SUMMARY - Leadership, Innovation, Simplicity, and On-Time Quality Delivery

Positions: Sr. Architect, Business Analyst, Project/Program Manager, Director of Enterprise Architecture

Seasoned IT professional with experience in the Telecom, Banking, Payment, e-Commerce, Government, and Healthcare industries. Trusted partner with business owners for simplifying requirements and delivering optimal solutions. 

Areas of Expertise: Full SDLC, enterprise and application architectures, information architecture, enterprise data management, large scale systems design and development, Online Channels, Middle Tier, MDM, ETL, EDW, BI, machine learning, and Big Data.

Top qualities: Business acumen, sound judgment, clear communication, adaptability, tenacity, analytical skills, and hands-on solution oriented approach.

Technical Skills: RUP, Agile, TOGAF, C/C++, Java & JEE Application Servers, Groovy, Spring, Hibernate, SOA, UML, ErWin, IBM InfoSphere, Cognos, Infomatica, Talend, Hadoop, etc.

Examples: On multiple occasions, on Business and IT Executives’ behalf, investigated the needs for systems redesign, information consolidation, data migration, technology replacement, and infrastructure upgrade.  Conducted interviews with key stakeholders, captured desired objectives, delivered target architectures, identified gaps, and  delivered program plans that contained architecture, timeline, budget, and staffing requirements.  Led the implementations at the CIO’s request, and delivered quality systems into production on time and within budget.

SELECTED ACCOMPLISHMENTS

·   Program Architect for a large regional bank’s “all channels transformation program” (Argo, IBM WebSphere Application Server and Process Server, InfoSphere MDM, and DB2).

·   Program / Chief Architect for the US Air Force Supply Chain Transformation program ($140M).

·   Led the re-design and development of an Open Source ETL program, delivering the new systems using Talend and JDK 1.7 (hands-on).

·   Designed and led the timely delivery of the large-scale (6000 TPS) real time payment transaction processing and reporting systems (POS, ATM, authorization and settlement transactions).  Technology Stack: Cognos, .NET, J2EE, JBOSS, and IBM DB2.

·   Created “Enterprise Transaction Information Management Systems (ETIMS)” to provide centralized and real time transactions management, fraud detection, and monitoring.

·   Designed new architecture for enterprise sales force compensation and production reporting application suite, consolidating fragmented systems into one single enterprise solution with Saleforce.com, MDM, and Callidus (Cloud Based).  Instrumental in vendor tools selection, RFI, RFP, and program start-up and execution.

·   Three patents in the areas of wireless applications, smart messaging and logging, and production systems resiliency; 2 awarded (7,139,722 & 6,925,586) and 1 pending.

·   DevNexus 2014 Conference Speaker on “Big Data Technology, Strategy, and Applications.”  Presentation published at: http://www.slideshare.net/GailZhouMBAPhD/presentations.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Sr. Enterprise Architect                                                      03/2014 – Present 

•         Completed multiple business and technology assessment and planning programs for a large global bank. Provided recommendations in the areas of business process improvement, technology upgrade, information management, and systems architecture redesign.

•         Delivered business reference architecture for a large regional bank.

·   Completed a resiliency maturity assessment program for the online channels (web and mobile) of a large global bank. Provided recommendations to institutionally improve resilience, including formal resiliency requirements, resiliency design patterns, performance management, and hardened SDLC.   

·   Developed next generation architectures with digital forces – Mobile, Social Media, AI and Robotics, Cloud, and Big Data. Developed various next gen Big Data use cases and reference architectures.

·   Enhanced consulting practice maturity: Defined delivery processes with linked artifacts in the following domains: Business Design, Business Architecture, Information Architecture, and Application Architecture. Created EA Meta Model and EA Delivery Methodology. Delivered engagement playbooks.

 

Brdige2 Solutions, E-Commerce ETL Solution Architect (ETL Systems Delivered)         05/2013 – 02/2014                                       

·   Investigated 200+ data fields and narrowed down the essential fields to 56 for all merchant catalogs.  Designed new global merchant catalog DBs.  Designed and built international framework with multi-country, multi-currency, and multi-language capabilities.

·   Designed and programmed new ETL processes (Talend & JDK 1.7), automated the production systems.  The new ETL systems have centralized components to perform tasks such as sourcing, mapping, cleansing, filtering, normalization, categorization, and populating new global eCommerce Catalog.

 

First Data Corporation, Enterprise Information & Solution Architect (IT Director)           09/2010 – 04/2013

Career Highlights: Received “Center Stage Award” for delivering excellence (highest in the company). Created reusable middle tier “Enterprise Transaction Information Management Systems (ETIMS)” that provided a new customer product and streamlined payment processing systems.

 

·   Designed logical and physical architectures for a very large scale real time payment reporting system (operational). Created middle tier “ETIMS” that is also leveraged for fraud detection and transaction monitoring. ETIMS bridged authorization systems and settlement systems.

·   Designed logical and physical architectures for a real time fraud detection and prevention system that can detect and stop fraudulent transactions from stolen credit or debit cards.

·   Designed architecture for enterprise sales force compensation and product reporting application suite, consolidating fragmented systems into one single enterprise solution with Saleforce.com, MDM, and Callidus. Instrumental in vendor tools selection, RFI, RFP, program start-up and execution.

·   Collaborated with international teams to define requirements and architecture(s) to offer secure mobile payment solutions, merchant offers, prepaid cards and other payment processing products.  Traveled to Europe and Middle East to design reusable bridges to payment switch (Base 24).

·   Defined enterprise technology standards for information management (RDBMS, DB replication, MDM, EDW, BI, and reporting). Authored position papers for MDM and SaaS.

 

Gail Z Associates, LLC, Sr. Principal Consultant                                                                   03/2009-09/2010

Overview: Provided consulting services in data center migration, program start up, and program management.  Clients include First Data, AT&T, and Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM).

 

·   EA Start-up: Bootstrapped First Data enterprise architecture function.  Developed platform transformation strategy and transformational enterprise reference architectures (TERA).

·   AT&T Optical Ethernet Portfolio PMO ($100M+/Year, Quarterly Release): Responsible for translating business requirements to technical requirements, facilitating and leading technical designs, implementation, and end to end testing.

·   MSM Data Center Migration and Infrastructure Upgrade: Delivered program architecture and processes to support MSM data center migration program that consolidated scattered campus data stores to off-campus HIPAA compliant data center (SunGuard). 

 

Bank of America, Lead Architect, Strategic and Business Architectures                  08/2007-03/2009

Career Highlights: Three spirit medallion awards, one patent, one trade secret, and gold level volunteer. Named by YWCA as one of the six Women of Achievement from Bank of America (May 2008).

 

·   Defined enterprise business context framework (EBCF) and end-to-end business architecture for all lines of businesses and channels to enable the bank to run as an integrated business.

·   Delivered 16 brief white papers with assessment and recommendations on new products, vendors, and industry best practices that helped executives to make important decisions.

·   Developed and institutionalized a production release-level stability and resiliency design review process with a centralized tracking system built in SharePoint (103 projects reviewed). 

·   Enhanced resiliency design guidelines that aligned with business impact analysis model, and developed QoS based Resiliency Maturity Model (Sole inventor, patented).

 

SunTrust Bank, Lead Architect, Transformation, Middle Tier and MDM Delivery      07/2006-08/2007                                                              

Career Highlight: Dual Roles as Enterprise Architect and Program Architect for a major multi-channel refresh program.

 

·   Designed architectures for a major multi-channel refresh program that encompassed all channels technology upgrade (Platform, Teller, and Call center), new SOA layer (IBM ESB and Process Server), and customer information migration (from CRF to IBM InfoSphere).

·   Defined system of record (SOR) strategy for customer, product, customer interaction history, account transaction history, etc. in order to consolidate scattered and inconsistent information across the entire bank.

·   Authored technical papers that defined new architectures for teller technology refresh and enterprise data consolidation, MDM, and BI architecture.

 

COX Enterprise (Manheim) Sr. Consultant, Integration Lead, BI Architect (Uniteque) 08/2004-07/2006

 

·   Started and completed a new business program that delivered multiple releases of web-based inventory optimization systems for automotive dealerships (driven by SAS Analytics Recommendation Engine); the systems were acquired by a large automobile manufacture.  Technology used: Struts, Spring, Hibernate, WebSphere, DB2, and SAS.

 

NTT Innovation Institute Inc. (NTT I³)    Chief Architect, Program Manager                      12/2001-09/2004

Career Highlights: Promotion to corporate architect and member of architecture leadership council. Authored proposals and white papers that resulted multi-million dollar contracts.  Led programs at clients’ request and delivered quality systems within budget and timeline.

 

·   Developed technology strategy, architectures, roadmaps, and migration plans for the U.S. Air Force supply chain modernization program ($140M). Simplified and presented same to various parties to create synergy, build momentum, and gain support.

·   Guided technical teams on multi-year program deliveries. Authored architecture documents, quality control procedures, and other program documents.

·   Authored proposals and white papers that led to awarding of additional multi-million dollar contracts (Clients: U.S. Air Force, Florida state government, Maryland state government, and SunTrust Bank).  Led implementations of the selected programs and delivered.

 

AT&T   Director of Enterprise Application & Data Architecture, and other roles              02/1995-12/2001

Career Highlights: Seven progressive promotions to Director of Enterprise Application and Data Architecture. Previously held positions include Sr. Software Engineer, Architect, Project Lead, and Acting Director for e-Commerce architecture and development. 

·   Delivered IT strategy, enterprise reference architectures, and road maps that standardized data definition and technology, utilized BI, MDM (customer and product), eliminated redundant data, reduced data inconsistency, simplified BI, and accelerated relevant information delivery.

·   Led architecture and development teams to deliver Web based e-Commerce systems (new and change orders, fulfillment, provisioning, customer support, product maintenance, and billing).

·   Designed and led the delivery of 12+ large-scale & high-volume B2B, B2C, and Web based telecom provisioning and e-Commerce systems into production with high quality (bug-free).

 

EDUCATION

·   PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tennessee

·   MBA, Executive Management and Finance, Kennesaw State University