Chris Black

Principal level architecture, full-stack development and DevOps consulting services for a client specialized in vehicle/home service contracts and claims administration industry

• Responsible for Azure infrastructure, application architecture and development for large digital transformation effort splitting legacy in-house administration system into Azure cloud-first replacement for service contract management. System implements two-way integration with new claims system that has been simultaneously migrated to Salesforce by another vendor.
• Architected and developed generic import service for intake of contracts from various fulfillment companies. Service is responsible for rating contracts against business / data-driven guidelines and rules to ensure profitability and flags or rejects those that are not.
• Developed API integrations, messaging, queuing and auditing, including data aggregation across multiple source systems into single managed back-end.
• Process improvement and modernization has reduced import and rating process from 35 minutes to ~10 seconds.
• Automation and process improvement has reduced contract cancellation process from full-time 40 hour+ effort to less than four hours / week.
• Designed and developed data-driven, expression-based calculation engine for contract rating and cancellations with ability to show its work. Greatly reduced that amount time spent debugging calculations for both developers and business users as it shows how system arrived at result for each calculation.
• Recently upgraded application data contexts from EF Core 5 to EF Core 6 with compiled models which as increased startup time and query performance nearly 70%.
• System is composed of Blazor (WASM) and Angular SPA(s), Web API, Function Applications, Azure Storage, Service Bus topics and queues, Redis Cache, Azure SQL, and developed with .NET 6.0 / .NET Standard 2.1. Secured with OAuth 2.0, Azure Active Directory and Key Vault.

Principal architect, full-stack development and DevOps consulting services for Nourished Rx, specialists in the engagement of patients and health plan members with custom dietitian approved meal plans for the prevention / progression of heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

• Partnered with subject matter experts and team to consolidate multiple systems and data sources into single application responsible for management of vendor meal catalogs, approval, scheduling, and fulfillment of meal orders for Nourished Rx members. Service oriented integration with Dynamics (system of record) for member/patient data that allowed dietitians ability to quickly customize meal plans, while avoiding duplication and storage of sensitive healthcare PII.

Principal level architecture and full-stack development consulting services for client's commercially-marketed, cloud-based automotive shop management SaaS product hosted in Azure

• Provided expertise administering and implementing features for all aspects of product's Azure environment (App Services, Service Bus Pub/Sub and Queues, SignalR, Search, Logic Apps, Key Vault and Azure SQL)
• Shared responsibility for all aspects of build and deployment pipeline, maintaining separate branches and environments (deployment slots) for dev, alpha, beta, staging and production.
• Produced and implemented application scaling strategies to optimize performance while controlling costs.
• Led application telemetry initiative that provided insights into products performance and usage characteristics, allowing team to identify and improve performance bottlenecks.
• Championed, designed and implemented load testing strategy to allow team to effectively measure each deployment/release's effect on performance of application under load.
• Implemented improvements to outside purchase, inventory and returns areas of product.

Strategic security assessment for client's commercially-marketed case management SaaS product

• Led team to identify and inventory areas of application to get overall picture of attack surface.
• Applied principles from OWASP Top 10 most critical web application security vulnerabilities to identify threats/vulnerabilities.
• Using combination of white-hat hacking techniques, and demonstrated current security posture of product to members of executive team. Used vulnerabilities and script injection to show live take-over of their multi-tenant SQL Server to point of being able to encrypt their backups with new key that could be used as ransom in hands of malicious attacker. All attacks were executed through console of Chromes development tools.
• Delivered findings and recommendations along with defense in depth strategies for consumption by software development team.
• Partnered with client's software development team to provide strategic guidance while demonstrating security best practices.

Security assessment for client's emerging loan platform hosted in Google Cloud

• Used various white-hat hacking techniques, tools, and automation to provide current security posture.
• Delivered findings and recommendations report along with defense in depth strategies to client.

Led the overall architecture and made key development contributions to ElevatePoint's Intranet in a Box SaaS Platform. Effectively reduced deployment complexity, and created an intuitive, repeatable delivery mechanism allowing team members to deploy without the involvement of senior development resources.

Consulting Accomplishments

Turned around a failing project and increased employee engagement and intranet adoption while restoring confidence and credibility to my client's global IT Department.

• Led small team to improve performance and perception of high visibility custom SharePoint Online intranet for a global client.
• Improved page load times from 18 seconds to 2-3 seconds in US. Reduced page load times in China from over one minute to 2-3 seconds.
• Shared engineering excellence concepts and best practices with their development team.
• Technologies and concepts used: JavaScript, SharePoint custom development, CDN optimization, pnp-js, gulp, bundling, minification, and elimination of render blocking.

Delivered on key strategic initiatives for the Senior Vice President of Technology on high visibility enterprise service bus client engagement.

• Evaluated NServiceBus, MuleSoft, Azure Service Bus, Rabbit MQ and Neuron ESB while creating proof of concepts and created solution architecture.
• Engineered scalable, reliable messaging platform for exchange of data and event notifications used by applications and integrations across organization.
• Integrated concierge and operational monitoring of services (WCF) with Polycom Real Presence Platform REST API while leveraging full-stack development skills.
• Technologies used: C#, ASP.NET MVC, HTML 5, JavaScript, jQuery, Web API, SignalR, WCF, SQL Server, MSMQ, REST API integration.

Designed and developed complex costing application for a remote client

• Worked with client's subject matter experts to rapidly gain industry knowledge and collaborated closely during design to ensure solid solution.
• Technologies used: C# .NET, WPF, MVVM, MSMQ, TDD, Web API, Unity IoC, and SQL Server.
• Contributed development solutions for a privately held, nationally marketed healthcare product.
• Delivered features in areas of secure mail integration, client file attachments and Meaningful Use Stage II audit logging for compliance.
• Technologies used: JavaScript, jQuery, Kendo UI, Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL.

Product Accomplishments

Innovated and delivered disruptive features that differentiated ElevatePoint's product from competitors.

• Architected and developed multi-tenant Microsoft Teams integration (custom news tab, connector, and productivity bot).
• Cloud hosted in Azure, utilizing Cognitive Services to drive high quality intent matches, rich entity extraction and querying functionality.
• Implemented ability to push news and alerts to channels in Microsoft Teams via ElevatePoint's news connector.
• Developed on unified code base capable of symmetrically servicing SharePoint Online (Office 365), SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2013 customers utilizing modern web development technologies.
• Technologies used: SharePoint custom development, TypeScript, JavaScript, Bootstrap, Knockout.js, HTML, web parts, webpack, pnp-js, gulp, Node.js, SPFx.
• Built all aspects of the continuous integration and deployment pipelines that service our customers with C#, PowerShell and SharePoint Patterns & Practices Cmdlets.
  

• Served as solution architect and development lead of team that built custom meeting management application with key integrations to several back-end systems. Technologies used: C#, ASP.NET, JavaScript, Bootstrap, Ajax, Entity Framework, SQL Server, Exchange Web Services, SharePoint, WCF, Service Bus.
• Delivered mobile web application development strategy for Newmont's Global IT department (Bootstrap, JavaScript, HTML, Phonegap).
• Streamlined elements of budgeting process for Newmont. Designed and developed investment systems solution that enabled technology and tools to enhance budgeting process. Technologies: SharePoint, ASP.NET, HTML, C#, JavaScript, jQuery, Ajax, SQL Server.
• Enhanced key IT delivery capabilities by introducing Application Life-cycle Management (ALM) to Newmont.
• Evangelized and led integration of Lab Management with Team Foundation Server and increased test capabilities for our team.
• Exceeded goals through effective task prioritization and great work ethic

• Consistently delivered on most complex features, exceeding expectations of management and customers.
• Provided architectural guidance for all new product features.
• Advocated for process improvement in form of design reviews, code reviews, code quality, and triaging of defects to reduce randomization of development and test teams.
  

Demonstrated engineering excellence while owning and delivering on several of the most challenging features that our team developed.

• Regularly conducted code reviews and mentored junior members on team.
• Made significant contributions to team coding standards and participated in their enforcement.
• Implemented T4 Text Transformation templates and utilized CodeDOM to generate .NET Assembly connectors based on MDS metadata.
• Raised bar within team by keeping code coverage over 90% throughout life-cycle of project.
• Demonstrated ability to successfully collaborate cross-geo with other Microsoft product teams (SQL Server Master Data Services, SharePoint, BCS).
• Built custom data provider as well as a Windows based wizard responsible for mapping and importing data into Microsoft PerformancePoint / Analysis Services cube.
• Built Windows based wizard responsible for mapping and importing dimension based data from Microsoft Dynamics into Management Reporter.