Robert Kates Email & Phone Number

I provided tier three support for applications used by Ernest & Young’s Brand Marketing and Communications division. The applications were hosted in geographically dispersed data centers and the majority of them utilized load balancers and database clusters to ensure availability and performance. While working in this position I helped support over 100,000 internal and external users.My day to day activities included troubleshooting issues with web, database, and application servers; providing support to customers with escalated tickets; and using ITIL best practices to record my activities. I also worked with vendors to troubleshoot issues with their applications and to test/install new versions of them. These activities included performing queries against SQL and Oracle databases, testing API functionality, and analyzing log files. Finally, I conducted analysis of application performance to improve page load times, optimize database queries, and ensure applications were only communicating with servers located in their local data centers.

I started working for Thermopylae Sciences and Technology (TST) after the government awarded a new contract for the projects I was supporting. During the contract transition, I worked with TST’s management team to ensure the transition was as smooth as possible and to retain existing members of the development staff.My software development activities continued to be focused on full stack development of web, windows, and console applications using C# and VB.Net. I spent significantly more time refactoring code to conform with SOLID principles and adding documentation to the code to make it easier for future developers to maintain.My database development activities included normalizing database tables; creating and maintaining stored procedures, functions, triggers, and views; developing database deployment scripts; and performing peer code reviews to ensure development standards were followed.In addition to writing code, I filled the team’s database administrator role for about six months. While filling this role I upgraded our database servers’ SQL versions, implemented SQL replication as part of our offsite disaster recovery plan, conducted performance tuning, created and maintained SQL jobs, and performed database backups/restores. I later crossed trained one of the members of our team to become our full-time database administrator.I also worked on a project to ensure our applications complied with the DISA Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) so that we could obtain an Authority to Operate on Department of Defense networks. This project required updating application code as well operating system, web server, and database server security settings.

I returned to the OCONUS location I had previously worked at while employed with GDIT to correct instabilities that had been introduced into applications by another contracting company. My development activities included full stack development of web, windows, and console applications using C# and VB.Net. My first priority was to get the code back under source control and to ensure all of the developers were working with the same version of the database.The next task I worked on was installing the search engine on a new operating system, because the current one was no longer supported. While working on this task, I discovered the search engine was not indexing all of the information it should be. I spent the next three months correcting issues such as handling unsupported characters, identifying PDF files that did not contain OCR text, and writing code to convert Microsoft Office files to versions supported by the search engine. I continued to maintain the search engine for remainder of my time in this position. Maintaining the search engine required the creation and maintenance of views and stored procedures for data retrieval, mapping database fields to properties and dimensions, and designing user interfaces to allow customers to perform queries.The other major task I worked on was to redesign the structure of one of the databases to give administrators more granular control over users’ access to information. For this project I created new tables, views, and stored procedures; modified existing SQL objects; created several dozen Transact-SQL scripts to migrate the data from the old table structures to the new ones; and updated .Net code to account for changes to the database.I also performed database administrator functions such as optimizing queries, creating and maintaining SQL Maintenance Plans, documenting SQL objects, and writing custom queries for ad hoc reports while working in this position.

While working for SRA I filled the roles of a database administrator, database architect, and business intelligence (BI) developer. I performed these roles throughout my time in Germany while working on multiple projects for the AFRICOM and EUCOM Headquarters.My BI developer responsibilities primarily involved working with external organizations to obtain access to their data, so that I could ingest the information into our centralized reporting database. I used SSIS packages to retrieve data from 20+ organizations, perform data cleansing, transform it into our schema, and then import the data using stored procedures. I also supported external organizations who were authorized to retrieve data from our systems using web services.One of the projects our team was tasked with was taking over support for an existing application that was being maintained using a different contract. The existing application was in rough shape, so I designed a data model for a new version application and proceeded to create all of the tables, views, stored procedures, etc. Once the database was completed, I finished the data migration routine that my manager had started creating. Prior to deploying the application, we ran several tests of the migration routine and conducted user acceptance testing to ensure there were no performance issues.I also worked on a project involving the creation of country cooperation plans. The goal of this project was to give the customer the ability to dynamically define which data elements should be included in a plan. These elements could be populated using control such as textboxes, dropdown lists, and hierarchical structures. Additionally, the application had to support versioning to allow the users to utilize the currently approved plan structure while the administrators were tweaking the layout of the next version of the plan. My responsibilities for this project were to design the database and create all of the SQL objects.

I returned to the development team to assist with rewriting the application using ASP.Net 3.5. My primary responsibilities were to be the architect for the new database and the creation of a program to migrate the data from the old database to the new one. Unfortunately, the rewrite had to be cancelled due to a number of personnel leaving the team during a contract rebid. I stayed on with the team functioning as a developer and database administrator.My software development activities were focused on maintaining existing .Net applications and adding new functionality to them. I also served as the software release manager in this role. My responsibilities included managing our source control system, building packages for deployment, and deploying new software releases to our staging and production environments.My database activities included both database development and database administrator. In my development role I served as the team’s lead SQL developer ensuring tables were properly normalized, performing peer code reviews of changes to SQL objects, troubleshooting issues reported by customers, and creating and maintaining SQL objects myself. My database administration responsibilities were focused on optimizing query response times, performing data transformations, conducting backups/restores, and maintaining SQL jobs.

I was the systems administration team lead for unclassified and collateral servers supporting three networks. Most of the time I performed a supervisory role developing project implementation plans, mentoring subordinates, and preparing budgets and status reports. Some of the projects I oversaw were implementation of an Exchange 2003 cluster and the migration of mailboxes from Exchange 2000, the implementation of a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and the consolidation of two networks to reduce administrative overhead.In addition to managing the servers my team provided tier III support to our help desk technicians. One of our initiatives in this regard was to stand up a training lab and bring in instructors to train personnel on Computers Associates software suites. We also assisted the technicians with developing standard operating procedures to troubleshoot issues. This greatly reduced how often my personnel were called in after hours to assist with workstations issues.I also worked in a technical capacity managing Active Directory, DNS, SQL, IIS, Exchange, WSUS, and other server-based software applications. I built software deployment packages to push out software applications and managed our asset management system. Finally, I led the team through troubleshooting efforts whenever problems occurred which were few and far between.

I joined General Dynamics to work on a project which required the creation of a new application at an OCONUS site. The first task was to move hosting of the existing application from DIA to the OCONUS site. There was no documentation for setting up the application so we had to develop our own deployment guide. Re-hosting of application was completed within 30 days of my arrival at the OCONUS location.The next phase of the project was to create a web application to replace the SharePoint 2001 interface. The customer only gave us three months to complete the new application, so each member of the team had to take ownership of their assigned duties. I was selected as the team lead and filled the database architect role.As the team lead, I met with the stakeholders to gather their requirements, presented briefings, and kept the project plan up to date and on schedule. As the database architect, I designed the new data model and created the actual tables, views, stored procedures, functions, and triggers. I also wrote the application that was used to migrate the data from the existing database to the new one. After the application was released, I focused my efforts on managing the development team. Using Agile processes, we continued to add new functionality to the application. Some of this functionality included creating workflows to manage the approval process for documents produced within the application, a management system to keep track of organizational objectives, and the integration of visualization tools. During my tenure the development team doubled in size from five to ten team members performing development at two different sites.

I initially joined the enterprise management team as a system engineer and was later promoted to the team lead position. Our team’s mission was to provide enterprise support for all networked devices on the United States Southern Command Headquarters networks.Most of our work was performed using Computer Associates software suites. We would use Asset Management to keep track of each device's hardware and software configurations. This allowed us to easily identify systems that needed to be upgraded and would alert us to any changes in a device’s configuration. This tool was particularly useful when integrated with Software Delivery which allowed us to automate the installation of software applications. Anytime a system was re-imaged Asset Management would detect the change and Software Delivery would deploy any software that was previously installed. Asset Management also fed into Service Desk Manager, so our configuration management, help desk, networks, and systems administration teams had access to information about their systems at their fingertips.Our team also maintained workstation images, managed group policy settings, and wrote software applications to automate administrator functions. We assisted the networks team with DHCP and DNS management, port control resets, and VLAN assignments. Finally, we maintained the SQL instances for all of our application servers, wrote custom reports, and performed data import/export routines.

I joined the information assurance team when a new position was added to our contract. This position allowed me use my previous cyber security knowledge to help the United States Southern Command Headquarters protect their networks and improve their overall security posture.My primary responsibilities involved computer network defense. I managed unclassified and collateral firewalls, intrusion detection systems, web filters, and antivirus servers. All suspicious activity was reported through the chain of command and to the appropriate regional computer emergency report team (RCERT). I also reported on the status of Information Assurance Bulletins and Fragos.To improve the Command’s security posture, I used scanning and network penetration tools to identify vulnerabilities and provided security configuration guidance to the systems administration and networks teams. I also performed risk assessments on new software and hardware platforms before they were allowed to be integrated into the network. Finally, I made recommendations for procuring additional tools to protect the Command’s computer systems.