Working in numerous industries and companies as afforded my a fairly wide range of roles.  Titles really don’t matter much in the SMB and Startup space,  I’ve been President of companies with only me, myself, and I as the employees.  

Roles are definitely more import as far as framing the experiences an individual brings to the table.  Below are the ones I can remember!

  • multiple role team members
    Successful teams have many team members playing many roles
    Systems Developer – Back in the day developers were sorted by “systems” developers and “application” developers.   The systems folks were nerdier doing OS scripting, machine language coding, and creating libraries and IDE’s used by the application developers who wrote in those easy languages like COBOL.
     
  • Applications Developer – Eventually I transitioned over to Application development because as Technology advanced the roles for Systems Developers were shrinking.  I also realized I enjoyed engaging users and bringing back to those users solutions that made their jobs better. 

  • System Administrator – At a more macro/systems level, have installed and administered a number of systems including: Windows Active Directory,  Azure/Office365, AWS, and Network Administrator.  On a more specialized level administrated  many packages for ‘teams’ or higher including Zendesk, Office 365, Sharepoint, Exchange,  Google for Business/Apps, and many others

  • Customer Success Agent Worked with clients to develop implementation plans and to ensure the plans were executed to success.  Assigned to corporate ‘red’ customers to meet with them and develop a ‘get to green’ process to turn their frown upside down and make them happy customers.  Managed Customer support department ensuring staffing and agent performance.

  • Developer Team Leader – Like many other industries, prove you are awesome at doing your current job and get promoted to management!  As a Team leader, I was responsible for managing a team of developers on a daily basis.  Early on it was daily statuses and work assignment,  in later years its scrum and stand-ups.

  • On-boarding/Intake/Data Migration – unless a company is extremely small, on-boarding customers is a process which may include combinations of data migration,  training,  system configuration, and deployment.  I’ve defined, developed, and deployed processes to accomplish this that would run independent on-premises as well as integrated into a cloud product.

  • Agile – Scrum Master and Product Owner – Agile is a way of life for developers in today’s LEAN world.  I’ve been both a scrum master and am a certified Scrum Product Owner.  When scrum does not fit, I’ve also managed Kanban teams.

  • Data and 3rd party Integrations – Numerous industries and environments required this.When working with Medical Claims payers,  this role involved integrating data from all the major claims payment systems  (Facets, QNXT, Amisys, etc) and consolidating it into a central database while scrubbing and normalizing the data for subsequent reporting and processing.  For other environments, it consisted of integrating data from varied sources.  Many times this involved SQL Server Integration services or 3rd party tools such as Zapier or IFTT.

  • Data Mart/Warehousing/KPI/OKR/Scorebooks – developed solutions in both SQL server (all flavors)  and mySQL/MarieDB for consolidating or extracting data into data warehouses or data marts.   This was always to be used for analysis and KPI/scorecards but many times also solved the challenges of discrete databases  (consolidated > 140 databases on one example) or disparate systems ( DB2 and Oracle systems consolidated to SQL Server DB for reporting and analysis)

  • IT Director/Manager – Moving up from Development team leader was the role of IT Director/manager.  Here was typically multiple teams as well as hardware/network/telecommunications management responsibility.  This included managing Active Directory, security, and networks as well as keeping all these systems operational.  This required developing processes and procedures,  setting service levels, staff training and management, planning for business continuity, and meeting SLA’s.

  • Operations Manager – As a successful IT Director and Manager, the next step was adding non-IT roles,  typically customer oriented with sales, customer contracting and customer support.  

  • VP/SVP/CTO – cross-functional area responsibility with financials added.  This role added vendor and cloud contract negotiations, corporate roadmaps, corporate strategy, fiduciary responsibilities, legal and due diligence processes,  business continuity planning,  corporate security,  and corporate standards and certifications such as PCI or HIPAA

  • Owner/President/Founder – these roles added overall business management and responsibilities, meeting investor needs, and doing anything else that needed to be done to make the business successful including cleaning if that’s what was needed.