Pilot Flying J

As an Enterprise Applications Manager, I have been responsible for teams supporting various internal products and initiatives.  In this role, I led a Data Engineering Team that:
	• Drove the onboarding initative of a large IP software purchase
	• Implemented Georedundancy in an existing cloud infrastructure
	• Carried a product through the end of the SDLC as it went into maintenance
	• Built Pipeline engine to process ETL

I also had the opportunities to help build communities within the organization.  Through direct involvement or Coaching and Mentorship, I helped several internal communities take or alter their shape.
	• A community of analysts working to improve and automate their manual analyses
	• A community of Product Owners trying to improve their Agile adoption
	• A community of Scrum Masters wanting to transform how they collaborate
	• A coalition to improve shared services through the introduction of self service elements

I had the opportunity to mentor amazing developers, QAs, new coders, managers, and junior leaders - a truly thrilling experience.

In my time with Pilot, my team started using a Test-First approach to development and became cross functional, handling their own Testing, QA, Database work, and DevOps.  Those I've been affiliated with have made a lot of progress in their goals as well.  I'm thankful for everyone I've been able to work with.

Manager, Enterprise Application

ANCA CNC Machines

As the USA Engineering Team Lead, I am the project lead for most special projects taking place in the USA.  Where I am not the project lead, I play a significant role coordinating the project with our overseas engineering teams in either our Australian headquarters or one of the other major branches.  Our engineering team is a cross-discipline team including Software, Mechanical, and CAM engineering capabilities working in what I typically refer to as an EngOps format (due to my software/data analysis background).

The projects that our team directly develops provide our customers with bespoke, turn-key cutting tool grinding solutions.  As with all engineering projects, some rely heavily on one discipline more than others, but by having a close-knit cross functional team, we are able to quickly shift gears when improved solutions arise.  Our projects have included
	• adapting our standard machine options to new platforms,
	• developing robot commissioning software and tooling,
	• improving the functioning of pneumatic actuation systems,
	• domain specific tool holding and robot end effector design,
	• part orientation digitization algorithms development, and
	• custom tool grinding algorithm development.

During my time as USA Engineering Team lead, our team has closed over 4 dozen special engineering projects, supporting CNC machine sales averaging $400,000 each, and reaching as high $1,000,000.

USA Engineering Team Lead

As our Branch's only Software Applications Engineer, I played a very active role in providing:
	• Custom Software Solutions,
	• Legacy special software support,
	• Direct customer support,
	• Engineering support for the Branch Aftersales unit, and
	• Technical Sales Support.

My primary objective to support branch special software developed for turn-key solutions including the development of new special grinding and digitizing algorithms as well as maintaining and updating legacy solutions.  Our modern special software projects were developed in Java and EPPL (a superset of NC Code) and our legacy projects were developed in C++.  I developed CI/CD for these projects through our corporate Jenkins Server using Groovy, Ant, and Ivy.

Additionally, I conducted countless daily customer support calls where I resolved software failures or conducted failure triage before sending issues to our overseas support teams.  I ran software demos approximately once a month for prospective customers, and supported our Applications CAM Team with their machine demonstrations and acceptance testing.  In the performance of these role, I developed sales and root cause analyses in Python, Excel, and Bash.

Tech Stack:
	• Java
	• EPPL (NC G-Code Superset)
	• ANCA Script
	• ANCA PLC
	• Commander
	• Python
	• Excel
	• Bash
	• Atlassian (Jira/Confluence/BitBucket)
	• Jenkins with Groovy Jenkinsfile Pipelines
	• Ant
	• Ivy
	• Eclipse
	• git
	• Windows Embedded
	• Fanuc Karel
	• Nachi
	• VirtualBox

Software Application Engineer

Altarum

At the Altarum Institute, I ran and upgraded our ETL software for processing military healthcare survey responses.  Our ETL analyses were primarily written SAS and SQL, but I also added a testing framework using Python UnitTest and a command line interface using Python ArgParse.  Our ETL pulled raw survey data from a SQL Server LimeSurvey database, transformed the data using SAS, then reloaded into another SQL Server reporting for reporting.  When I took over the ETL process, the analysis software didn't was not under version control and did not have any unit test coverage.  To provide a safety net, my first step was to get all our code under version control in git.  After that, I developed a simple CI/CD infrastructure and started adding unit test coverage for any code I needed to modify.

Since we were working in secure computing environments, installing version control or CI/CD software on the compute servers was not possible, so I ended up configuring an integration server hosted on a local virtual machine and deployed the code to the compute servers using SSH scripts.  SAS doesn't offer a sophisticated UnitTest library, so to add test coverage, I developed a simple framework using Python UnitTest to process the tests and the standard Python OS library to run our SAS code.  The result was effective for our needs.

When I started, our ETL process was described by a complex document, requiring software changes to update hard coded variables, and an intimate knowledge of the ETL structures.  I simplified this by developing a Python CLI using ArgParse and ConfigParse and using the standard OS library to run our SAS code.  Doing this allowed us to simplify our work instructions, allowed us to move hard coded data to ini files for repeatability, and required less knowledge of how the programs were structured, what intermittent folders to create, and what programs to run in which order.

Research Analyst

University of Michigan

While working with the UM Physical Oceanography Group, I analyzed the output from a large-scale ocean model called HYCOM (HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model) with experimental data output sizes on the scale of 8 TB.  Our research goal research was to test HYCOM's fitness at predicting real-world Available Potential Energy then use the model to calculate global ocean energy budgets and maps.  For our fitness tests, we compared experimental HYCOM results against in-situ data from an archive of fixed oceanographic sensors (Global Multi-Archive Current Meter Database).

I developed a GUI in MATLAB and Java so we could review the in-situ data and scrub corrupted and invalid data for use in our fitness testing.  Then we used modified Fortran Libraries to extract experimental parametric data from the in-situ neighborhood, allowing more efficient datasets and improved compute efficiency.  Finally we used MATLAB to compute interpolated model energy time series for comparison to the in-situ data.

After validating the model against in-situ data, we used Fortran libraries to convert the experimental HYCOM data into standard 3D Geospatial coordinates, for use creating Available Potential Energy maps and a global energy budget.

Research Assistant

CACI International Inc

My time with CACI probably gave my career the most direction out of any of my previous positions.  It was with CACI that I discovered software development which has led me to software as an artform, as a passion, and as an ultra-powerful tool.  From a simple standpoint, my employment with CACI was meant to use brute force to figure out which Navy equipment was likely to fail.  But when my supervisor gave me my first task, I knew that I was not suited to the level of detail manually processing 10 "full" Excel files (back when an excel file could be full).  Instead, I was exposed to Regular Expressions for the first time, and was able to get the rough data my team needed to look into the specific equipment further.

After the unexpectedly fast turn around on that first project, my supervisor kept sending me more and more analysis projects to see if there was way to automate them.  My analysis skills quickly outgrew RegEx, then Excel, then VBA, then MS Access.  After just 3 months, I started developing analysis software in .net using C# paired with data in SQL Server databases.  Not long later, I started working with my first software mentor to clean up my analysis code which we ended up using to develop a C# based reporting-style website built around the analysis code I had written.

In the end, I learned that I LOVED software engineering and data analysis, so I moved on to pursue my degree in Mathematics and Physics.  However I owe a lot to my experience with CACI, and I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such a fantastic team.

Reliability Engineer

US Navy

My time in the Navy was a thrilling and unparalleled experience.  I was stationed on the USS George Washington (CVN73) as an Electrician.  I also had several collateral duties and watch station qualifications.

As an Electrician's Mate, I performed maintenance and repairs on all non-nuclear electrical systems including 110VAC and 440VAC electrical distribution systems, lighting systems, small boat electrical systems, 400HZ motor-generators, pumps, Aircraft Electrical Servicing Stations, Aircraft Catapult Electronics, and Aircraft Elevators.  I was also qualified and stood the following watch stations:
	• Chief Electrical Watch
	• Ashore Chief Auxiliaries Watch
	• Load Center Rover
	• Aft Steering Electrician Watch
	• Anchor and Windless Watch
	• At Sea and Shore Fire Parties

As Repair Parts Petty Officer (RPPO) for my division, I was responsible for ordering, accepting delivery, and managing storage of all repair parts for 65 sailor electrical division responsible for all non-nuclear repairs for an aircraft carrier.  Spare parts were stored in 3 electrical repair store rooms which fell under my responsibility.  During my time, I managed all electrical parts for our division through 2 major ship overhauls during ship drydock where major electrical work was performed.  I had 2 part time assistants to help me carry out these duties.

I also had 2 other major collateral duties: assistant workcenter supervisor and departmental training petty officer.  As assistant workcenter supervisor, my job was to schedule maintenance and repair work for the 15 sailors in my workcenter.  As the departmental training petty officer, I was responsible for scheduling, coordinating, and administrating a training plan for 260 enlisted engineering sailors and I welcomed new sailors aboard and conducted their initial orientation on the ship and in the department.

Electrican's Mate

Remodelling Specialties

With Remodeling Specialties, I worked as a Cabinet and Countertop Fabricator.  My job was to build custom cabinets and countertops for our customers' specifications.  In this role, I was able to independently take raw materials such as rough sawn lumber from a lumbermill and sheets of plywood from specialty suppliers and turn them into custom finished cabinetry and furniture.  I was also capable of doing the same with solid surface countertops, including the mounting of sinks and overhanging edge preparation.  After cabinets and countertops were manufactured, I played a key role during installation.

In this role, I safely used and maintained a wide variety of powerful and dangerous hand and powertools without incident, including Tablesaws, Hand Held and Table mounted Routers, Miter Boxes, Bandsaws, Planers, Jointers.

Cabinet and Countertop Fabricator

I've spent a lifetime working in engineering and analysis and providing community leadership.  I grew up fabricating Cabinets, spent several years as a Naval Electrician, conducted Reliability Engineering Analysis, analyzed oceanographic energy data, performed ETL on medical survey data, and run an Engineering Team for a CNC Manufacturer.

Serving causes and the community are both important to me, so I spend a lot of my free time building and leading teams in community organizations.  I am on a Steering Committees for an annual community festival with around 75,000 attendees, I am on the planning committee for a large annual education fundraiser, and I am the Cubmaster for a local Cub Scout pack.  In the past, I also volunteered IT services for a local women's shelter and CASA, and I have provided volunteer math and physics tutoring at U of M.

Outside of work and volunteer time, my hobbies include computers, electronics, robotics, and woodcrafts.    I like making and selling things so I've started a couple arts and crafts businesses in the past which combine all my hobbies.

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