Michael Ell Email & Phone Number

Calgary, Ab, Ca

Calgary, Ab, Ca

Plano, Texas, Us

Generative AI (GenAI) accelerator to provide chat over various data sources/knowledge bases through a web application that can be hosted on Azure or AWS and consume models from many providers hosted in Azure, AWS, GCP or Groq.Designed and developed a Large Language Model (LLM) reasoning application that currently supports and allows users to ask questions about data in relational databases, csv/excel files, Power BI Datasets, APIs supporting OpenAPI specs and web search integration Created a supervising LLM agent that orchestrates chatting over multiple data sources. A Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture is used for chatting over relational databases that allows users to upload example SQL statements for questions to a specific data source. This will provide more context/hints to help improve the accuracy and consistency of the responses. Prompts for each data source are managed and deployed independently from the application to allow for changing the prompt and evaluate any improvement in responses. Agents can be paused and resumed in an asynchronous manner to allow for human input.Technologies used: Python, LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith, Azure AI Search, Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Studio Model Catalog, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure SQL, Azure Storage, Azure Container Registry, AWS Bedrock, AWS OpenSearch, AWS ECR, AWS Fargate, AWS S3, AWS DynamoDB, GCP Model Garden, React, Server Sent Events, Docker, Jupyter Notebooks

Plano, Texas, Us

Consulting in a variety of roles and engagements for Improving and Quadrus as outlined below.Honoured to be in Improving top 100 for 2022.Participated in hiring events and interviews.Created practicums, code review samples and interview screening questions to help assess candidates.Created onboarding workshop for new hires to help ramp up skills needed for various client engagements.Thought Leadership:- Created and presented a talk for Improving Calgary and Clients on Generative AI reasoning applications and agents with LangChain, LangGraph and LangSmith- Created and presented a talk for Prairie Dev Conference on the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) Architecture for AI reasoning applications - Created and presented a talk on GitHub Copilot for an AI focused Prairie Dev Con, Improving Talks and Prairie Dev Conference - Designed, developed, presented, and facilitated a 3 day workshop on developing smart contracts and distributed apps (dApps) on the Ethereum blockchain. The workshop included learning Solidity, Remix, Next.js/React, Chakra-UI, solc.js and web3.js

Chief Architect and mentor for a startup company that eases co-ordination of golf rounds leveraging a users self managed golfing network.Collaborated with the company to help identify the value of the product applying lean start-up principles. Designed the architecture of the system. Selected the technology stacks and platforms. Established the development patterns and practices for the development team. Created scaffold for Restful API’s and SPA applications. Setup identity management for the system. Setup continuous integration / delivery build, test and release pipelines. Mentored the company on Agile principles. Evaluated mobile app development frameworks. Developed the mobile app using Flutter.Technologies Used: .Net Core, C#, EF Core, Azure, Azure DevOps, Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB Gremlin (Graph DB), Azure Event Grid, Azure Functions, Flutter, Dart, React, Redux, and Auth0.

AI Proof of Value to surface ad hoc analytics to internal stakeholders through a MS Teams Bot. Investigated, designed and developed an AI agent that generates and executes appropriate SQL statements for a question-and-answer chat with stakeholders. Technologies used: Python, LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith, Terraform, Azure AI Search, Azure OpenAI, Azure SQL, Azure Storage, Azure DevOps and MS Bot Framework SDK

Columbus, Ohio, Us

Brought on to uplift a team responsible for a mobile application that has been recently developed to allow customers to return online purchases at merchant stores. Interviewed team members to get an understanding of current challenges, background, skillsets and goals. Reviewed the mobile application to understand patterns and practices used to date. Based on interviews and code review, proposed a new design and roadmap to address challenges and observations focusing on: - Separation of concerns - Single responsibility - Improving code quality with unit tests Paired with team members and refactored various aspects of the application to implement and leverage the new design along with mentoring the team.Asked to help review the Loop architecture as whole from a customer and merchant perspective to help with some latency challenges as a result of increasing load on the system. - Reviewed Datadog logs to identify impacted areas - Gained an understanding of the affected areas by tracing data through the systems - Presented proposed low hanging fruit as well as longer term design solutions to help with latency challenges to the lead architects Lead the start online, drop off in store new feature of the system. - Performed gap analysis of work to date. - Created stories for the remaining work. - Organized technical discussions with various groups to define an overall approach. - Implemented and mentored on various aspects of the feature. Presented talks for Loop as a whole: - Introduction to the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture with LangChain - Introduction to GitHub Copilot - Refactoring code to reduce technical debt Technologies Used: React Native, Expo, Jest, Vue, PHP, Laravel

Abbott Park, Illinois, Us

Consulting as cloud architect to help evaluate an existing MVP solution with the future goal of surfacing disparate data sources to various stakeholders such as physicians, hospital administration and researchers.Reviewed design of existing solution focusing on the flow of data through the system, possible scaling concerns, data architecture, structure of microservices and code quality.Evaluated Azure Synapse and implemented numerous ELT options to help showcase Synapse capabilities.Evaluated eventing services within Azure to help shift to an event driven architecture.Created blueprint for the structure of microservices as well unit testing patterns.Created proof of concept that transforms data from a study that is exposed via an API and is consumed by a web app that renders an interactive 3D heart model with lesions plotted on the heart surface.Technologies Used: Azure Synapse, Spark, Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, Serverless SQL Pools, Dedicated SQL Pools, Azure Event Grid, Azure Service Bus, Azure Functions, Azure DevOps, C#, React, ThreeJS/React Three Fibre.

Consulting as architect, team lead, mentor and senior developer, led a distributed team to design and build a real time iOS and Android application that will augment the client’s next generation oil & gas trading platform.Collaborated with the stakeholders to help define and prioritize the backlog. Designed the architecture of the API’s and the native application. Established the development patterns and practices for the development team for API’s and native app. Collaborated to design integration endpoints needed with the core client system. Mentored developers. Co-ordinated efforts between developers within the client and Improving. Created client specific UI component library. Integrated authentication using Keycloak within API’s and mobile app. Integrated push notifications with Firebase. Integrated real time streaming gateway within the app using SignalR.Developed and published the Android and iOS app with React Native. Technologies Used: React Native, Redux Toolkit, Jest, SignalR, .Net Core, C#, EF Core, PostgreSQL, Firebase and Keycloak.

Calgary, Ab, Ca

Consulting as architect, team lead, BA, mentor and advisor, led various teams toward the next generation of the ParkPlus parking management solution.Facilitated and guided stakeholders in discovery sessions of the existing Park Plus system. Facilitated numerous sessions with stakeholders to help understand the challenges of the existing Park Plus product and the desired evolution of the product. Gathered high level requirements for the next generation of Park Plus product as a service. Established roadmap and blueprint architecture for the new version with a design for change approach. Co-ordinated technical proof of concepts with developers from both CPA and Improving. Facilitated numerous sessions to help determine the enforcement process. Acted as proxy product owner to lay the foundation for the new product. Established the development patterns and practices for the web development team utilizing NX, React and React Toolkit. Mentored web developers. Created UI design for the enforcement web application. Collaborated with the technical team lead throughout the project to help organically grow the architecture to allow for change as the system evolves. Technologies Used: Mural, Nx, React, Redux Toolkit, Jest and Azure DevOps.

Calgary, Ab, Ca

Consulting as technical lead, led a team consisting of Graham and Quadrus developers in the design and build of an intuitive and responsive web-based portal which enables users to navigate project hierarchies and to contextually access commonly used web and desktop applications. Worked closely with project sponsor, product owner and IT management to flush a comprehensive product backlog based on simple mock-ups prepared by the product owner. Collaborated with Graham enterprise architects and development team to define the solution architecture and technology stack. This resulting framework formed the basis for future migration of PowerBuilder desktop application to activity targeted web applications. Worked with IT Security and designed and implemented token based authentication with Azure AD for all API’s and React apps. Designed and implemented the authorization model for all API’s that integrated with the custom built Graham permissions system. During the course of development activities, implemented stronger development practices, uplifted technical and development capabilities of Graham’s development staff through code reviews, paired development and ongoing mentoring. Introduced a cloud-based DevOps framework to facilitate the building of Graham’s software product which included source control, build/test/release pipelines and Graham NuGet feed. Setup, mentored and coached the team on Agile development using Scrum Technologies Used: .Net Core, C#, EF Core, Azure DevOps, React, Redux, SignalR, and JavaScript.

Calgary, Ab, Ca

Consulting as technical director, provided holistic assessment of Boardwalk’s IT ecosystem to assess current challenges in the existing architecture, software development practices and team skillsets.Led and mentored a 16-person development team in delivery of numerous software initiatives to support various lines of Boardwalk’s business on web, mobile, desktop platforms and integration with cloud-based SaaS systems.Recommended, established a roadmap and moved the enterprise architecture from a monolithic to microservice design that resulted in greater flexibility, and mitigated risk when upgrading technology and integrating with various business solutions in Boardwalk's IT ecosystem.Planned and orchestrated a roadmap to uplift Boardwalk's software technology stack and development tools.Uplifted technical skills of development staff by conducting mentoring and training sessions in the areas of best practices, software patterns and development techniques.Architected, coordinated and implemented aspects of Boardwalk's new public website which allowed stakeholders to manage content as well as improve website visitor conversion rate by optimizing search and booking functionality.Technologies used: .Net Framework, C#, Entity Framework, React, Redux, NServiceBus, Identity Server, MS Bot Framework, LUIS, Team Foundation Server, and Azure DevOps

Louisville, Ky, Us

Consulting as team lead and scrum master in the design and implementation of a solution module to enable mode switching within a SCADA system.Worked closely with head architects / product owner to ensure deliverables met required specifications within Schneider’s enterprise-scale, complex SCADA product suite.Through active mentor-ship, improved the software development process and practices of Schneider development teams in the areas of Agile principles and practices, user stories, test-driven and behavior-driven development and acceptance criteria.

Calgary, Alberta, Ca

Consulting as an instructor, designed and presented a two-day custom course on JavaScript version 6 (ES6) based on WestJet specified learning objectives.Course content included lecture material and lab exercises designed to fit with development scenarios pertinent to WestJet.Content scope included working with JavaScript asset pipelines using Webpack, RESTful API's and evaluations of Angular JS, Ember.js and React.

Calgary, Alberta, Ca

Consulting as architect, technical lead project manager and scrum master, created an iOS mobile application with best practices in mind such as single responsibilities, dependency injection & separation of concerns to allow for cleaner, maintainable and testable code.Worked as Architect, Technical Lead, and Business Analyst on the sales, estimation, architecture, development and deployment phases of the life-cycle.Created UI design and provided theme and look for the application.Provided estimates, organized requirements, created mockups and selected appropriate technologies and tools to create the project.

Calgary, Alberta, Ca

Consulting as solution architect, team lead, senior developer and mentor for WestJet’s employee Standby and Confirmed Booking system.The system was targeted to eliminate call centre costs to the WestJet employee and to design a robust architecture to enable mobile delivery of travel benefits to the application user.Conducted requirements gathering sessions to identify project scope and translated requirements into a scalable and extensible design.Full software development lifecycle delivery of all aspects of the solution; front end user interface, services, Sabre and legacy application integration and backend data persistence in compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) requirements.Designed and architected such that the business logic is abstracted into a service tier which allows different clients (browser, mobile, browser, native mobile application etc.) to utilize a centralized business logic engine.Mentored team of 5 developers and 2 quality assurance analysts on Agile practices, using new technologies and uplifting development skills.

Calgary, Alberta, T2P2M5, Ca

Consulting as solution architect and team lead for the Staff Commuter Challenge, an internal website for The City employees to track how they commute to work with the goal to increase environmentally conscious commuter options.Managed system expectations and designed a development process to work within timeframe and resource constraints.Mentored the team on Agile techniques and process, design patterns and technologies.Mentored business clients on the software development process.Gathered detailed system requirements.Facilitated estimation sessions, iteration review and planning sessions.Designed wireframe mockups for the application UI and selected 3rd party tools / software to meet the business needs in a cost effective manner

Calgary, Alberta, Ca

Consulting as development team manager, solution architect, senior developer and mentor, managed development team on eSDK system which allows Cenovus users to collaboratively work on projects and centrally track activities prior to construction.Led analysis, estimation, architecture, development, documentation and deployment.Mentored Cenovus resources on technologies, Unit Tests, BDD testing, development patterns and best practices.Utilized estimated user stories to track project completion through a burndown chart which promoted team and stakeholder communication.Involved in all features of the project from presentation to business logic to persistence to application profiling for improving performance

Calgary, Alberta, Ca

Calgary, Alberta, Ca

Led and implemented many software solutions from enterprise wide web systems to smart client / click once applications to stand alone applications.Responsibilities included:• implementing all aspects of projects, including architecture, design, estimating, data modeling, and development of interface, service, domain and data source layers;• serving on the business planning team to determine overall functionality and direction of the projects;• analyzing the needs of stakeholders to identify business problems and propose solutions;• determining project costs;• setting-up the development environment and infrastructure;• delivering all presentations to executive managers;• implementing test-driven development and agile methodologies.• evaluated and recommended third-party tools to accomplish required functionality.Accomplishments• recipient of four Ingenuity Awards.• delivered all projects on time and on budget

Led the design and implementation of the Tymeworks service, which became one of the first commercial tools available to the newly-deregulated Alberta power market. It used real-time push technology to supply a graphical internet conduit from energy market information sources on the web to assist power traders, producers and large industrial customers. Responsibilities included:• managing all aspects of the project;• creating stand-alone systems from full-scale data modeling to concise, user-friendly, front-end interfaces;• working with end users to determine business requirements.

Calgary, Alberta, Ca

Calgary, Alberta, Ca

Computer Technology

Bachelor Commerce, Accounting