Michael SparksNorth East Metro Atlanta

sparksmail@gmail.com

Senior Solution ArchitectPassionate results driven technology leader with a broad range of experience in delivering technical strategies and comprehensive solution architectures. Experienced in delivering performant, innovative, high quality, scalable and highly available systems.

Leverages deep technological and interpersonal skills to provide a conduit between business and technical audiences. Focus in microservices, cloud, IoT, mobile, web, and service oriented architectures. Years of consulting experience collaborating with stakeholder roles ranging from executives to deep subject matter experts in stages from pre-sales through delivery.

Technical Solution Architecture Design / Stakeholder Buy In Experienced in creating and providing professional technical presentations catered to interest of

audience

Proficient in creating professional architectural descriptions and patterns documentation

Experienced in identifying and engaging representative organizational cross cutting stakeholder groups

Proven ability to effectively act as the liaison between business and technical stakeholders.

Years of experience in creating, collaborating, and delivering comprehensive RFI, RFP, RFQ (Information, Proposal, and Quote) documentation

Generates solution architecture descriptions based upon views (Context, Functional, Information, Concurrency, Development, Deployment, and Operational) per technical and business audience to ensure that each level of concern is met and demonstrated in candidate architectures.

Refines architectural description in iterative passes with stakeholders to ensure best of breed candidate architectures are defined and communicated in views appropriate to the audiences’ technical aptitude and business interest.

Experienced in mircoservice design for consumption by a variety of consumer solutions (Mobile, Web, Service Composition, External Consumers, and Devices)

Broad knowledge of the architecture styles, principles, patterns, and methodologies surrounding cloud, IoT, mobile, web, and microservice architectures

Experienced as a Technology Strategist - Determining organizational staffing needs, target platforms, architectures, and strategic road maps

Team Building through mentoring and leadership Proven ability to lead a variety of teams (Web, Mobile, Services, Dev Ops, IoT) at the

requirements, design, and development, transition, and ongoing release and change management phases of a project.

Experienced in technical team building, leadership, and mentoring.

Experienced in determining development standards and proven practices, provided to development teams through a variety of media (Design patterns, white papers, coding standards, code samples, sample applications, and webcasts) demonstrated through leadership of two evangelist teams which focused on architecture and mobile respectively.

Michael Sparks

Key Technical SkillsIndustry Experience: Weather, Water Management, Hotel Industry, Insurance, Tourism,

Telecommunications, Power Utility, Records / Document Management, Retail, Career Management, Finance, Manufacturing

Competencies: Architectural Strategic Planning, SOA, API Design, Microservices, RESTFul Services, Mobile Architecture, Cloud Architecture, Information Architecture, UI/UX

Languages: C#, JavaScript, AngularJS, JQuery, HTML5, Python, Scala, SQL, T-SQL, PL/SQL

Software/Tools: MS Visual Studio, Xamarin / Xamarin Studio, SQL Server Management Studio, Amazon Web Services, XCode, Android Studio, Git, Visual Studio Online, Team Foundation Server

Databases: MS SQL Server, Oracle, NoSQL Databases (Mongo, Cassandra)

Cloud Services: Amazon Web Services, Akamai

.NET Technologies: OWIN(Kata), Web API, WCF, Web Services, MVC Web Apps, OAuth2, Windows Applications, Windows Phone Applications, ASP.NET, Enterprise Library, Entity Framework, WPF

ExperienceThe Coca Cola Company, Atlanta, GA May 2016 – August 2016

Senior Solution Architect (Consultant) for Enterprise Architecture

The goal of this project was to create an enterprise architecture portal. The portal is designed to surface the combined knowledge of Coca Coca’s various companies’ enterprise integration design patterns.

Responsible for planning and executing the project. Gathered and evaluated design patterns from enterprise architects. Designed the portal site experience and navigation. Designed the format of documents and diagrams presented. As corporate implementation knowledge grew, advised on improvements in existing implementations and in progress designs.

Key Technologies: Amazon Web Services, MuleSoft, Salesforce, SAP, Apigee, Websphere

The Weather Company, Atlanta, GA August 2015 – April 2016

Senior Solution Architect Product and Technology

Responsible for the cross-platform architecture of world-class applications that are used by millions of consumers daily - running on the wide variety of devices ranging from phones and tablets to consoles, in-home applications and computers. Responsible for working across mobile platforms and back end systems to ensure mobile applications employ full-stack solutions to push capabilities to a new generation of performance and quality.

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Michael Sparks

Provided subject matter expertise, technical leadership and effective communication to deliver world class products in the consumer application weather space. Demonstrated ability to identify technical trends and influence key business and technical stakeholders in defining effective user experiences.

Effectively the glue and grease in collaboration with companywide groups such as Product Management, Design, Shared Services, Content Management and Ad Operations to accomplish comprehensive architectural designs and strategic planning.

Designed, developed, and maintained next generation application architecture, APIs, Microservices, and SDKs based on product user feedback, strategic goals, and customer/product/team collaboration. Drove analysis requirements between product management and engineering - Use Case through functional requirements and SDK design for reuse of most common functionality.

Key Technologies: Amazon Web Services, Cassandra, Akamai (ESI), Varnish, Redis, Scala, Android, iOS, Windows

Mission Communications, Norcross, GA June 2014 – April 2015

Director of Applications Development / Solution Architect

Mission Communications is a National IoT company with Edge to Enterprise services for water management. The operation is 24 by 7 with devices reporting in around the clock, requiring a highly available solution. The end result of the enterprise side processing is customer reporting and alarm notifications for equipment connected to the devices in the field.

Solution Architect and Director responsible for creating staffing, processes, and technology roadmap to move a company from a data center of legacy applications to a highly available and scalable Cloud based solution.

The staff sources responsibilities included mentoring existing staff in modern processes, design principles/patterns, web technologies, and services technologies. Sought out and hired complimentary staff to complete the teams needed to implement the Cloud roadmap. The teams included Web UI, RESTful Services, Core Services, and Cloud Infrastructure teams.

The architecture roadmap involved evaluating existing application assets through code reviews and current performance / up time analysis to determine if the encapsulated functionality should be modified for the new scalable architecture or re-written. Code reviews and knowledge transfer sessions were conducted with application owners to make determinations on an asset by asset basis. The roadmap included the current data center state, the interim hybrid state, and the final Cloud state.

Key Technologies: Amazon Web Services, SQL Server, AngularJS, JQuery, .Net Web API, OWIN, OAuth2

Daugherty Business Solutions, Atlanta, GA Feb 2013 – May 2014

Manager / Application Architect

Application Architect and Manager responsible for analyzing and aligning business and technical requirements to determine architecture design and roadmaps based upon client strategic goals. Provided hands on technical leadership in full application life cycle development from inception to deployment in large development teams.

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Michael Sparks

The Intersect Group, Atlanta, GA Jan 2012 – Feb 2013

Senior Enterprise Architect

Senior Architect responsible for creating technology roadmaps and architecting solutions that align with a business's strategic objectives and investments in skillsets and platforms. Hands on technical architect responsible for leading technical team through full application life cycle.

Slalom LLC, Atlanta, GA Jul 2010 – Jan 2012

Technology Solutions Consultant

Mobile practice technology solutions consultant responsible for architecting end to end mobile solutions. Mobile technology strategist providing client technology and staffing roadmaps. Mobile roadmaps encompassed target mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Phone), architectures, and application type (Native, Mobile Web, Hybrid, MEAP), and organizational staffing needs.

RDA Corporation Jul 2000 – Jul 2010

Senior Consultant

A proven “first in” resource that progressed through development, UX design, analysis, technical project leadership, and architect roles over a ten year span. These roles provided experience in all phases of application life cycle management in waterfall and agile methodologies. Strong concentration in web applications, composite applications, and service oriented technologies. Internal Leadership roles included leading the Smart Client Evangelism and Architecture Evangelism teams.

Recognitions

Microsoft Patterns and Practices Expert Advisor for PRISM Microsoft Patterns and Practices UX Design Expert and Expert Advisor for Composite Application

Block

EducationBachelor of Science, Electronics Engineering Western Carolina University 1993

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