Summary

My career path represents a ‘Philosophy of Change’.  From old Legacy Systems to Bleeding Edge Technology I have observed first-hand how technology borrows from itself, builds on top of itself.  I have had the luxury of working within Scalable Backend Architectures, RESTful API design patterns, Cloud-first ecosystems, CI/CD Pipelines, Legacy Migration Conversions, and Lift & Shift Initiatives.  All to drive enterprise efficiency and performance through automation and reusability.

Experience                                                                            Apr 2015 - Present

Industries: (Education, Insurance, Government, Finance, Healthcare, Ecommerce, & Transportation)

o   AI Model Trainer (Contract) – Handshake – Jacksonville, FL– Mar 2026 – present

• Actions:  Integrated AI into the SDLC to improve and increase software development velocities; trained Image/Language Models

• Context:  Leveraged recently acquired Python & AI Mastery Certifications, OpenAI Codex, Gemini, GitHub CoPilot, and Multitiered Prompting to generate Single Page Web Applications for the 2026 Handshake OpenAI Codex Creator Challenge.

• Result:  Significant improvement in overall development turn-around time.  Stood up 4 separate single page web applications in three business days.

o   Senior Platform/API Engineer – University of Phoenix – Lake Mary, FL– Nov 2022 – Aug 2025

– Contract to Hire via Insight Global

• Action:  Led Legacy Framework Migrations from Java 7/8 – 11, 17, & 21; Spring 2.x to Spring Boot 3.x+; Spring RESTful API Security Templates

• Context:  Modernized monolithic Documentum and Funding Domain systems into cloud-native microservices on AWS EKS

• Result:  Eliminated critical technical debt and optimized service consumption across the enterprise infrastructure.

• Action:  Integrated Event-Driven Design Patterns, with respect to Domain-Driven Design Patterns, by leveraging AWS MSK and Glue with Kafka.

• Context:  Targeted newly integrated high-latency vendor software, Flowable, across the platform's messaging layer

• Result:  Substantially increased performance and throughput while reducing "across-the-wire" latency

• Action:  Provisioned high-availability AWS resources using Terraform and Spacelift.

• Context:  Engineered robust CI/CD pipelines on EKS/ECS to automate the onboarding of project teams for third-party Flowable and Documentum integrations

• Result:  Significantly reduced manual configuration time and streamlined the deployment lifecycle for cross-functional engineering teams

• Action:  Established "Golden Path" Engineering Roadmaps, Trouble-shooting Guides, and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) within Atlassian Confluence.

• Context:  Eliminating knowledge silos while standardizing API HTTP Request/Response Bodies during a period of rapid organizational growth.

• Result:  Accelerated developer onboarding and ensured architectural governance across the Funding and Documentum domains

• Action:  Integrated New Relic platform observability across the cloud ecosystem, for Flowable Vendor Product.

• Context:  Developed customized JSON logging and domain-driven dashboards for real-time production monitoring.

• Result:  Significantly reduced Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) by providing actionable insights into system health and performance bottlenecks.

o   Senior Software Engineer – Kemper – Jacksonville, FL– Mar 2022 – Aug 2022

– Contract via Insight Global

• Experience Available Upon Request

o   Lead Software Engineer – Allstate– Jacksonville, FL– Mar 2019 – Mar 2022

• Action:  Spearheaded the integration of IBM z/OS Connect for Custom Application BatchCard Services.

• Context:  Required bridging mission-critical legacy mainframe data with a modern RESTful Microservice architecture.

• Result:  Successfully modernized legacy data access, bridging the gap between modern and legacy infrastructure

• Action:  Architected a high-availability Azure/CaaS environment managing 52 Docker images across 12 Kubernetes namespaces.

• Context:  Part of the "Transformative Growth" initiative to scale enterprise-level container orchestration bring the infrastructure to an ONPREM Cloud Stack.

• Result:  Ensured 24/7 system availability and standardized the deployment pipeline using Jenkins, Groovy, and HTML with the basis of parameterization. 

• Action:  Engineered a custom Java Spring Boot Wire Mock Framework for JSON-based API simulation.

• Context:  Aimed at decoupling internal team dependencies during the development of complex microservices

• Result:  Established as an enterprise alternative to product licensing, effectively reducing developer overlapping project dependencies and accelerating delivery timelines.

• Action:  Comprehensive Database Administration (DBA) and Modeling for SQL Server and Oracle PL/SQL.

• Context:  Data Normalization & schema re-design for V3 AIM/Billing Vendor Software.

• Result:  Ensured high-performance data retrieval & strict transactional consistency with respect to the Vendor Product

o   Senior Software Engineer – Leidos– Orlando, FL– May 2018 – Mar 2019

– Contract via Collabera

• Experience Available Upon Request

o   Senior Software Engineer – Lockheed Martin– Orlando, FL– Oct 2017 – Apr 2018

– Contract via Apex Systems

• Experience Available Upon Request

o   Senior Backend Engineer – OneMain Financial– Evansville, IN– Jan 2017 – Sep 2017

– Contract

• Action:  Maintained 24/7 high-availability Java/J2EE APIs and REST/SOAP Web Services.

• Context:  Leveraged Spring Boot & Hibernate to enable real-time analytics for automotive risk mitigation and asset recovery.

• Result:  Successfully optimized JSON/XML processing using Jersey and Jackson, resulting in significantly improved response times for critical financial reporting.

• Action:  Optimized complex data exchanges and messaging integration across DB2, SQL Server, and Oracle PL/SQL.

• Context:  Operated within a WebSphere environment to facilitate seamless data flow across the lending department and personal loans division.

• Result:  Ensured strict data integrity and compliance with financial auditing requirements through comprehensive testing using SOAP UI and JUnit.

o   Senior Software Engineer – Heritage Services– Indianapolis, IN– Apr 2015 – Aug 2016

• Action:  Spearheaded the integration of Open-Source Technology Stacks.  architecture using Leaflet and OpenStreetMap.

• Context:  Proof Of Concept (POC) leveraging JAVA, Hibernate, & Oracle PL/SQL with Leaflet & OpenStreetMaps to identify alternative transportation routes & Zero Landfill Opportunities.

• Result:  Provided opportunities for reduction in transportations costs and increase in sales growth.

Technical Skills

·       Programming and Scripting: Java, Python, SQL, Bash, PowerShell, Groovy (Jenkins DSL), cURL.

·       Frameworks and Libraries: Spring Boot, Spring Framework, Spring Cloud, Spring Security, Spring Web, JPA, Hibernate, JUnit, Mockito, PowerMockito, Selenium.

·       Cloud Platforms:AWS, EKS, ECS, EC2, S3, ELB, VPC, SSM, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, IAM (Roles/Policies), Secrets Manager, Parameter Store, MSK, Glue, RDS, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Redshift, Cognito, Azure, Microsoft Entra ID (SSO), ForgeRock integration.

·       DevOps and Infrastructure: Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, Terraform Cloud, Spacelift, CloudFormation, Istio Service Mesh, Sidecar patterns.

·       CI/CD and Build Tools: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Maven, Gradle, JFrog Artifactory, JFrog X-Ray, SonarQube, NPM, PIP, Winget, Chocolatey.

·       Messaging and Integration: IBM z/OS Connect, COBOL, JCL, Apache Kafka, RESTful APIs, Microservices, Web Services, JWT, OAuth2, Postman

·       Data and Configuration: JSON, XML, YAML, YML, Oracle PL/SQL, Git, GitHub, BitBucket, GitBash.

·       Observability and Monitoring: Splunk, Datadog, New Relic (JSON Logging), Grafana, AWS CloudWatch.

·       AI and Generative Engineering: OpenAI, Codex, ChatGPT, Node.js, Javascript, HTML, CSS, Copilot, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, Prompt Engineering.

·       Methodologies and Environments: Agile (Scrum/Kanban), Waterfall, Domain-Driven Design (DDD), Test-Driven Development (TDD).

·       Operating Systems: Linux, Unix, Windows.

Education

·       Bachelor of Science: Computer Science | Indiana State University | Terre Haute, IN

·       Bachelor of Science: Mechanical Engineering | Southern Illinois University | Carbondale, IL

Certifications & Awards

·       AI Workflow Automation | University of South Florida (In Progress)

·       AI Master Program | Coursiv (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, etc.)

·       PCEP – Certified Associate-Level Python Programmer | Python Institute

·       Eagle Scout | Boy Scouts of America

*** Full Employment History & References upon request ***