Vance Collins Email & Phone Number

Overland Park, Kansas, Us

I speak to a variety of groups on IT and leadership concepts. I create custom presentations for most audiences and topics; injecting humor, anecdotes, relevant quotes, and visual aids. I call on over 13 years of university classroom instruction to create organized and engaging presentations. I have earned advanced certifications from Toastmasters. I am ordained to perform weddings and am registered in Kansas and Missouri. Some recent presentations include:April 2024 - CxO Podcast - “Navigating SOC2”March 2024 - CxO Podcast - “Servant Leadership”Feb 2021 - Grand Canyon Univ. - "Effective Requirements Documents for Agile SDLC"July 2020 - ProMo - "Applying the 7 Habits to Public Speaking"Sep 2018 - Smith/Kirn Wedding - "The Individual, the Marital Unit, and the Village"Oct 2017 - HackEd - "Presenting Technical Projects to Non-Technical Stakeholders"July 2017 - SMG - "Cyber Security is for Everyone"Oct 2016 - SMG - "Converting from Team Member to Coach to Leader"Jul 2016 - Top Box Toasters - "Motivating Diverse Teams"Jul 2015 - Private Graduation Ceremony - "The Real Expectations of a Graduate"

Overland Park, Ks, Us

- Manage the strategy for scaling a small local dev team to multiple dev teams that are geographically diverse- Hire a high performing team and keep them engaged and energized about the great products we are delivering- Create a scalable and mature software development ecosystem- Manage SOC2 program from early phase (policy creation, data gathering, etc) to full Type 2 attestation.- Create a security training program and foster an environment of security awareness- Manage cloud infrastructure and security- Create and manage engineering team budget- Optimize cost and efficiency in both infrastructure and engineering resources- Integrate technical and human resources after M&A(Azure AD, Azure SQL, Intune, OpenAI, LangChain, Drata, SOC2, Mongo Atlas, Realm, AWS, iOS, .NET, DNS, etc)

Kansas City, Mo, Us

Brought in to redirect an engineering team that had been struggling after substantial churn and business disruption- Turned around a team that had not produced a release in nearly a year- Oversaw upgrade from TFS to Azure DevOps for both version control and sprint management- Hired talented developers to bring modern practices to a legacy product

Kansas City, Mo, Us

- Bring together a globally diverse group of developers, architects, designers, and testers to create an industry leading product. - Responsible for hiring and leading top tier talent for fully remote development teams. - Develop budget forecasts for labor, infrastructure, cloud, and vendor costs.- Integrate continual improvement processes to achieve maximum productivity and software quality.- Achieve team efficiency by adopting the best practices of agile scrum. - Work with President and CEO to develop short and long term roadmaps as part of a larger ALM. - Review functionality for security and privacy concerns. - Manage numerous connectors to and integrations with Salesforce and Sage Accounting Software- Ensure viability and security of internal network including endpoints, firewall, and VPN configuration.- Evaluate vendors and negotiate contracts with them.- Participate in EOS program as part of the leadership team and implement many facets of it with the teams I manage. (https://www.eosworldwide.com/what-is-eos)Key Technologies: Sophos Security Suite, Google Cloud, Firestore, Algolia, PostgreSQL, C#, React, GitLab

Remote-First Organization , Us

This role was frequently the face of IT to the rest of the organization. In it I evaluated requests from business owners and determined level of effort to make decisions for acceptance and prioritization based on impact to the company and forecast capacity. - Ensured executive strategy was understood and aligned with tactical implementation- Oversaw the operations of four teams and their leads---Each team was different in function and process--- The teams consisted of Technical Leads, Software Engineers and Quality Analysts.--- Responsible for HR functions of the team (interviewing, hiring, reviews, etc).- Provided technical product ownership of a variety of internal and customer facing tools.- Contributed to and ensured adherence to software architecture and coding standards- Mentored team leads on leadership skills and personal growth.- Mentored software developers on best coding practices such as SOLID, CLEAN, DRY, and YAGNI through design sessions, code reviews, and individual interaction.- Administered Agile artifacts, ceremonies, and timelines in a Scrum environment.- Supplied guidance and policy advice for information security related matters.--- Member of cross functional data security team.Key Technologies: C#, JQuery, Angular, Moq, MS Test, WebAPI, NInject, TFS, SQL, Mongo, C#, React

Overland Park, Ks, Us

I led students to a deeper understanding of IT concepts using "flipped classroom," "Socratic method," and "think, pair, share" teaching practices.

Phoenix, Az, Us

Instruct students on a variety of business and IT courses ranging from software development to eCommerce. Facilitated over 50 security related courses focused on Security+ and the CISSP CBK Domains.Earned the Certified Advanced Facilitator designation that is awarded after rigorous training, consistently strong student evaluations, and over five years of continuous instruction.

When I joined Xceligent it was a small company that was experiencing rapid growth. My first task was to bring order to a culture of cowboy programming and siloed expertise. I introduced an Agile SDLC and worked with the CIO to incorporate product governance to help pay off years of technical debt.- Managed the re-architecture of the primary product in four months. This effort had been stalled for almost two years.- Developed an enterprise security policy in conjunction with the CIO.- Designed secure infrastructure for servers, DMZ, Cloud partners, and network topology.- Instituted Agile practices such as an advertised release cycle, daily stand-ups, sprint planning, sprint retrospectives, backlog grooming, planning poker, and product demos. Pushed a TFS integration to manage Agile artifacts and handle software version control.- Ensured that the “right people were on the bus” by judicious interviewing and hiring and encouraging career changes where they were necessary.- Created a culture of transparency and accountability with the team members and business stakeholders. Included team members in decision making to promote buy-in and ownership of the new direction.- Took ownership of missed targets and re-directed praise to the individual contributors.- Fostered a fun, positive work atmosphere.- Led an award winning hackathon team in NYC competing against teams from the US and England.

Served as lead developer/architect for team of high functioning developers.- Strategized with business stakeholders, project managers, analysts, testers and developers to ensure projects were completed on time and exceeded expectations.- Fostered an environment of creativity, ownership, and collaboration.Implemented and utilized Agile best practices.- Directed scrum, backlog prioritization, sprint review, and sprint “poker” meetings. - Collaborated with business leaders to understand and maximize the benefits of AgileProvided technical leadership and systems architecture- Managed and engineered a project to develop a custom GL system.- Lead a team of developers to reconstruct a CMS-like eCommerce system for customers of a large photo lab.-- Ensured compliance of PCI standards through audits and internal reviews.- Responsible for a complex Object Oriented system with millions of lines of code and a data environment with over 5 Billion records.-- Ensured compliance with FERPA regulations for student data.- Managed the security of the code and architecture of web-based solutions.- Specified infrastructure requirements to maximize scalability and secure communications.Key Technologies: ASP.NET, SQL Server, C#, VB, JQuery, Knockout.js, AJAX, WCF, WebAPI, MVC, MVVM, SVN

New York, Ny, Us

Lead the technical team and owned some product components of the primary eCommerce platform.- Provided programming and architecture for all backend and customer facing features.- Provided guidance and mentoring to development team members.- Responsible for developing access controls and the security of all endpoints Implemented enterprise-wide conversion of corporate intranet for 1,800 employees to a customized SharePoint portal. - Developed SharePoint App Part that allowed managers to maintain the Access Controls and Active Directory attributes for personnel and systems in their purview of control. - Integrated Infopath forms with MS Dynamics ERP system and Solomon time cards to handle workflow of budget requests and expense logging. Created and distributed coding standardsUpdated and managed version control systemsIntroduced Agile methodology to development teams and business units.Key Technologies: ASP.NET, C#, PHP, VB, SQL Server, Oracle, Biztalk, Infopath, Sharepoint, TFS, AD, IIS, WCF

Kansas City, Mo, Us

Served as lead programmer and IT architect to help launch a new solutions group that delivered customized solutions to utilities, government, and military customers.Developed and documented coding standards for new department. Ensured those standards were in line with the appropriate NIST and DoD security guidelines.Introduced the Agile SDLC to compliment the legacy waterfall SDLC.Key Technologies: ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server, SSIS, XSLT, Infopath, TFS, Sharepoint

Us

Exposed legacy applications via SOAP WebServices and consumed them in browser driven applications.Managed and engineered a project to integrate most CRM and Point-of-Sale functions into a single web client that interfaced with MS Great Plains ERP.Established relationships with vendors and suppliers to enhance EDI capabilities and automation.Developed coding standards, application and database diagrams, and systems documentation for large heterogeneous system.Key Technologies: ASP.NET, VB.NET, C#, SQL Server, SSIS, Crystal Reports, PHP, Progress 4GL, SOAP

Overland Park, Kansas, Us

Led six month Process Improvement team to revamp logistics applications used by 2,000 retail stores, numerous distribution points, and five warehouse locations.Served as escalation point for other software engineers.Was the primary developer of a data driven calendar system to manage employee days off and on-call scheduling.Supported all apps related to the eCommerce, Logistics, and POS systems.Key Technologies: SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Linux, PHP, Perl, Apache, Tomcat, JAVA

Lenexa, Ks, Us

Developed and maintained applications in VB and Delphi against Paradox and DB2 databases.Earned Cisco and Novell certifications.Project Manager for enterprise-wide bar code implementation for manufacturing company of 200 employees.- Coordinated vendors and other IT staff to finish the project well ahead of time and budget.- Ensured tight integration with the Kanban JIT manufacturing process.Managed security access control via the Novell Directory and Cisco networking appliances.Documented systems and network topologies.Maintained JD Edwards MRP/ERP software.Key Technologies: Delphi, JD Edwards, VB, Paradox, DB2, Visio, AS400, Optio, Zebra Printers

Master Of Management (M.M.), Information Systems

Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Computer Science