enabled the City to economically manage and refinance billions of dollars of debt while also affording protections from operational, credit and legal risks. SQL Server, JavaScript, Perl, Visual Basic, ADOdb and ODBC Informatica State of the Data

To manage a major supermarket chain’s Informatica-driven Master Data Management effort, the State of the Data report tracked progress and accuracy of Informatica’s cleansing and migration of data from thirty-nine systems to one. Also, using Tableau and R-Server together, along with sophisticated Perl testing routines, large data sets were modeled, and then analyzed and scored for completeness and accuracy. The application integrated with Informatica’s data models and stages so the results could be stored for comparison overtime. Useful and informative summaries and Tableau data visualizations were carefully designed and generated as reports to team and management.

Perl, R, ggplot2, Informatica, Tableau, LATEX, Sweave, Oracle and PostgreSQL Syndetics

Responsible for the ISBN numbers that identify published materials, Bowker provides the Syndetics search service to libraries and retailers. Their goal of expanding into foreign language markets was thwarted by poor data modeling and ineffective ETL. To protect Bowker from the operational risk of suspect and dangerous data and from the economic risks of a failed market entry, I redesigned the data models and built a robust quarantine system for incoming data and developed a new, company-wide ETL process to ensure proper cleaning and encoding of content contributed from a wide variety of little-known sources from around the world. The new ETL process accurately mapped these contributions to various databases. Developed NoSQL

(MongDB) document data models for a product targeting academics. Perl, Oracle, SQLServer, MongoDB and MarkLogic

Agelis

An enterprise-class system for managing public finance and derivative data. Agelis, and its custom-built predecessor, manage billion of dollars in municipal debt among large issuers and is used by dozens of investment banks to track that data and analyze it for refinancing opportunities that would benefit the issuer. The complex and dynamic nature of debt refinancing required sophisticated data models to accommodate as yet unknown variables and as yet undetermined behaviors in response to their values. The system enabled clients to economically manage and refinance billions of dollars of debt while also affording protections from credit and legal risks.

Unix, PostgreSQL, gSOAP, JavaScript, C/C++, Perl, Visual Basic, ADOdb, ODBC and JDBC OFACSearch

Solved the problems encountered when searching for names transliterated from foreign writing systems by decomposing linguistic interpretations into scores of foundational phonemes-to- writing conventions. A set of data models were designed to quickly and effectively decipher these transliteration attempts, find possible matches and score their accuracy. OFACsearch let its subscribers comply with Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and reduce their transaction risk.

FreeBSD, PostgreSQL, gSOAP, PHP, Apache, C/C++ and Perl with Mason Derivation

Tracked Derivative and Swap portfolio for the City of New York. Using a custom developed mini- language, Derivation modeled the scheduled and contingent changes in the payment and receipt legs of a derivative contract and incorporated the results of those calculations into the current debt service schedules.

Visual Basic, SQL Server and TSQL

Super Smasher

A sophisticated Excel application automatically produced for submission to international clients a presentation-ready, detailed and fully modifiable workbook. Reducing turn around of this deliverable from one week to one day.

Excel, VBA, Perl, TAP, Web Services and JSON

Assumption Based Pricing

A web-based application enabling two major communications companies to collaborate on the initial stages of designing and pricing large infrastructure implementations. The Assumption Based Pricing system handles discounts by regions, maintenance charges by country, unlimited configurations, creates detailed presentations in various formats, including Excel workbooks, and integrates with other systems through complex ETL processes, including a web services JSON integration with Super Smasher.

Perl, Catalyst, Moose, PostgreSQL, sqlite3, FreeBSD, JavaScript, Sencha and TAP Coupon Interest Report

Mergers and acquisitions provided no clear way for a securities firm to report interest income across a wide range of products. The Coupon Interest Report used Perl and Oracle’s PL/SQL and analytical functions to overcome these hurdles. Perl and SQL were used for extraction and Excel was used for presentation.

PL/SQL, Oracle Analytics, Perl, Excel, VBA and TAP Reconciled Trade Report

Reconciled a major security firm’s trades between its London, New York and Tokyo offices, each with its own data layouts and data granularity. Perl, Oracle’s PL/SQL, Oracle’s analytic functions and Excel were used to merge the data, perform the reconciliation and present daily reports to the management team.

PL/SQL, Oracle Analytics, Perl, Excel, VBA and TAP Publications, Conferences, Teaching, Patents & Education Books

2001 Author, Access 2002 Development Unleashed, Ralston

(SAMS, a Simon & Schuster Co.)

1999 Author, Access 2000 Development Unleashed, Forte, Howe & Ralston

(SAMS, a Simon & Schuster Co.)

1998 Consultant, Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6, Scott Warner

(Osborne Press, a McGraw-Hill Co.)

1997 Contributing Writer, Peter Norton’s Guide to Visual Basic 6, Norton/Groh

(SAMS, a Simon & Schuster Co.)

Magazine Articles

2005 Author, Watching the Watch List, OFAC Compliance Solutions Advisor (March/April Edition)

2000 Author, The Oracle Option, a series of three articles appearing in Access/VB Advisor (Advisor Publications)

2000 Author, Making It Through The Wilderness, Software Project Management, a series of articles in Access/SQL/VB Advisor (Advisor Publications) Conferences & Testimony

1999-2005 Speaker, Advisor Developer Conferences, Orlando, FL; Phoenix, AZ; Washington, DC; Los Angeles, CA; Las Vegas, NV

2003 Expert Witness, Council of the City of New York, Technology Procurement Hearings, Advised on procuring open source software, New York, NY 1998-2001 Speaker, New York City Access/VB Users Group, New York, NY 1998-2001 Speaker, New Jersey Enterprise Visual Basic Users Group, Piscataway 1998-2001 Speaker, New York Software Industry Association, New York, NY 2000 Speaker, Advisor InterOp Conference, Maui, HI 1999 Instructor, City University of New York, Graduate School, Professional Software Project Management, New York, NY

Patents

2006 System and Method for Perspective Rendering of Data from Municipal Finance Data. Patent Application Number: 11/732,394

Education

Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY. BA, History

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