Chris Pollard

Ellicott City, MD · chris-remove-@chrispollard.dev

Passionate and pragmatic technologist who loves to learn new skills/languages/patterns and assimilate into my toolbox. Long history of being able to deliver in a variety of roles (developer, architect, team lead, consultant, sales) and working with stakeholders. Currently interested in cloud computing (AWS, Azure), enterprise architecture, and getting rid of servers (serverless).

Skills

Architecture
  • AWS
  • DNS
  • Cloud Networking
  • Load Balancing
  • Microservices
  • RESTful APIs
  • SaaS/PaaS/IaaS
  • serverless
  • Azure
Languages, Operating Systems & Tools
  • Python
  • git
  • .NET
  • linux
  • bash
  • angular
  • ansible
  • Jenkins
Platform Development & Administration
  • Atlassian
  • Bitbucket
  • Microsoft BI Platform (SQL Server, Analysis Services, Integration services)
  • Oracle
  • SharePoint
AWS Services
  • VPC
  • EC2
  • RDS
  • Lambda
  • ELB
  • Beanstalk
  • CloudFormation
  • Networking
  • Private Link
  • Cognito
  • s3
  • Workspaces
  • DynamoDB
Certifications
  • AWS Solutions Architect Associate
  • AWS Solutions Architect Professional
  • AWS Security Specialty

Creations

A collection of projects authored by Chris shared as an open source project on github.

CFN Dependency Visualizer

Visualize your CloudFormation imports and exports for easily understanding dependencies.

Read more..

Serverless Space Merchant

Migrating a monolithic PHP browser based game to serverless in AWS.

Read more..

Experience

Cloud Solutions Engineer

Promontory Interfinancial Network

Technical leadership position with broad organizational responsibilities. Key member of the organizational effort to migrate from data centers to AWS in a challenging regulatory environment. Helped stand up the cloud engineering organization by driving governance and authoring policies, procedures, and standards. Architected scalable, resilient, and fault tolerant solutions and contributed to implementation. Evangelized and trained organization on cloud best practices. Mentored and taught colleagues on AWS technologies, appropriate use cases, architectural patterns, and best practices. Worked with senior leadership to amplify cloud vision and transform culture from a traditional IT organization to a cloud enabled dev ops organization. Participated in internal audit, FFIEC examination, and preparation.

September 2017 - Present

Technical Advisor

AidLogic PBC

Helping an amazing founder fill a gap in connecting providers and some of our most vulnerable patients with essential services via technology. Reviewed and suggested architecture, code, and technology choices to build a scalable, low cost, cloud-native application.

August 2017 - March 2018

Sr. Manager Consultant, Cloud

Sogeti USA

Working in the cloud practice to help our customers make the transition from on-premise to cloud. Participated in sales and presales opportunities that led to multiple engagements. Worked with a multiantional product company to architect and build a BluePrism RPA solution in Azure. Worked witha National analytics, marketing, and card services firm to create a cloud governance framework that complimented existing governance and helped drive the adoption of cloud computing.

February 2017 - September 2017

Team Lead

FDS Rx

Starting with vague requirements to "build a data warehouse", built from the ground up a data warehouse in AWS sold as SaaS to pharmacies ranging in size from independent to large chains. Participated in every facet of the product life cycle - from tool evaluation, to architecture, implementation, sales, consulting, documentation, support, requirements gathering, you name it. Vast experience interacting with internal and external stake holders. Key member of the AWS migration team, responsible for architecting and moving applications from multiple environments (on premise/colo) to AWS. Drive best practices regarding AWS application deployment and refactor applications to take full advantage of AWS services and elasticity in a HIPAA compliant manner.

March 2013 - February 2017

Sr Technical Consultant

Blackboard Analytics

Delivering Blackboard Analytics (BbA) products, customization and technical training to customers. Traveled to customer locations to give on site technical and functional training for administration, use, and enhancements of BbA products. Gathered requirements, planned projects, and executed on solving complex client problems. Continued in the role part time after leaving for a new opportunity. During the part time role, I was assigned to work with full time consultants in order to help architect and implement solutions to the most challenging technical problems faced by the services organization.

June 2012 - March 2013

Sr Software Engineer

iStrategy Solutions/Blackboard Analytics

Developing a suite of Higher Education data warehouses. iStrategy was acquired by Blackboard. Designed, implemented, and installed a Business Intelligence solution for higher education institutions that worked in conjunction with market leading ERP systems (PeopleSoft, Sunguard, Colleague). Developed, documented, installed, and administered a SharePoint solution for presenting warehouse content.

January 2009 - June 2012

Database Administrator

Northrop Grumman

Database administration tasks on Oracle database (8,9i,10g). Created internal PL/SQL applications to improve data quality and processes. Designed relational data models to support a wide range of customer needs

February 2006 - December 2008

Education

Frostburg State University

Bachelor of Science
Information Systems
2002 - 2006
Nifty tech tag lists from Wouter Beeftink