Enterprise Data & Canonical Architecture Leader

Chris Michaelson

408-***-**** ***************@*****.*** LinkedIn

SUMMARY

Executive technology leader specializing in AI strategy, enterprise innovation, technology commercialization, digital transformation, and executive advisory for Fortune 500 organizations. Proven success leading engineering, enterprise architecture, platform engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, Internal Developer Platforms, cloud modernization, and operational governance across enterprise-scale SaaS environments for delivering measurable customer outcomes, accelerating enterprise implementations, and driving long-term customer growth across Fortune 500 organizations.

CORE COMPETENCIES

•Leadership & Management: Engineering Leadership, Mentoring and Team Coaching & building, Operational Excellence, Technology Commercialization, Vendor Management, Product Strategy & Management, FinOps, Cross-Functional Alignment

•Software Development & Methodologies: Java, Python, .Net/C#, Node.js, C, C++, AngularJS, React, Microservices, Enterprise Architecture, Agile/Scrum/Kanban, SDLC, Security, Containers (Kubernetes, Docker), AI workflows, AI Governance

•Cloud & Infrastructure: Cloud Strategy(Native/Hybrid), Cloud Architecture, SOA, AWS(S3, EC2, EKS, Glue), Azure(AKS, APIM, DevOps, IAM), GCP, CI/CD, DevOps/DevSecOps, SRE, IaC (Terraform, Ansible), Internal Developer Platforms (IDP), Kubernetes & Docker, Disaster Recovery/HA, Cybersecurity, Zero Trust, Networking

•Data & Analytics & Tools: ETL/ELT, Data Governance & Modeling, Lakehouse, Snowflake, Kafka, AI & ML, RAG, NLP, SQL, NoSQL, BI Modernization & Reporting, HIPAA/PCI/SOC, GDPR, Data Model, Observability(Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana), SLO/SLA, MTTR, MTBF, JFrog (Artifactory), Maven, Jira/Confluence/GitHub

WORK EXPERIENCE

PWC Jan 2024 - Present

Architecture Leader / Director Tampa, FL

Directed the architecture and software strategy for the Next Generation Audit (NGA) platform within a Product Operating Model, leveraging AWS to enable AI-driven automation and NLP processing that boost client reporting capabilities for audits.

•Defined AI governance and lifecycle controls for NLP-driven audit solutions, establishing architecture standards, model oversight, security reviews, platform engineering, and compliance frameworks for enterprise AI adoption.

•Architected the NLP ingestion pipeline and partnered with cross-functional squads to embed AI/ML analytics into workflows, achieving a 30% gain in accuracy and an 18% improvement in per-developer efficiency

•Partnered with product and engineering leadership to operationalize AI-assisted SDLC workflows, accelerating delivery while maintaining auditability, quality, and regulatory compliance.

•Directed the architecture of backend services and data-mining modules, reducing system latency by 20% and significantly enhancing UX responsiveness for high-volume audit flows.

•Standardized secure coding practices and enforced corporate compliance across the entire NGA ecosystem, mitigating systemic risk and ensuring SOC2/regulatory alignment.

Forcepoint Apr 2022 - Oct 2023

VP of Cloud, DevOps Austin, TX

•Led a 70-member global engineering organization through a high-performance transition to hybrid cloud for the Zero Trust architecture, utilizing an SRE and microservices-based delivery model to enhance platform resilience

•Directed engineering and cloud platform strategy supporting zero trust cybersecurity products protecting millions of users globally, delivering highly available SaaS services with enterprise-grade security, scalability, and compliance.

•Established enterprise platform engineering standards encompassing CI/CD, observability, deployment governance, infrastructure automation, and developer enablement across global engineering teams that improved release predictability and platform reliability, driving a 30% increase in engineering velocity.

•Led adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices, automation frameworks, and developer productivity tooling that improved delivery velocity while maintaining security and quality standards.

•Directed a comprehensive architectural refactoring across Azure, AWS, and GCP, achieving a 33% reduction in technical debt while ensuring strict adherence to global governance standards in FedRAMP and (GDPR, PCI, HIPAA).

•Established a dedicated FinOps practice and optimized the SDLC to realize $3.8M in annual AWS cloud savings within the first 90 days of implementation.

Albertsons Nov 2020 - Mar 2022

Senior Director of Engineering, DevOps Boise, ID

•Managed a global 170-member organization of software, SRE, and platform engineers, working with Product to architect a unified DataOps and DevOps framework in ServiceNow to drive platform resilience across Store, Supply Chain, and HCM ecosystems.

•Directed the Agile modernization of legacy mainframe applications to an event-driven microservice architecture, ensuring seamless API integration with BI metric data for unified workforce management and labor compliance.

•Architected high-performance inventory data models and service layers using Azure AKS, implementing Salesforce-compatible structures that reduced delivery errors by 26% and enabled real-time analytics for multi-brand platform convergence.

•Led the refactoring of legacy Pharmacy systems into a HIPAA/PCI-compliant environment, mirroring Salesforce Trust protocols to achieve 100% compliance while enabling secure BI analytics for patient and sales reporting.

•Reduced annual observability costs by $6.5M (45%) by consolidating fragmented monitoring tools into a unified Proactive Application Performance (PAP) stack, significantly improving enterprise-wide system vigilance.

•Overhauled POS and payment data flows in partnership with Product teams, reducing latency by 60% and ensuring transactional integrity while enabling real-time customer rewards during peak demand.

David's Bridal Apr 2018 - Sep 2020

VP of Engineering, DevOps Conshohocken, PA

•Led the Agile transformation of legacy e-commerce and retail platforms to an event-driven AWS microservices architecture, reducing technical debt by 30% and accelerating order-processing velocity.

•Engineered the modernization of legacy e-commerce flows into an AWS event-driven ecosystem (SNS, SQS, Lambda, DynamoDB), creating a high-scale, Salesforce-integrated order processing engine.

•Directed Technical M&A Strategy for the Bilberry acquisition, unifying disparate data models and engineering cultures into a single, integrated product roadmap to realize immediate post-merger synergies.

•Owned Incident Command and War Room governance, directing cross-functional leaders to resolve critical outages at scale while institutionalizing DORA metrics and root-cause analysis (RCA) to ensure long-term business continuity.

•Optimized secure payment data flows across in-store and e-commerce platforms, architecting a unified POS-to-Salesforce integration that ensured 100% PCI compliance and transactional integrity.

•Established enterprise-wide data quality and governance standards, improving reporting accuracy for executive decision-making and ensuring strict adherence to global regulatory requirements.

Arris Sep 2017 - Mar 2018

Technical Project Manager Malvern, PA

•Directed a strategic partnership with The Weather Group (TWG) to architect personalized media delivery systems across TV, web, and mobile, resulting in a measurable lift in cross-platform user engagement.

•Led a comprehensive system-wide audit utilizing DevOps instrumentation and NoSQL log analysis to institutionalize Agile/Scrum improvements, significantly hardening the stability of the enterprise release cycle.

•Architected a dedicated Incident Response function, implementing a high-velocity Kanban workflow that streamlined cross-functional collaboration and drastically reduced the lifecycle of critical software defects.

•Revamped the SDLC lifecycle to drive cross-team consistency, resulting in a 75% reduction in MTTR, moving from a 2-hour average to a 30-minute resolution window.

Comcast Oct 2014 - Aug 2017

Director of Engineering Philadelphia, PA

•Directed the engineering organization responsible for the Xfinity DVR SaaS platform on AWS, transitioning legacy hardware functionality into a highly scalable, cloud-native service.

•Optimized API performance and data governance to scale the software ecosystem from 400K to 8.8M concurrent users without performance degradation.

•Orchestrated a zero-downtime, high-availability migration of the DVR service database from legacy Oracle to Cassandra, ensuring zero service downtime for 8M+ customers.

•Defined enterprise reliability standards including SLOs, incident governance, deployment automation, and platform resiliency and automated CI/CD and SRE DORA metrics framework that reduced deployment cycles from 3.5 hours to 35 minutes.

•Directed enterprise-wide Incident Command and War Room governance, coordinating cross-functional engineering teams to resolve high-scale outages and safeguard business continuity for millions of users.

MobileMum May 2013 - Sep 2014

Chief Technical Officer Richardson, TX

•Launched revitalized children’s educational mobile apps for iOS and Android, utilizing backend development in Java and Splunk for observability, which boosted user engagement and expanded video entertainment distribution.

•Generated enhanced metadata and updated the user experience, implemented large-scale data capture, and linked usage metrics to analytics and personalization pipelines using Splunk, which improved app performance and advertising effectiveness.

•Enhanced API and CDN interfacing, leveraging Splunk, resulted in a 17% reduction in network load and a 25% in responsiveness.

Linius Nov 2012 - May 2013

VP of Product Development San Jose, CA

• Orchestrated a cross-functional initiative to architect a video virtualization platform, utilizing automated DNA extraction to enable high-precision ad insertion and real-time modality, transforming legacy video assets into a dynamic, revenue-generating ecosystem.

Infotel Broadband Services, Ltd Sep 2011 - Nov 2012

Director Digital Home Services Plano, TX-Mumbai, India

• Led implementation strategy for the R4G platform, applying Agile project management and full-stack development with Node.js on AWS IaaS/PaaS, coordinated with the Senior Leadership Team to design system architecture, selected vendors, and executed pilot programs using Docker containerization, resulting in a scalable solution adopted organization-wide.

KIT Digital-Sezmi Jul 2008 - Aug 2011

VP of Product Development Belmont, CA–Prague, Czechia

• Leader of the global engineering team, developing, enhancing, and customizing features of the Video Asset Management system.

EDUCATION

Oregon Institute of Technology

Bachelor of Science, Computer Engineering Klamath Falls, OR

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