Aston Carter

Catalog Associate

Founder of Investoroo.com | Helping employees and self-employed professionals navigate the world of retirement planning | Finance Writer

Retirement planning can be time-consuming, energy-draining and downright confusing.

Does this sound like you?

❌ You aren’t sure about how to predict your future financial needs
❌ You’re overwhelmed with retirement options
❌ You don’t know where to start investing

All of these are reasons I’ve heard for why people postpone retirement planning.

The problem?

The longer you wait, the less you’ll make. 

Whether you’re an employee or self-employed, chances are you aren’t maximizing your retirement options. 

Here’s how I can help ⬇️

Over the last 10 years, I’ve maxed out my retirement contributions in 401ks and IRAs by understanding laws, limits, and undervalued investment opportunities.

Now, I’m sharing everything I know.

When you subscribe to the Investoroo.com newsletter, you’ll get tips and advice to help you make informed decisions about your future.

We’ll explore topics such as:

✅ Roth IRAs vs. Traditional IRAs
✅ Self-employment retirement options
✅ Supplemental plans to go with pensions
✅ How to determine how much money you’ll need to retire (and how to get there)

And so much more.

Why Me? ⬇️

Unlike most retirement plan experts, I’m not affiliated with a financial company. 

I’m not here to sell IRAs or pressure you into opening unnecessary accounts.

I’m here to give unbiased advice to help you retire the way you want.

That’s it.

Let’s get you on the right path today. Sign up for the Investoroo.com newsletter here.

Aaron Koral

FTI Consulting

FTI is a global B2B legal advisory firm. Led the technology modernization initiative, including a Generative AI LLM project and a finance transformation program.

Key Achievements:
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•	Enhanced the legal team’s productivity 65% by delivering a GenAI-powered LLM feature integrated into the legal document management and workflow system to automate drafting of complex M&A agreements.
•	Drive model development and fine-tuning effort with a cross-functional team of Data Scientists and ML Engineers, leveraging Azure Machine Learning.
•	Delivered a $65M ERP migration 6 months ahead of schedule; defined the product roadmap, led backlog refinement, managed end-to-end development and drove adoption for 5k users across 34 countries.
•	Reduced cloud hosting costs 90% by prioritizing a cloud-native architecture using C# Azure Functions, React JS, Node JS, MS SQL Server, Redis, DevOps CI/CD pipeline, and Git.. 
•	Architected, designed and implemented scalable, event-driven RESTful APIs leveraging serverless functions, enabling seamless integration of 18 applications with the ERP system. 
•	Built and scaled global software engineering teams across three continents; led multiple concurrent workstreams and oversaw vendor selection to enhance operational performance and achieve strategic objectives.

Sr. Manager, Software Engineering & Applied AI

The National Institutes of Health

The National Institute of Health is a federal government healthcare research agency. Delivered a portfolio of scientific applications leveraging computer vision, AI/ML and High Performance Computing (HPC) while managing a cross-functional team of PhD data scientists and AI/ML Engineers.

Key Achievements:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
•	Drove $MM sales growth by turning around underperforming projects, building client relationships and boosting customer retention through clear roadmap communication and iterative, quality-focused releases.
•	Boosted development team effectiveness 300% by implementing management best practices, coaching Product and Engineering leaders in agile methodologies; established a QA function that cut project rework by 45%.
•	Architect, design, and oversee development using AWS Cloud, C#, .Net, Angular, Node JS, SQL Server/Oracle, and open-source tech stacks.
•	Manage mobile application development for iOS and Android platforms focused on training machine learning models, achieving a 30% increase in model training efficiency.
•	Led development of advanced machine vision algorithms for terabyte-scale data analytics, increasing image recognition accuracy by 20%.
•	Transformed enterprise-wide hiring through competency-based interviewing and standardized practices, boosting talent quality and building cross-functional, high-performing teams; led individual and team appraisals 
•	Established KPIs and KVMs to drive 35% improvement in operational efficiency; defined and executed business strategy; and provided hands-on leadership to Product, Engineering, Sales and Customer Success teams.

Software Development Director

T. Rowe Price

T Rowe is a global asset management firm with more than one trillion in assets. Spearhead a multi-year cloud initiative to transition the IT Infrastructure to AWS cloud. Elucidated requirements and formulated use cases with business stakeholders while overseeing engineering teams to deliver a suite of financial data analytic applications.

Key Achievements:
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•	Lead all aspects of software development for applications, including financial risk, liquidity and regulatory projects.
•	Architect microservices using C#, AWS Lambda function, DynamoDB, S3 and Apigee. Deploy in AWS Cloud using docker containers driven via Jenkins CI/CD pipeline.
•	Reduce development timeframe to 50%, by introducing cloud-native technologies/serverless functions to implement a micro-service architecture for a suite of financial analytic products.
•	After successful cloud-native implementation, evangelized serverless technologies across the organization for cost savings, scalability, development, deployment and TCO benefits.
•	Significantly reduced developer onboarding and cross-training time by designing and implementing cutting-edge software development procedures and improved coding standards.

Senior Technical Manager  | Solutions Consultant

Contract

Worked at Educational, Financial, Healthcare organizations and State of Maryland. Lead technically diverse software development teams including Quality Assurance and Business Analysts through full SDLC. Created plans for disaster recovery and setup environment for business continuity.

Key Achievements:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
•	Launched an on-premise education CRM product to AWS Cloud as SaaS while managing development teams using .Net, Java and DevOps automation tools and leveraging IaC & IaaS.
•	Scaled and led on-site and offshore engineering teams while upskilling the DevOps team by creating and executing a training plan.
•	Implemented agile methodologies and conducted daily scrum meetings while representing my team in cross-functional team meetings.
•	Created project plans, performed risk management, estimated Level of Effort (LoE) and rolled out complex releases in collaboration with internal and external stakeholders.
•	Authored and presented a well-received white paper on Cloud Strategy and SaaS Product Maturity levels in a world-wide senior IT executive meeting.
•	Drove down cloud hosting costs by 30% in collaboration with Amazon representatives.
•	Served as Product Owner and client advocate while creating a product roadmap and refining the backlog.
•	Ensured payment portal enhancements aligned with client needs by collaborating with third-party vendors and eight divisions to schedule and deploy quarterly releases.
•	Develop an enterprise healthcare web-portal for state clients using ASP.Net, MVC, Web API, Angular JS and NoSQL Raven DB to create a unified enterprise solution.
•	Key contributor to Improving sales by developing a mobile application for iOS and Android tablets geared towards marketing professionals while leading a distributed team.

Senior Software Engineering Manager | Cloud Architect

Elevance Health

Elevance Health (formerly Anthem) is the largest US health insurance company. Managed two full stack development teams delivering Client Toolkit and Message Engine projects using HTML, Web Services, JavaScript, T-SQL & SQL Server.

Key Achievements:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
•	Improved data analytics capability five times by consolidating 600 individual client databases into one Enterprise Data warehouse. Re-architected Client Toolkit application to perform optimally with new database.
•	Architected Message Engine as a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) by creating proof of concept (PoC) using WCF Web Services; participated in the Buy vs. Build decision-making.
•	Successfully delivered the minimum viable product (MVP) with half the team size, a third of the time and cost of comparable Clinical Rules Engines.
•	 Invigorated developer morale and boosted retention rates by orchestrating new career paths, job descriptions, training plans and performance objectives.
•	Orchestrated waterfall to agile transition, increased team’s productivity by 2X, while maximizing customer satisfaction.

Application Development Manager | Scrum Master | Developer Advisor

Exelon

Exelon is the nation’s largest utility company serving 10 million customers. They had an urgent need for two B2B and B2C energy trading products.

Key Achievements:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
•	Deliver two enterprise energy auction and pricing web portals, rolled out from concept to production in months,
•	Rollout product releases on a state-by-state basis across the US,
•	Expeditiously hire, train and mentor software development teams, use C#/ASP.Net, T-SQL, SQL Server, PL/SQL & Oracle,

Technical Project Manager

SpectrumK12

•	Slash outstanding product issues down to 25% while leading an offshore development team

Lead Software Engineer

CoStar Group

•	Help roll-out the e-commerce industry’s most sophisticated Report Wizard by conceptualizing design, prototyping Proof of Concept (PoC) and develop n-tier reporting infrastructure in C#, XML, ASP.Net & SQL Server

Software Engineer

SEO Keywords

Software Technologies & Project Management Skills

Dynamic IT leader with 15 years of experience aligning IT strategy and talent to deliver AI-enabled SaaS products across startups and Fortune 500 companies. Proven success in building and scaling high performance software engineering and data science teams across the US, Europe and Asia while driving adoption of industry-leading technology practices. Own the strategic roadmap, define the technical architecture and lead end-to-end development of complex projects across multiple industries, leveraging agile methodologies. Adept at collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders and sales teams to drive innovation and accelerate revenue growth. Hands-on experience in delivering mission-critical solutions leveraging AWS, Azure, C#, .NET Core, Python, Java, AI/ML and open-source technologies.


Certifications:
~~~~~~~~~
PMP - Project Management Professional
Professional Scrum Master
Professional Scrum Product Owner
AWS Architect, MCP, MCSD and MCDBA


SEO Keywords
~~~~~~~~~
SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE | ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | MACHINE LEARNING | PEOPLE MANAGEMENT | PROJECT MANAGER | PROGRAM MANAGEMENT | SDLC | CLOUD COMPUTING | DEVOPS | CI/CD | DATA ANALYTICS | AZURE | AWS | REST APIs | ORACLE | C++ | SQL SERVER | JIRA | SERVICENOW | DOCKER | KUBERNETES | B2B | B2C | HEALTHCARE | E-COMMERCE | FINANCE | FINTECH | EDUCATION | PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

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