Richard Hammer Email & Phone Number

Blacksburg, Va, Us

Roanoke, Va, Us

Klarivis recruited me as a CTO candidate to build a Data Governance (Data Gov) and Quality Assurance (QA) team and bring my big data, business intelligence, predictive analytics, and cloud development experience to their organization. The initial implementation, while cloud based, was client specific and the ETL processes were a black box (and delicate to deploy). The offering was on Microsoft Azure, the client UI was built in .net and wrapped an embedded version PowerBI for Business Intelligence Reporting. All new client onboarding required months of development from the App Dev team.I built a small 2 person QA team and worked with the App Dev team to shift the ETL process for 9 production clients and 5 onboarding clients from SSIS to dynamic, table-driven stored procedures called by a bridge orchestration engine, built a user-friendly UI, and put control of the client data transformation into the hands of the Customer Success teams. This increased onboarding time 10-fold and allowed the App Dev team to focus on technical debt, enhancements, and new features. I then turned my attention to building the Data Gov team, sanitizing data for App Dev and QA, tuning client performance, and addressing our data’s technical debt.With two new hires for Data Gov, we started the Common Data Model (CDM) initiative and worked thru performance, data governance, security processes, sanitization, and multi-tenancy in building a friendly structure to support the disparate data we were receiving. There were 23 unique core / query systems being used by 90 clients, each with their own naming conventions, data integrity, availability, and client specific transformations. Performance tuning for each core / query returned a 3 to 5-fold increase in process and refresh timing. Materialization yielded an additional 5 to 8-fold increase in performance. Both initiatives produced a 30% to 50% cloud computing cost reduction.With a 3rd strategic hire, we have legs.

Reston, Virginia, Us

I was invited to join 1901 Group to guide an initiative with the DoJ/ATF back into its lane. Two dozen large, complex, interconnected, Oracle Forms applications on Exadata, developed in the early 2000s, needed to be redeveloped and migrated from a dedicated data center to the AWS Gov Cloud. I reorganized the technical personnel, restructured the architecture and development technologies, and instituted improved planning, estimation, and communication practices top to bottom across both organizations. This included regular technical and business brief to the ATF CIO and CTO and 1901 Group’s executive management. This guidance included evaluating the initial architecture, simplifying and templating the target software design, and focusing the development stack to improve application performance, enabling greater development velocity, and creating a healthy development team culture. I also established test driven development and an automated testing initiative and oversaw its implementation.This project was an incubator for a Cloud Factory concept. Creating 1901 Group's Cloud Factory as a full lifecycle, repeatable approach to assess, refactor, migrate and manage mission application in Cloud environment was a great accomplishment. It leverages an underlying software factory that follows agile practices to refactor, modernize, and migrate applications to the cloud. I directed a team of experienced subject matter experts, researched and defined industry best practices and brougt the people, processes, and tools approach to implement an assembly line approach to software development and migration.This offering was a key factor in Leidos' acquisition of 1901 Group.

Roanoke, Virginia, Us

As NorthStar Management Partnered with Cortex Leadership, I was able to help our clients usher in their own golden era of growth as an executive coach and mentor.Having over 30 years of experience in consulting, as an executive, data analytics, and management of technology teams, from directing $400K to $3M initiatives, to managing over $20M in VC/equity funding, I understood how to achieve and sustain success.I helped our clients analyze and find holes in their business data and articulate that data into meaningful information to accelerate company growth, develop executable business strategies from that data that ensure high yield results and continued business success, transform low performing IT teams through synergizing technology, business, and people, do due diligence and analyze risk, creating plans to manage horizontal and vertical growth in personnel and technology.

I started NorthStar Management to offer local and national businesses a collaborative partner to provide objective insights into the challenges of building business. By listening, I was able to design and implement proven strategies to add technical velocity, improve agility, and build culture with organizations like Crisis Prevention Response (CPR), InfernoRed, Virginia Tech's APEX CIE, Axon Health, 88 Owls, and Uncork-it. Starting NorthStar enabled me to focus on my passion for developing and nurturing a "people, processes, and tools" approach to transform culture, supporting productivity and growth across the organization.

Folsom, Ca, Us

I joined Interactive Achievement (IA) to bridge the tension between the business and technical teams and help scale their SaaS K-12 Assessment platform onTRAC from 50k students in Virginia to over 1m students nationally. Under my leadership, the business developed healthy, data informed practices and the platform continued exponential year over year growth in features, staff and student volume. I pivoted the initial research and development for a Virginia state grant to develop a Longitudinal view of student growth and performance. I built a team dedicated to developing and scaling a data predictive analytics platform called TRACbook LDS, which won a multi-million dollar Virginia State contract. I introduced Lean / Agile / Scrum processes to the entire organization (not just technical) and increased business and development health, culture, and velocity. I was responsible for managing the technology due diligence process for securing a multi-million dollar round of private equity funding in 2013. With this investment we expanded our sales and marketing teams and grew nationally rapidly. In February, 2016, IA was acquired by PowerSchool.While with PowerSchool, I continued to leverage business and technical expertise and experience in rebranding and integrating the entire IA product suite into PowerSchool's offering. I was a part of the strike team responsible for technology due diligence work in acquiring eight additional companies and their product lines and ultimately the integration of those product lines, business processes, technology stacks, and staff into PowerSchool. I was a member of the Architectural Review Board and the Security Policies Board and provided business, architectural, and technical direction across the development and compliance organizations.

Blacksburg, Virginia, Us

Being engaged by Modea, I directed the development, QA/CM and Dev Ops teams and architected a test first, continuous integration, automated build, test and deploy process capable of delivering global, world class web applications and services to our clients on very aggressive schedules. I was also responsible for account and client management, project estimation, budgeting, planning and scheduling, architecture, IT infrastructure and managing staffing needs and issues.Working with Fortune 500 clients such as Advance Auto, Newell Rubbermaid, Lenox Tools, Teutonia, and Mizuno Sporting Goods, I was responsible for the technology behind and development of their national and global web presence and dozens of digital marketing campaigns.

Us

At Exmplar, I directed an off-shore team of 10 developers and a local development team in building the "next generation" of the multi-channel, one to one, personal brand experience platform called Summit. The platform included predictive consumer behavior analytics, dynamic image management, data based email generation engine, campaign management tools, and several web usage applications: opt in/opt out services, send to a friend services, view and link tracking, catalog and order processing, as well as return mail processing.I increased email generation performance 400%, mailer functionality ten fold, and bounce and return mail processes accuracy from 65% to 82%. I was responsible for managing the technology due diligence process for securing several multi-million dollar rounds of private equity funding and Venture Capital funding.Ultimately, Summit was 5 years ahead of its time. I learned valuable lessons in enterprise architecture, data analytics, predictive analytics, and the value of relationship building with private equity and Venture Capital companies.

Fairfax, Va, Us

At CC Pace, I was responsible for mentoring and managing client project managers and development teams in implementing enterprise frameworks, architectures and design/development patterns. I had the pleasure of working with AOL, Discovery Channel, Freddie Mac, the USPTO, and the MSRB.I also engaged in technology due diligence for funding groups and corporations looking to purchase/invest in companies on the verge of an IPO and/or looking for additional startup funding. The basic template included overall best practices (development and management), technology strategy, product quality, of technical quality assessment (database design, code structure, etc.), and resource competence and availability (development, testing, and maintenance).I grew exponentially while at CC Pace. I learned true business integrity and transparency there and ultimately the real value in doing the "right" thing . The organization, consultants, and clients there are still today first class.