Derrick McDowell
Houston,TX
Overview
11
11
years of professional experience
Work History
Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead
Microsoft
11.2021 - Current
- Owned architecture and technical direction for a multi-tenant, Azure-native platform spanning 10+ microservices, supporting millions of monthly transactions and achieving 99.9% availability through distributed, event-driven design using .NET 6/8, AKS, Service Bus, and Event Grid.
- Defined and promoted architecture standards (DDD, Clean Architecture, CQRS, resiliency patterns), reducing cross-service dependencies and improving development consistency and reducing cross-team friction.
- Designed and implemented backend services and APIs supporting user-facing applications, collaborating with frontend teams and contributing to React/TypeScript-based UI workflows to enable seamless end-to-end functionality.
- Led development of an AI-powered Copilot-style assistant using Azure OpenAI and .NET microservices, including a RAG pipeline (Azure AI Search + Cosmos DB vector indexing), improving workflow efficiency by 20-25% and reducing data retrieval latency by 30%+.
- Built asynchronous orchestration and event-driven workflows using Azure Functions, AKS, and Service Bus, improving processing latency by 25-35% and enabling scalable background processing.
- Designed and optimized API platforms (REST/gRPC) via Azure API Management, implementing caching, throttling, and versioning strategies that reduced P95 latency by 25-40%.
- Engineered data solutions and pipelines using Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Data Factory, and Synapse, optimizing indexing, partitioning, and query performance (~30%+ improvement) while enabling near real-time analytics (~40% faster reporting).
- Led migration from monolithic systems to containerized microservices (Docker, AKS), improving scalability, deployment flexibility, and reducing deployment time by ~50%.
- Implemented secure identity and access architecture using Microsoft Entra ID, OAuth2/OIDC, RBAC, and managed identities, standardizing authentication and improving security consistency across services.
- Established observability and reliability practices using Azure Monitor, Application Insights, and OpenTelemetry, reducing MTTR by 30-40% and improving system visibility.
- Improved DevOps and delivery pipelines using Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions, enabling automated CI/CD, zero-downtime deployments, and more consistent release cycles.
- Built and maintained automated testing strategies across backend and frontend layers using xUnit, Playwright, Cypress, and Jest, improving test coverage and release quality, while leveraging AI-assisted tools (GitHub Copilot, Azure OpenAI) to enhance development efficiency.
- Led design reviews, mentored engineers, and collaborated cross-functionally, influencing architecture decisions and delivering scalable, high-impact solutions aligned with business goals.
- Remote
Senior Software Engineer
Capital One
Plano, TX
05.2018 - 11.2021
- Developed and delivered full-stack applications using React (TypeScript), Redux, and ASP.NET Core APIs, supporting customer-facing financial workflows including account management and transaction processing.
- Built a real-time payments monitoring and fraud detection dashboard using React and .NET Core, enabling transaction visibility, anomaly detection, and investigation workflows, reducing investigation latency by 20-30%.
- Developed dynamic, data-driven UI components and dashboards for transaction monitoring and alerting workflows, improving user visibility and usability across financial systems.
- Designed and implemented RESTful APIs using ASP.NET Core, enabling secure, scalable communication between frontend applications and backend services handling high-volume transaction data.
- Integrated applications with AWS services (EC2, S3) and optimized frontend/backend performance through caching, efficient API design, and asynchronous processing, improving system responsiveness by 20-30%.
- Implemented state management using Redux and modern React patterns, improving maintainability and consistency across complex UI workflows.
- Developed secure, compliant features using OAuth2 and enterprise identity systems, ensuring protection of sensitive financial and customer data.
- Built and maintained automated tests across frontend and backend layers using Jest, React Testing Library, and xUnit, improving test coverage and reducing production defects.
- Contributed to CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, enabling automated build, test, and deployment processes for applications running on AWS, and collaborated in Agile teams to deliver high-quality features.
- Plano, TX
Software Engineer II
Enverus (formerly Drillinginfo)
Dallas, TX
08.2015 - 05.2018
- Developed and maintained full-stack web applications using C#, ASP.NET MVC/Web API, JavaScript, and SQL Server, supporting data platforms for oil & gas analytics.
- Built data-driven dashboards and UI components to visualize large datasets (production, pricing, operational data), improving usability and accessibility for business users.
- Designed and implemented RESTful APIs and backend services, enabling efficient data retrieval and integration across internal systems.
- Wrote and optimized complex SQL queries, stored procedures, and indexing strategies, improving query performance and reducing data retrieval time by 20-30%.
- Collaborated with product and data teams to support data ingestion, transformation, and reporting workflows, translating business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Improved application performance through backend optimizations and caching strategies, enhancing responsiveness for data-heavy applications.
- Contributed to frontend enhancements using JavaScript, jQuery, HTML/CSS, and participated in Agile development, code reviews, and testing (unit/integration) to ensure quality and reliability.
- Dallas, TX
Timeline
Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead
Microsoft
11.2021 - Current
Senior Software Engineer
Capital One
05.2018 - 11.2021
Software Engineer II
Enverus (formerly Drillinginfo)
08.2015 - 05.2018