With over 20 years of experience working in different capacities from hands-on to managerial I have developed a broad range of technical, organizational, and leadership skills that allow me to architect, implement, improve, and support very complicated interconnected systems. Equally comfortable working individually, as part of, or leading a team I enjoy finding creative solutions to support the more efficient use of technology.
While working extensively in and around higher education I have had the opportunity to seve in a wide range of roles and an even wider range of institutions. With a foundation in system, database, and application administration I have been able to expand my role and impact into architecture, management, and business development within Ellucian and for my customers. As a consultant I have supported customers ranging from small private insititutions to very large, multi-institution public consortiums. Projects have ranged from simple upgrade support to multi-year implementations and platform changes.
Southern New Hampshire University, - August 2021 - Present
Solution Architect - Unify - As part of the Unify team supporting SalesForce and other products that comprise the CRM solution at SNHU I work to identify and evaluate potential solutions to complex business problems. Solutioning in this complex, integrated environment includes meeting with business users, executives, and technical staff to document the need, then working to identify possible solutions from options already in place, third party, or in-house developed products.
Ellucian, Reston, VA - October 2006 - August 2021
Senior Services Design & Engineering Manager - December 2019 - August 2021 - Worked with Ellucian staff to evaluate, develop, and document solutions to be offered by or integrated with Ellucian Cloud Services. My work included gathering input from technical staff, Ellucian leadership, 3rd party vendors and customers with a focus on marketability, cost, automation, supportability, and consistent delivery.
Technical Architect - July 2009 - November 2019 - Worked with Ellucian clients on major infrastructure projects including Banner Student Information System implementations, platform migrations, major upgrades, and reengineering of systems for improved resilience and performance. Clients range from small private institutions to very large multi-institution systems.
Principal Solutions Engineer - May 2017 - March 2019 - Worked as part of a small team to develop and deliver services specifically targeted at getting Ellucian clients upgraded to the latest version of the Banner Student Information System. Developed materials, trained staff members, evaluated and adjusted delivery materials and methods, and monitored delivery quality through hundreds of services delivered.
Oracle Remote Database Administrator - October 2006 - June 2009 - Install, upgrade and maintain Ellucian's Banner student information system and related products for educational clients in the US and internationally. Work closely with client staff to identify their technical and organizational needs. Technical responsibilities include all areas of database, system and Banner administration, including: installation and configuration of Oracle database and application servers, installation of Ellucian products, backup and recovery planning and implementation, troubleshooting, patching and upgrading. Supporting development, training and production environments from installation through go-live and beyond.
Team Manager - July 2007 - May 2011 - Managed a distributed, international team of Banner DBAs and technical trainers while still maintaining the responsibilities of a Principal Technical Consultant. Responsibilities include assigning employees to client projects based on employee skills, developing and documenting procedures, identifying solutions to technical and organizational needs and performing employee reviews. Involved in scheduling trainers, onsite DBAs and remote DBAs working with clients in the US and internationally.
Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH - March 2004 - October 2006
Oracle Database and Application Server Administrator - Involved in all areas of maintenance of the Ellucian Banner student information system. Setup and maintenance of Oracle Application server for Oracle Forms, Discoverer, SCT Workflow and PL/SQL gateway. Focus on database tuning, backup, recovery and cloning. Project management on several projects involving diverse campus departments. Major accomplishments include helping develop a versioning and release system, deploying databases for several new systems, setup of RMAN database backups and other systems to support reporting needs.
Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH - Fall 2005
Adjunct Faculty - Teaching Database Administration, an upper division course in the Applied Computer Science and Information Technology majors.
Boston University, Boston, MA - July 2003 - March 2004
Senior UNIX Systems Administrator - Individually responsible for around 120 UNIX systems used for a variety of tasks including GIS applications. This environment includes an NIS domain, around a dozen Solaris, Linux, SGI and Macintosh OS X servers, and over 100 workstations. Primary platform is Solaris 8/9. Supporting users in the Geography and Earth Sciences departments as well as the Center for Remote Sensing. Responsibilities include: server maintenance, upgrade, growth planning, evaluation of requirements for new hardware, maintaining a lab, account provisioning, email administration, application administration, and UNIX desktop support. Major accomplishments include design, implementation and administration of Sun Ray systems in a lab environment, successful integration of Linux in our NIS environment, implementation of 7 new servers, and maintaining an extremely high level of user satisfaction.
WebCT Inc., Lynnfield, MA - May 2000 - May 2003
Systems and Database Administrator - Simultaneously held the role of lead system administrator and sole database administrator. Responsible for designing, configuring, and maintaining several company-critical systems including Oracle 8i databases, Oracle 9i databases, Oracle Finanacials Solaris 7, 8 and 9 servers. Areas of responsibility included production, development and quality assurance environments. Evaluated hardware requirements for new systems. Hardware used ranged from Sun Ultra5, to Sun Enterprise 3500. Worked on setup, configuration, upgrades and maintenance of WebCT Campus Edition hosting servers while maintaining a 99.9% uptime guaranty. Maintained, configured and supported custom web application server running an Oracle back end with a Java web server running on Apache/Tomcat front-end. Planned, setup and maintained an Oracle Database for SalesLogix. Performed a hosting server migration that involved moving over 50 essential hosted servers over 3000 miles while keeping downtime to a matter of minutes. Setup and maintained an Arrowpoint Load balancing/failover system to meet the demand for high availability. Building and configuring WebTrends Enterprise Reporting Server to analyze web site usage and volume. Responsible for setup and maintenance of Veritas NetBackup. On call 24x7 for emergency customer and corporate system issues.
Easy Linux Commands: Working Examples of Linux Command Syntax by Jon Emmons & Terry Clark, Rampant TechPress - Publication Date: October 2006
Terry Clark and I have assembled a comprehensive reference of working Linux commands ranging from simple file manipulation to complex system monitoring tasks. A useful reference for the novice and expert alike this book covers many common administrative tasks, file manipulation, the vi text editor, scheduling tasks with crontab and an introduction to shell scripting.
Oracle Shell Scripting: Linux and UNIX Programming for Oracle by Jon Emmons, Rampant TechPress - Publication Date: May 2007
This book offers background information on UNIX and Linux, a thorough tutorial on shell scripting and over 50 ready-to-use shell scripts all geared to the Oracle professional. Specific attention is given to developing reliable scripts for automating routine tasks.
Linux for the Oracle DBA: The Definitive Reference by Jon Emmons, Rampant TechPress - Publication Date: December 2010
This book covers all major aspects of Linux system management critical to running Oracle on Linux. Unlike general system administration books, this book focuses on those tasks most important to Oracle administrators.
Life After Coffee - www.lifeaftercoffee.com - August 2005 - May 2011
Author - Sole author of this very successful weblog with topics including Oracle, humor, electronics and food.
Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH - 1996-2000
Bachelor of Science degree in Interdisciplinary studies with focus in Applied Computer Science and Music.
Solaris 8 System Administration I - September 2000
Solaris 8 System Administration II - December 2000
Oracle Enterprise DBA Part 1A: Architecture and Administration - August 2001
Oracle Enterprise DBA Part 1B: Backup and Recovery - May 2002
Oracle Enterprise DBA Part 2: Performance and Tuning - December 2002
Oracle Application Server 10g: Administration I - June 2005
Oracle Database 11g: RAC Administration - September 2010
Oracle ACE Award - Oracle Corporation - December 2007
Awarded an Oracle ACE award for my contributions to the Oracle community including my website and books. The Oracle ACE Program is designed to recognize and reward members of the Oracle Technology and Applications communities for their contributions to those communities.
2014 OIT Project Excellence award - Montgomery College - 2014
Myself and the team I led received this award as recognition for our successful completion of a project which included a platform migration and rearchitecting to support better redundancy of key services between campuses.
References are available upon request.