NWEA Experience

I was brought into NWEA with the goal of unifying Internet applications and web products under common governance and architecture. The existing infrastructure had grown over the years in an organic fashion -- that is to say there were all sorts of different systems that didn't talk to each other and were not able to handle large spikes in traffic or other external impacts.

After about a year I implanted a range of tools and processes that not only have made the existing systems more scalable and stable, but provides a clear migration path to entering the 21st century world of big data and distributed systems which will let the company continue to grow and change over the coming years.

Enterprise Architecture
NWEA is a $150 million non-profit which delivers Assessment Testing to K-12 students worldwide. While the core product has evolved, the overall integration of different department communication and application needs was fractured.

Worked cross-departmentally to discover and address known, and more often, unknown vulnerabilities and inefficiencies. Developed clear migration plans and systems to balance the needs of day-to-day operations and functional processes.

Implemented High Availability and High Scalability architecture and processes around legacy systems while preserving day-to-day operational workflows. This included heavily leveraging AWS services with auto-scaling and replication for applications not specifically designed to work in distributed environments.

Developed a new customer profile API my combining Salesforce data with individual applications and user stores. Designed integrated SSO supporting both legacy, internal systems and external SaaS requirements.

• AWS Management and design
• SSO
• Salesforce API integration
• Java/Mongo API infrastructure