Chris Downing Email & Phone Number

Dallas, Tx, Us

Richmond, Virginia, Us

As a Principal Data Engineer on the Data & Analytics Platform Engineering team, I'm responsible for working with data-related teams to build out secure, robust, and performant platforms in Azure. During my first six months in the role, I've lead the Azure Platform workstream in CarMax's Enterprise Data Warehouse modernization effort. I've worked closely with engineers and architects throughout the data space at CarMax to create Azure resources including Azure Data Factory, Function Apps, Batch Accounts, as well as establishing network connectivity with our other resources, both on prem and in Azure, and have led the work to obtain approval from our security team.

Richmond, Virginia, Us

As a Senior Database Engineer on CarMax's Database Engineering team, I provided subject matter expertise for SQL Server, Azure SQL, and Azure DevOps. During my first year at CarMax I accomplished the following:Provided guidance and leadership for a major SQL 2012-to-2019 upgrade initiativeWorked with contractors to plan and execute migrations from one datacenter to another for CarMax’s SQL serversLed the pilot program for CarMax adopting Liquibase for database code releases, and presented the results of the pilot at DevOps Day 2022 to CarMax associates and leadershipLed a team of interns in summer 2022, including piloting Azure DevOps to track work for the Database Engineering teamActed as interim manager for the Database Engineering team during the search for a new managerHired and onboarded new contractors to take over the Database Engineering After Hours frontline support

Akron, Ohio, Us

As the Lead Database Administrator at Drips, I worked on a team with ten backend, frontend, and QA developers, and reported to the Development Manager and CTO of Drips. The entire application and data footprint existed in Azure PaaS services, including Azure SQL Database, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Cosmos DB. My primary responsibilities included managing and monitoring the production databases, identifying and resolving performance related issues, managing security for the entire data footprint, working with developers on changes in lower environments and migrating to production, and assisting with Azure management outside of database resources. During my first year at Drips I accomplished the following:Created and implemented a long term backup policy and strategy, saving thousands of dollars a month in storageIdentified several performance bottlenecks and put plans in place to remediate themIntegrated our largest tables with Tableau OnlineCreated a lower environment for Azure Data Factory and linked to source controlStandardized security for developers using Azure AD groups and SQL rolesStandardized alerting across all Azure SQL DatabasesWrote and provided reporting data and dashboards for legal and investor purposes

Dallas, Texas, Us

As the Manager of BI & Analytics, I was responsible for the team building and supporting Freeman’s Enterprise Data Warehouse. I worked closely with business partners and the BI Architect to make decisions on priorities and strategies, as well as peers throughout IT to facilitate data integrations with multiple systems. My responsibilities included: ● Managing a team that includes developers, an architect, program manager, testers, scrum master, and business analyst ● Budgeting and planning for ongoing support and project work ● Meeting with business partners to discuss new integrations and reporting needs ● Presenting the enterprise data warehouse, its status, and how it can be used to IT, business partners, and executives ● Managing and making decisions regarding technical debt incurred by past projects I took the role of Database Tech Lead in January of 2020 to take on the responsibility and challenge of leading the SQL Modernization project at Freeman. The main goal of this project is to inventory the entire SQL footprint, standardize and create a common database platform for all application teams, and plan upgrades for all instances, with a focus on moving to Azure where possible. In addition to leading the effort on SQL Modernization, I am also responsible for managing the SQL and Oracle DBAs. As part of that management, my focus has been on identifying processes that are candidates for automating or improving, and better tracking the day to day support work done by the DBAs.

Plano, Texas, Us

I was the sole Database Administrator at ResMan Software, supporting over 120 production databases within five Elastic Pools. ResMan is a rapidly growing company that was born in Azure, and is completely hosted within Platform as a Service offerings in Azure today. As the first and only database administrator, I was instrumental in evaluating the current database infrastructure, and implementing changes and building a roadmap for the scaling necessary to support Resman’s expanding business. In my time at ResMan, I accomplished the following in improving Resman’s database infrastructure and preparing for the future: ● Created automated process within Azure Automation and Azure Devops to create and refresh cleansed development databases for ResMan’s development team ● Converted key maintenance jobs to easily configurable Azure Automation runbooks ● Create PowerBI report to analyze performance trends to identify issues before they occur based on data I began capturing in Log Analytics ● Created daily report to identify poorest performing queries, which are addressed through tuning and the Query Store ● Created a roadmap and tuning schedule for improving ResMan’s SQL codebase based on in-depth analysis of performance trends ● Automated the creation and maintenance of over 400 Azure alerts to identify performance problems within the databases and elastic pools ● Documented infrastructure options for ResMan’s future for executives and the Board of Directors, including Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, Infrastructure as a Service within Azure, Amazon RDS, and Google Compute. ● Created repository of standard troubleshooting and utility scripts (TSQL and Powershell), and trained the on-call Leads in how to use them to identify and troubleshoot problems ● Was a key member of the team responsible for selecting enterprise BI and visualization software for ResMan’s analytics initiative

Dallas, Texas, Us

As a Senior Database Administrator, I was responsible for maintaining our production, QA, and development systems, securing all database systems, planning and implementing upgrades, and working with developers to ensure the quality of their database code. I also served as the DBA representative on the SQL Coding Standards team, the Enterprise Architecture team, and the team responsible for our enterprise scheduler standards. Our environment was made up of over 50 SQL servers (including SQL, SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS). As the Database Administration Manager, I retained my responsibilities as a senior database administrator, while also being responsible for setting the priorities of the other Senior DBA, serving as the point of contact for all database related issues and questions, working with business users to identify data related needs, and advising developers in best practices in their database related work. In my last nine months at GuideStone, I was a member of a small team leading the migration to Azure and transforming IT infrastructure department through Devops methodologies. I not only provided expertise for SQL-related projects in Azure, but also became a key team member in defining our strategy in Azure, as well as architecting automated deployment solutions to Azure through Visual Studio Team Services.

Charlotte, Nc, Us

My day to day responsibilities included managing over 300 production databases (security, maintenance jobs, physical space and files, performance, etc…) ranging in size from 1GB to 1TB, supporting twenty developers and all the development and QA databases, and reviewing any database changes proposed or written by the developers. In addition to performing administration for the production environment, I helped developers with the design, syntax, and performance of new queries and stored procedures for our applications. I was also a key member of the team responsible for deploying new versions of our products. Finally, in addition to my DBA responsibilities, I was asked to help with various IT tasks and projects throughout my time at GDSX. Specifically, from July through September in 2008, I was asked to step in as interim IT manager. It was a critical time for the company, with two very large projects on the horizon and no IT manager. I successfully managed a team of five until the projects were complete. I was not interested in taking the position full time, but was happy to help, and embraced the challenge.

Barcelona, Es