James Severance Email & Phone Number

Texas, United States

Plano, Tx, Us

Frisco, Texas, Us

Plano, Tx, Us

Optimal Blue builds and operates the mortgage industry’s SaaS digital marketplace – connecting mortgage lenders and investors to manage $45 billion in rate locks for 1 of 4 mortgages nationwide.As Director of Data Engineering, I led the development of a new data team and product offering that equips lenders with self-service business intelligence for their loan lock processes.Highlights:• Provided hands on leadership of an agile team composed of internal staff and outsourced services from a 3rd party partner.• Led solution architecture, data architecture, dimensional modeling, and software architecture, and was active in the hands-on development of multiple aspects of the system.• Delivered using Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL Elastic Pools, Power BI Embedded, and VSTS for build and deployment pipelines of all artifacts.As an Enterprise Architect I helped shape a strategy for moving the company from on-prem tightly-coupled monolithic systems to a loosely coupled cloud-hosted microservices architecture.Key initiatives included:• Delivered a data strategy to leverage vast amounts of mortgage data available in existing transaction processing systems for data science, data mining, and data product development.• Provided solution and software architecture for a re-implementation the company’s flagship rules-based pricing engine on Azure.• Facilitated design sessions for a team constructing a new Digital Marketplace API product offering – ensuring cohesive REST APIs, loosely coupled integration with legacy monolithic systems, and the use of open protocols for authentication and authorization. • Enterprise security strategy based on federated AD, Azure AD, OpenID, and OAuth.• Led/facilitated brown-bag sessions on software architecture, design patterns, and data engineering topics for highly motivated engineers.

Frisco, Texas, Us

I led information systems for Conifer’s Physician Services business unit, an acquisition of Illinois-based SPi Healthcare in 2014. Conifer Physician Services provides financial management services to ~30 large academic and medical specialty physician practices across the US.• Led an IT organization of ~40 FTEs (applications, development, business intelligence, IT infrastructure and operations) servicing an organization of ~600 FTEs.• Led directors of application management, IT ops, and BI technology through the adoption of a monthly strategic planning and executive reporting governance model, and longer-term roadmap planning for line of business systems.• Ensured success of client integrations, migration to a new digital claims clearinghouse, integration into Conifer’s corporate network, and implementation of Conifer standard applications and governance frameworks.• Capital and operating expense budget, forecast, and variance management.• Interim CIO from March-August 2015; made permanent as Vice President in the role in August, 2015.

Frisco, Texas, Us

Conifer Health Solutions (~15K FTEs and growing) provides healthcare financial management services for ~800 clients, servicing $29B of net patient revenue, $22B of medically managed spend, and 24M patient interactions. I led corporate enterprise architecture and the application development and BI technology teams in the Office of the corporate CIO.• Hands on leadership of the enterprise-, application-, and integration-architecture for acquired businesses, disparate departments, and technology enablement of new and potential services.• Senior software development leadership for line of business and departmental applications, client integration technology, corporate-wide time-tracking, reporting and work list applications, intranet, and the corporate website.• Launched the revenue cycle business unit’s business intelligence technology solution for better insight into Conifer’s performance for its customers.• Technology due diligence for M&A opportunities in partnership with McKinsey and Deloitte – evaluated software architectures, products, and development teams of prospective acquisitions.• Implemented a demand management governance process, ensuring approved projects deliver a positive NPV and prioritized the highest-value initiatives for delivery and completion to ensure maximum return on resources.• Performed contract/SOW scoping, negotiation, and approval of outsourced IT services and products.

Round Rock, Texas, Us

Led Dell’s global Healthcare Solution Development (HSD) organization providing leveraged software development, systems integration, SaaS applications, and IT operations to over 40 healthcare accounts.• Led technology and business strategy, customer delivery, staff development, and managed financial performance of the 350-person organization (~270 onshore and ~80 dedicated FTEs from a sister organization in India).• Engaged with customers, account management, and sales organizations to architect and initiate new projects, organize teams, and oversee delivery.• Refined the organization’s agile delivery methodology, leading the organization through the adoption of Scrum for development, and ITIL v3 for operations.

Round Rock, Texas, Us

Software Development Manager for teams in Texas, California, Bangalore, and Noida building and maintaining healthcare patient access, billing, A/R management, and integration solutions in .NET, Java, RPG, BizTalk, and Ensemble on the Windows and IBM iSeries platforms. • Provided technical direction, architecture, staffing, expense management, and delivery to account leaders and customers up to the executive-level.• Ensured successful delivery of projects and long-term ongoing maintenance development; and provided hands-on architecture and development leadership for key new initiatives.• Assessed the software portfolio, custom system architectures, and development and operations teams of an international (India) healthcare provider as part of solution architecture and sales due diligence that led to the signing of a 10-year IT Outsourcing (ITO) agreement.

Round Rock, Texas, Us

• As technical lead and principal architect, I led a global team of 40+ people (developers, business analysts, user experience professionals, testers, and database administrators) to produce a custom patient access system. The system performs admissions, discharges, and other functions for hospitals across the United States (50+ hospitals and growing as of 2014). • Developed many other systems as a team leader or developer including a hospital case management system for discharge planning and access to patient demographics, pharmacy, and labs; and an executive reporting portal and ad-hoc reporting tool that was showcased during a Microsoft Fusion 2003 conference keynote.• Authored and delivered brown-bag presentations to staff from across Perot Systems on Agile methods (Scrum, XP, agile practices), Unified Process, Use Cases, Continuous Integration, Automated Unit Testing, Test-Driven Development, OOAD, UML, and Design Patterns.• Architecture, design, and development in C#, ASP.NET, Windows Forms .NET, .NET Remoting, SQL Server, and Oracle 10g. Blended the Unified Process and Scrum for an agile SDLC delivery.

Dallas, Texas, Us

• Senior developer on an agile development team building Beckett.com’s flagship sports memorabilia inventory system that enables collectors and retailers to manage their collections, retrieve asset pricing, and sell through Beckett.com’s e-Commerce site.• Retained for additional development projects including Beckett’s media collateral data warehouse.

Basking Ridge, Nj, Us

Senior developer for GTE’s web-based ADSL order management system. • Played an active role in the analysis, design, and system architecture in addition to development. • Ensured the success of the project through pilot deployment, including onsite implementation management at the pilot call center in Florida.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Analysis, design, and development of a web-based learning management system for Microsoft’s training academy for premier support staff. System provides class schedules, progress reports, test results, student profile information, deadlines, rosters, staff tracking, and reporting capabilities.

Dallas, Tx, Us

• Designed and built a web application for Mystery Shoppers to record their shopping experience at BX/PX stores and the management reporting tools to analyze the results using ASP and SQL Server.• Constructed an online edition of AAFES’ Home Décor & More print catalog.• Design and development of public-facing websites for Army and Air Force bases launched initially by AAFES.

Began as an audio engineering intern, and then hired as an employee, in MCD Communications' Soundscape Studios. Performed digital audio post-production for television and radio commercials, corporate videos, and the independent film, "Vocecitas."Helped launch MCD into the business of web design and development by providing HTML, Perl, JavaScript development, and hosted BSD Unix administration for MCD’s clients including World Crisa, DuPont, and Sunstrand.

Ms, Software Engineering

Mba, Management Information Systems, General

Bachelor'S Degree, Business Administration

Associate'S Degree, Commercial Music-Recording (Audio Engineering)