Candidates About

Christopher Sipes

Summary:

Highly experienced, proven technical leader with global responsibilities. Adept at leading teams of cross functional, highly specialized, technical personnel both on and offshore, contractors and fte’s. My strengths are getting the most of my resources and implementing organizational changes that drive success, stability and sustainability. Expert in enterprise level SDLC processes, development methodologies and project management methodologies with a strong focus on Agile methodologies.

Professional Experience

Capgemini

Sr. Manager Consultant - Enterprise Architect

Tempe, AZ

02/2017 – present

Client: Banner Health - 02/2017 – present

Project: Banner Health - Medicare/Medicaid Support Sites

Role: Project Leader / Enterprise Architect

https://www.ufcaz.com/, https://www.universitycareadvantage.com/, https://www.bannerufc.com/, https://www.uahealthplans.com/

Banner Health has an existing Sitecore implementation (www.bannerhealth.com) based on Sitecore 6x, s designed and implemented by a former IT partner. This implementation is fraught with problems: it is fragile, does not scale, and is not reliable. Banner Health wants to increase its investment in Sitecore and has a roadmap full of mission critical projects that they would like to base on the Sitecore product; however, they were reluctant to move forward until they had a solid Sitecore foundation to build upon. In this project I was tasked with leading a team to create a new Enterprise Sitecore framework/architecture and implementation to be used by Banner Health going forward as their model and standard as well as a multi-tenant, multi-site implementation in which new Sitecore implementations could be added on and participate and benefit from the foundational work that was created. Ultimately www.bannerhealth.com will be migrated to run under this new framework.

A part of the project goals, beyond creating this go-forward, best-practice Sitecore implementation, was to design and build a series of 4 new Sitecore sites that were of upmost importance to Banner Health's Medicare and Medicaid participation/partnering.

Core technologies used: Sitecore MVC, ASP.NET MVC, WebAPI, Javascript, Typescript, , Bootstrap, Grunt, Gulp, NPM, TDS (Team development or Sitecore), Fabricator (rapid prototyping), Visual Studio 2015/17, VS Code

Result: All 4 new sites were delivered on-time, and the project was accepted and adopted as the new best practice framework for all new Sitecore development. In the 3 months since delivery, 3 additional sites have been stood up on this framework, and the work to migrate www.bannerhealth.com to the new instance has begun.

Project: Health E Connect - Enterprise Blog Sitecore Application

Role: Project Leader / Enterprise Architect

https://www.bannerhealth.com/healthcareblog

Led a multi-disciplined team to port the functionality of an existing enterprise blog application built in WordPress into a Sitecore "Feature" that can be plugged into any existing Sitecore site to add enterprise blog functionality. Sitecore Helix principles were used to design a re-usable modular blog application. Core technology used: Sitecore MVC, ASP.NET MVC, WebAPI, Javascript, Bootstrap, Grunt, Gulp, NPM, TDS (Team development or Sitecore), Fabricator (rapid prototyping), Visual Studio 2015/17, VS Code

Result: Project was delivered on time and under budget, with additional functionality delivered over the legacy application most notably in image compression and dynamic image size serving – drastically reducing the site's payload.

Plain Green Financial

Director of IT

Scottsdale, AZ                                                                                  

11/2016 – present

Director of IT responsible for all facets of IT including all engineering, reporting and analyst teams, operations, infrastructure and related support teams. In this role I am the senior leader in Information Technology department, reporting into the COO with all other IT directors and managers reporting into me. I am responsible for managing a department budget of 10M + and team of 30-40. A few of my key responsibilities and accomplishments include:

ü  Mentor other IT Directors and management

ü  Establish enterprise level development guidelines and processes (SDLC)

ü  Review and develop plans to remediate any compliance issues (SOX etc.)

ü  Evaluate entire IT operations and fill gaps, identify potential pitfalls and develop plans to remedy or improve all facets of the IT operations

ü  Implement an Agile development process and mindset

ü  Reduce IT cost and increase output and efficiency

ü  Build a team of highly capable and high performing IT professionals

ü  Modernize and harden IT infrastructure and create guidelines and processes for reducing risk and increasing performance and capability of the infrastructure

ü  Build and foster an environment of collaboration, transparency and accountability

ü  Put into place quality assurance procedures and methodologies to reduce or eliminate the promotion of any Production changes that cause a disruption to the business

ü  Utilize cloud platforms and technologies to reduce cost and increase availability and performance of systems

ü  Migrate engineering team to industry standard development platforms and technologies. Source Control, Work management, Release management, monitoring etc.

ü  Review technology mix and provide architectural guidance to make sure we are utilizing the best possible mix of technology and ensure company and IT roadmap are completely in sync

ü  Meet with and foster strong relationships with Vendors

ü  Create a set of standard metrics for reporting capability and performance of each IT team to executive leaders

ü  Optimize the resource mix and improve resource utilization. Make sure we have the right people in the right positions, motivated and fully engaged

Valore Partners

Principle Consultant, Enterprise Architect, Program Leader

Tempe, AZ                                                                                         

08/2016 – 11/2016

Client: SRP (Salt River Project) - 08/2016 – 11/2016

Project: Portfolio Modernization 2017. My roles on the project included Project Development Manager, Scrum Master and Enterprise Architect. SRP sets aside capital improvement funds to renew, upgrade their technology portfolio each fiscal year. This year’s project (2017) was the first time SRP brought in a development partner to run and manage the project and to be responsible for delivery. I acted as the project’s Development Manager and was responsible for the overall success and client satisfaction. I oversaw 2 teams, both a combination of Valore and SRP resources. One team was responsible for MS CRM implementations and the other team focused on custom .NET solutions. During a 6 month period we created 10+ new Angular2 applications with C# .NET REST back-ends and also stood up 5 new MS CRM instances with custom functionality representing an application solution. We utilized Angular2 as the main client side development framework and worked through all 6 RC releases before finishing the project with the final release of Angular2. All applications were developed using industry standard best practices for OOP based web applications. Other technologies in our development stack include Azure, AWD, Typescript 2.0, Bootstrap3, C#, .NET MVC, WebAPI, Unity, AutoMapper, Moq, NUnit, Entity Framework 6, SQL Server, Node, NPM, SystemJs, JQuery, RxJs etc...

Result: Completed project early and under budget. Client was able to add in additional work to the scope to use up the remaining project hours. Client was ecstatic with the results of the project. Valore has already been invited back to work on next year’s Portfolio Modernization project. I left the Client with a series of documents/guides to help them further adopt the new technologies that the applications were developed in as well as recommendations on the further implementation of industry best practices in engineering program/project management with a focus on Agile methodologies.

Avnet Inc.

Manager of Web Applications, Enterprise Architect

Tempe, AZ                                                                                                  

04/2004 – 05/2016

Manager of Web Applications

Managed a cross functional team Sr. Developers, architects, and support teams. My team consisted of a mix of FTE, contractors, onshore and offshore resources. I most recently lead a global project called Digital Customer Transformation, which was aimed at improving the company’s user experience across all of their digital interaction points. I directly oversaw the multi-million dollar re-write of one of my mission critical sales applications while simultaneously leading the company’s Mobile initiative. I was responsible for leading the implementation of the enterprise mobile architecture as well as leading the development of the organizations first mobile application offering. Some of the technologies we used in these projects are Azure, AWS, Softlayet, WebSphere, IBM MobileFirst, IBM Worklight, .NET WebAPI 2, Enterprise Library, AngularJS, SQL Server and many more. I managed a budget of well over 1M a yr. and was responsible for 10+ global applications. I implemented many organizational changes that led to bottom line improvements in quality, sustainability, and performance in our applications. I pride myself in getting the most of my team members while motivating them and keeping their morale high. I am never content with the status quo and I am always in constant improvement mode.

Enterprise Architect / Sr. Engineer

Implemented TFS source safe system for all teams.

Designed and implemented an automated build system built on top of TFS and MS Build that the entire company now uses

Was a catalyst in bring in AGILE methodology for customer facing fast paced apps. Lead the eventual AGILE team

Architected, designed, and led the implementation of the mission critical sales/workflow application R2O. Utilized, AngularJS, Angular Material, Telerik Kendo, WebAPI2, Entity Framework, Factory pattern Data manager system to reconcile the back-end system differences in all of the regions the app is deployed. SQL Server DB with custom procs for those with critical performance requirements

Implemented code review system on team that drastically improved quality

Played key role in refining Avnet’s SDLC process to maximize efficiency and quality

Architected and deployed application countless apps across the globe. Overcoming all of the challenges in running apps in multi regions.

Utilized cloud technologies extensively  where feasible to increase stability, performance and uptime of our enterprise apps as well as to reduce maintenance costs over time. These included Azure, AWS and  Softlayer

Designed, build, and lead the team of developers that build Avnet’s first mobile app. Using IBM Worklight, Phone Gap

Played instrumental role in designing Avnet’s Enterprise security framework, including the standup of IBM Tivoli

Created architectural standards for the development teams to improve overall quality and deliverables.

Designed Avnet’s JavaScript standards and lead the training of other team’s ads they moved into client side development.

Created a .NET port of a JMS client in C# to receive JMS messages and IDOC messages from SAP.

Most recently re-architected mission critical order request system as a part of an SAP ERP implementation. This was a part of a massive project to replace the ERP system of a 10 billion dollar a year division within the company. Played a key role in designing the overall architecture of the Open Systems (systems outside of the ERP) as well as the interaction between the Open Systems and the ERP. As a part of a large enterprise environment the application communicates with many disparate systems including: WebMethods Middleware, Java, JMS, and the ERP main frame system. It connects to both SQL Server and Oracle back-ends. We worked under very formal project management methodologies and I was responsible for providing the key deliverables for my team at every step. As part of the project I also designed a very streamlined build and deploy process that included a custom workflow for the Team Build Server. I was also responsible for designing the Source Control solution including the branching and merging strategy. This process was adopted by other teams at the company.

FSWAZ

Sr. Programmer Analyst

Tolleson, AZ      

01/2003 – 04/2004

Drastically improved the company’s’ utilization of Data Analysis to aid in business decisions.

ü  Designed and built applications for custom reporting. Applications built utilizing SQL, ASP.NET, C#, and Crystal Reports.

ü  Designed and implemented a suite of custom ASP.NET web controls that incorporated client side functionality into server controls.

ü  Designed and built a custom Help Desk / IT Work Order System to help track and organize the IT departments work as well as improve the end-users experience and awareness of the IT process. Built completely with C# and ASP .NET

ü  Dramatically improved employee productivity.

ü  Designed and built a COM+ component with C# that attaches to Internet Explorer and provides companywide internet monitoring. Component also has capability to block or allow internet sites based on NT group membership.

ü  Enhanced company’s network by applying common networking standards.

ü  Added 3 new member servers to offload Exchange, SQL Server, and an Application Server onto dedicated machines.

CRC Information Systems

Programmer Analyst

Scottsdale, AZ                                           

04/2002 – 01/2003

Converted hundreds of FORTRAN applications into VB or VB.NET applications. Directly handled customer relations and custom application requirements gathering. Improved speed and performance of many existing applications by applying “best practices” methodology to Stored Procedures and Application Code. Created DTS packages and Windows Scripts as well as custom applications to convert legacy data from a variety of systems into SQL tables.

Education and Certifications

Bachelors of Science in Computer Information Systems

DeVry University, Arizona – Graduated 2004 | 3.85 GPA | magna cum laude | Upsilon Pi Epsilon