Mr Ramin Koch

• Strategic Development and Policy Leadership: Directed initiatives that emphasized Georgia's geographic importance as a "bridge between Europe and Asia," positioning the nation as a vital transport and logistics hub along the Trans-Caspian trade corridor.
• Telecommunications Innovation: Played a pivotal role in licensing Starlink’s satellite internet in Georgia, collaborating with the Georgian National Communications Commission to eliminate geographic barriers and expand digital service access.
• Digital Inclusion Initiatives: Spearheaded efforts to provide high-speed, low-latency internet (100–200 Mb/s with a delay of 20ms) to remote mountainous villages, addressing decades-long communication infrastructure gaps.
• Technology Advocacy: Advocated for the role of "digital corridors," comparing them to modern Silk Roads, promoting cross-border collaboration and equitable access to knowledge and markets.
• Project Management: Managed the rollout of Starlink technologies, enabling speeds up to 1 Gb/s while improving spectrum efficiency, and introduced innovative business models tailored to the Georgian market.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Worked closely with the Georgian National Communications Commission, fostering a proactive regulatory environment that supported next-generation technologies.
• Market Research and Forecasting: Conducted extensive analysis to anticipate trends and strategic opportunities in satellite internet services and regional connectivity initiatives.
• Team Leadership: Planned and facilitated team meetings, aligning objectives with organizational priorities and ensuring seamless communication between internal and external stakeholders.
• Future Focus: Announced and prepared for the introduction of new technological advancements and business models in Georgia, ensuring alignment with SpaceX's global objectives.

Key Achievements:

• Licensed Starlink as the first satellite internet provider in the Caucasus region.
• Enabled transformational access to digital services for underserved populations.
• Advocated for policies driving innovation and connectivity along strategic trade corridors.

• Technology Strategy and Innovation: Developed and executed strategies to enhance efficiency, improve delivery, and foster a culture of innovation and operational excellence within the organization.
• Executive Leadership and Risk Management: Provided guidance on technology risk management, cost reduction, emerging technical trends, and customer satisfaction, securing over $8 million in initial funding for strategic initiatives.
• Team Building: Recruited and onboarded over 20 key personnel, forming a high-performing team to drive strategic initiatives.
• SRE Center of Excellence Development: Created a digital strategy for a greenfield SRE Center of Excellence, focusing on centralized innovation management to ensure optimal application performance.
• Product Development: Led product initiatives through stakeholder management and comprehensive product discovery processes, resulting in the deployment of cutting-edge SRE digital products utilizing technologies such as Cloud Foundry, AWS Cloud, Kubernetes, and machine learning application testing frameworks.
• Strategic Partnerships: Established partnerships for testing and distributed tracing capabilities, reducing development costs and accelerating platform adoption.
• Chaos Engineering Implementation: Optimized the discovery process of internal application vulnerabilities through chaos engineering and live product perturbation experiments on Kubernetes.

Achievements:

• Operational Cost Reduction: Reduced digital operating costs by 30% while maintaining service levels through strict budgetary controls and effective vendor management.
• Legacy System Decommissioning: Decreased project and infrastructure costs by 20% and decommissioned 50% of legacy applications and systems, streamlining operations and reducing technical debt.
• System Reliability Enhancement: Reduced system downtime by 40% through the implementation of automated monitoring tools and proactive incident response strategies.
• Deployment Efficiency Improvement: Improved deployment efficiency by 30% using Kubernetes and Terraform, ensuring robust and scalable infrastructure.
• Security Enhancement: Led the integration of advanced secrets management solutions, significantly reducing the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access.

Technical Proficiencies:

• Programming Languages: Proficient in Python and Java for developing automation scripts and system integrations.
• Cloud Platforms: Extensive experience with AWS, GCP, and Azure, including services such as EC2, S3, Lambda, and Kubernetes Engine.
• Containerization and Orchestration: Expertise in Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, and EKS for container management and orchestration.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Utilized Terraform and Ansible to automate infrastructure provisioning, ensuring consistency and reducing manual intervention.
• Monitoring and Logging: Deployed and managed observability tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and the ELK Stack to ensure system reliability.
• Secrets Management: Implemented solutions using HashiCorp Vault and CyberArk to manage sensitive data securely.

Director, Head of Quorum Frameworks Architecture (December 2020 – March 2021)

• Quorum Blockchain Framework Development: Defined and implemented architecture policies to optimize partner onboarding, enhance infrastructure performance, and improve decentralized application (DApp) developer efficiency by delivering robust APIs, SDKs, and frameworks.
• Cross-Border Payment Ecosystem: Established standards to integrate core enterprise customer data and applications, supporting a cost-effective and high-performance cross-border payment ecosystem built on the permissioned Quorum blockchain, initially driving ISO 20022 adoption standards.
• Strategic Leadership: Led platform architecture, concept development, system delivery, client technical solutions, and governance for the Quorum blockchain wholesale payment system trial.
• Privacy Manager Transition: Participated in design workshops for transitioning Quorum's privacy manager from Constellation to Tessera, enhancing system privacy features.

Key Responsibilities:

• Global Operations Leadership: Directed digital transformation initiatives across Bahrain, Dubai, and Singapore, ensuring seamless integration and execution.
• Cloud Migration Strategy: Led AWS cloud migration, enhancing system scalability and performance.
• Innovative Solution Delivery: Collaborated with teams to deploy advanced technical solutions, digitizing processes, and improving efficiency.
• Cross-Functional Team Leadership: Managed a team of experts in data science, UI/UX, DevOps, cybersecurity, and full-stack engineering, fostering collaboration and innovation.
• Agile Framework Implementation: Established a Discovery/Agile framework using Jira and Confluence, enhancing SCRUM team collaboration.
• Operational Guideline Development: Created guidelines to streamline digital transformation initiatives, ensuring consistency and best practices.
• Customer-Centric Digital Strategy: Developed strategies to reduce user touchpoints, enhancing customer satisfaction.
• Cloud Playbook Development: Facilitated AWS cloud migration and developed comprehensive cloud playbooks.
• Centralized Telemetry Implementation: Centralized process telemetry to improve observability and efficiency across platforms.
• Advanced Monitoring Solutions: Implemented application monitoring solutions integrating ELK stack, Riemann, and PagerDuty for real-time performance insights and rapid incident response.

Achievements:

• Enhanced System Performance: Migrated critical applications to AWS, improving system performance by 40% and reducing operational costs by 30%.
• Process Digitization: Digitized key business processes, increasing operational efficiency by 25% and reducing manual errors by 50%.
• Team Development: Built and mentored a high-performing team of over 20 professionals, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.
• Agile Adoption: Implemented Agile methodologies across multiple teams, reducing project delivery times by 35% and improving collaboration.
• Customer Satisfaction: Developed and executed a digital strategy that reduced user touchpoints, leading to a 20% increase in customer satisfaction scores.

Technical Proficiencies:

• Cloud Platforms: Expertise in AWS services including EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, and CloudFormation.
• DevOps Tools: Proficient in Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform for continuous integration, deployment, and infrastructure automation.
• Monitoring and Logging: Experienced with ELK Stack, Riemann, and PagerDuty for comprehensive monitoring and incident management.
• Agile Project Management: Skilled in utilizing Jira and Confluence to manage Agile projects and facilitate team collaboration.
• Programming Languages: Proficient in Python, Java, and JavaScript for developing scalable applications and automation scripts

Distributed Common Ground System – Army (DCGS-A):

• Architectural Leadership: Led the design and implementation of DCGS-A, the U.S. Army's primary system for posting data, processing information, and disseminating intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) information about threats, weather, and terrain to all echelons.
• System Integration: Consolidated 16 legacy systems into a unified network, enhancing the Army's capability to handle Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information and improving intelligence sharing through the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB).
• Technical Expertise: Developed modular architectures utilizing Microsoft .NET Framework, C#, and SQL Server, ensuring scalability and maintainability across various Army echelons.

Digital Transformation for U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Afghan Ministry of the Interior:

• Strategic Leadership: Led comprehensive digital transformation efforts, delivering scalable logistics and distributed systems to modernize operations for the U.S. DoD and the Afghan Ministry of the Interior.
• Innovative System Design: Engineered a $9 billion civil engineering management system for hospitals, schools, and clinics, leveraging AWS EC2, S3, and Elastic Load Balancing to ensure secure and reliable operations.
• Process Modernization: Revamped business processes with a .NET-based civil construction planning system integrated with SQL Server, enhancing project management and operational efficiency.
• Advanced Development: Created a content dissemination platform employing Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and RESTful APIs, automating delivery and facilitating seamless communication.
• Capacity Building: Conducted extensive training for Afghan IT teams and end-users in AWS Cloud, Active Directory, and SharePoint, promoting sustainable operational adoption.
• Resource Acquisition: Secured $20 million in funding to establish analytics capabilities using SQL-based tools and Crystal Reports, providing actionable insights for informed decision-making.
• Agile Implementation: Applied Agile methodologies and automated pipelines with Jira, Jenkins, and SVN, reducing risks and accelerating project delivery timelines.
• Comprehensive Delivery: Delivered a turnkey transformation program featuring cloud-based solutions, modernized processes, and trained personnel, ensuring long-term operational success.

• Exclusive Liaison for Custom Application Initiatives: Acted as the primary interface between the 1st Armored Division and development teams, overseeing the design and deployment of tailored applications to meet specific operational requirements.
• Development of Classified Event Systems: Established and managed secure, classified event management systems to support critical U.S. Army operations, ensuring data integrity and accessibility under stringent security protocols.
• Integration of Disparate C4I and Content Management Systems: Utilized the MITRE Universal Core and Layer 7 routing systems to seamlessly integrate various classified Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (C4I) systems with content management platforms, enhancing interoperability and information flow.
• Design of Modular Architectures for the Distributed Common Ground System – Army (DCGS-A): Developed scalable and maintainable modular architectures for DCGS-A, the U.S. Army's primary system for posting data, processing information, and disseminating intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) information about threats, weather, and terrain to all echelons.

Technologies and Frameworks:

• Enterprise Architecture Frameworks: Applied the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) to ensure structured and coherent system development aligned with military standards.
• Middleware and Integration Technologies: Employed Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) solutions and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles to facilitate seamless communication between heterogeneous systems.
• Programming Languages and Platforms: Utilized Java EE and Microsoft .NET frameworks to develop robust and secure applications tailored to military needs.
• Database Management: Implemented Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases to manage and secure sensitive information.

Achievements:

• Enhanced Operational Efficiency: Streamlined information dissemination and command operations by integrating multiple classified systems, resulting in improved decision-making processes.
• Improved System Scalability and Maintainability: Designed modular system architectures that allowed for easy updates and scalability, ensuring long-term sustainability and adaptability to evolving requirements.
• Strengthened Security Posture: Developed and implemented secure systems that adhered to the highest security standards, safeguarding sensitive military information.