Christopher Sindoni

403 Main Street, #420

San Francisco, CA 94105

415-350-3156

chris.sindoni@datamodeler.com

 

 ___________________________________________________________________

 

Objective

 

I am interested in a contract position as a Database Architect, Data Modeler, or ETL Architect. My preference is to be in the San Francisco bay area, but I will also entertain other areas. I am mostly interested in full life cycle projects.

 

 

Summary of Qualifications

  • Over fifteen years of experience with the design, architecture, development, implementation and maintenance of databases and software systems with Fortune 500 companies. Over 15 years experience with multi-terabyte data warehouses and high availability transaction processing systems.
  • Inventor/Author of issued and pending patents on business processes for the application of metadata in transaction processing systems.
  • Expert Enterprise Data Modeler with a deep understanding of developing transactional enterprise data models that strictly meet normalization rules, as well as enterprise data warehouses using Kimball and Inmon data warehouse methodologies.
  • Experience defining enterprise data location architectures for EDW, Datamart, and ODS data.
  • Experience defining ETL and system integration architectures combining data from disparate source systems and disparate data formats.
  • Experience designing XML and Java Enterprise Business Objects.
  • Recognized project management expertise including leading JAD sessions, facilitation, problem resolution, planning, scheduling, and achievement of end-item objectives.
  • Proven ability to interface and coordinate with cross functional teams and cultures, analyze existing systems, wants and needs, design and implement database solutions.
  • Excellent business analysis skills.
  • Expert at implementing Oracle and SQL Server physical data structures in order to achieve maximum database performance. 
  • Expert at implementing physical database models with Oracle (7, 8, 9i, 10g, 11g), SQL Server (7, 2000, 2005, 2008), and programming stored procedures in both Oracle PL/SQL and MS TSQL.
  • Excellent communication, coordination, organizational and follow-through skills.
  • Efficient in the execution of all assignments, eager to take on new challenges.
  • Experience working in Agile development environment.  

 


Technical Skills

  • Enterprise Data Modeling, Logical Data Modeling, Physical Data Modeling.  EDW, OLTP, OLAP, ODS, Metadata Management.
  • ERWin (15 years), Embarcadero ER/Studio, Oracle Designer
  • Oracle (15 years - 7, 8, 8i, 9i, 10g), MS SQL Server (ten years – 7, 2000, 2005, 2008), MySQL, Informix
  • Rational Rose (5 years)
  • SQL (15 years), PL/SQL (12 years), Stored Procedures (12 years), Triggers (12 years), Packages (ten years), Transaction Processing (15 years), Oracle Text (search), Multi-byte character sets (Oracle NLS)
  • Oracle Enterprise Manager Tools (ten years), TOAD (eight years), DB Artisan (two years)
  • XML Schema Design (XSD) for Web Services, XML (seven years)
  • MS Project (12 years), Visio (12 years)
  • I have worked for several years as an architect in environments with the following BI tools: MicroStrategy, Cognos, Crystal Reports, and Business Objects
  • I have worked for several years as an architect in environments with the following ETL tools: DataStage, SSIS/DTS, PL/SQL, TSQL, custom C++ applications
  • Windows, Linux, UNIX (Sun, HP)

 

 

Experience

 

Gap, Inc.                    January 2008 – Present                             Database Architect 

San Francisco, CA                                                                          Contract

 

Project Summary and Goals: Gap Inc. Direct is the largest online clothing retailer in the world. I was involved in two CRM projects during this engagement. The first was designing an Enterprise Master Data Management database for customer information through all touch points – POS, online commerce, loyalty programs, employees, outbound marketing, etc. The second was an enhancement to a Promotions Management and Control application that extended online promotions into Gap physical stores.

 

Participation: I was the Data Architect for the for the CRM group during this engagement. I was responsible for development and ongoing change control of the data model for the organization. Routine duties through the course of this engagement included:

 

  • Entire design responsibilities for logical and physical models (200+ tables)
  • Design of master data management architecture
  • Source system data model analysis
  • Evaluation of opportunistic and deterministic master data match and merge techniques
  • Designing for consumer data privacy
  • Vendor evaluation and detailed “build vs. buy” technical analysis
  • Interfaces to outbound marketing systems
  • System sizing and transaction throughput calculations
  • Developing data flow diagrams
  • Enhancement of existing Promotions data model to extend functionality between online and physical stores, and internationalization

 

Redwood Trust      November 2006 – December 2007           Database Architect 

Mill Valley, CA                                                                                  Contract

 

Project Summary and Goals: Redwood Trust Invests in and securitizes residential and commercial real estate loans and securities. Through its ownership of residential credit-enhancement securities, Redwood credit-enhances $237 billion high-quality residential real estate loans. Redwood credit-enhances approximately 10% of all jumbo residential loans in the United States. The existing reporting platform had been developed in an ad hoc manner and had significant shortcomings at all layers of the technology stack. I was the architect hired to enhance/redesign the database and etl layers of the existing data warehouse.

 

Participation: This scope of this engagement included a redesign of the star schema data model, defining a new hardware architecture and physical database implementation, and re-architecting the ETL process from a SQL/job based architecture to one using an ETL tool. The existing data model had not been created using best practices and this resulted in a business intelligence layer that had an unusually long and error prone development cycle, poor data quality, and poor query performance. After implementing a correct data model design the MicroStrategy report development and qa cycles were cut by approximately 70%, and data quality and performance were improved dramatically. The existing SQL based ETL process was very error prone and was extremely difficult to understand, troubleshoot, and manage. The new process resulted in dramatically improved data quality, system manageability, and communication between the business and technical teams. The technologies on this project included Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft SSIS. 

 

Gap, Inc.                    April 2004 – April 2007                               Database Architect 

San Francisco, CA                                                                          Contract

 

Project Summary and Goals: Gap Inc. Direct is the largest online clothing retailer in the world. Gap implemented a large scale business process reengineering project for their online division. This included replacement of online stores for all three Gap brands (Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic), as well as the order management system, promotions management system, content management system, data warehousing system, web analytics system, network, security strategy, integration tools, etc.

 

Participation: I was the technical architect for the data warehouse portion of the project. I was brought onto the project during the initial requirements phase and I assisted the product manager and approximately 30 business partners in the requirements definition. I designed the entire logical and physical data model with 500+ tables, set technical direction, and was the technical lead for the database, ETL, and business intelligence development teams. I also did a considerable amount of database tuning and hands on Oracle work. Prior to this project the Gap had no data warehouse or reporting system for the online division of the company. All reporting was done by pulling raw data into spreadsheets and processing it manually. This project was implemented using an Oracle 9i RAC database on Linux, a MicroStrategy 8 business intelligence platform, and a combination of IBM/Ascential DataStage and Oracle PL/SQL for ETL. Later in the project lifecycle the database was migrated to Oracle 10g on IBM AIX. Data model subject areas included Sales, Returns, Shipments, Invoices, Taxes, Inventory, Promotions, Price Changes, Products, Customers, and Web Analytics. The database is currently 6 TB and is designed to grow to over 20 TB. The system has a unique design that delivers reports that combine data from disparate subject areas into a single report. Reporting users can, for example, make decisions to accept or reject a price change by reading a single report that contains Sales Velocity, Profit Margins, existing and upcoming Promotions, deployed Content, and Inventory levels. Prior to the implementation of this system users were unable to consolidate the information they required in order to make informed pricing decisions in a timely manner.

 

Kanisa                       October 2003 - April 2004                           Data Architect

Cupertino, CA                                                                                  Contract

 

Project Summary and Goals: Kanisa supplies software systems for tech support call centers and user self help technical assistance. Part of the Kanisa product offering is an analytics product that allows customers to measure the effectiveness of their tech support, and take action to correct any gaps in tech support content or training. My role on this project was to lead the design of a reporting database that would fulfill the function of this analytics product, and to lead the development of the ETL layer to populate this database. This project faced some unique challenges - enormous data volumes (click stream data), deployment on two different RDBMS platforms (Oracle 9i and SQL Server 2000), a short development cycle with a tight budget, and a design requirement to supply an end product that was generic enough to satisfy all Kanisa customers. Kanisa customers include many of the big names in the technology sector - HP, Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, Intuit, etc.

 

Participation: Lead data modeler (logical and physical) and lead database software developer. I lead the logical and physical database design efforts on both Oracle and SQL Server platforms. ERWin was the design tool I chose to use. I set the architecture and software standards for all stored procedures and led the development effort of the ETL tasks to move data from a raw data staging area into the star schema reporting database. ETL tasks were done using PL/SQL and T-SQL. In addition to leading other developers I wrote approximately 20,000 lines of stored procedure code on this project. I also set direction and standards for the report developers and directed the query tuning and optimization efforts.

 

Intel                            October 2002 - October 2003                     Data Architect

Santa Clara, CA                                                                               Contract

 

Project Summary and Goals: This was a large project to replace a legacy software system in the Intel mask operations group. A mask is a glass plate with a chip design etched onto it. These glass plates are used in the chip making process much like a photo negative is used to print a photograph. The system is used to manage all aspects of the mask manufacturing process. This was a high visibility, very complex, and high risk project. A data mistake during the masking stage of the process is extremely costly to Intel. Mistakes have the potential to cost over $100 Million if they get into production.

 

Participation: Directed all aspects of the data implementation of strategic proprietary business processes. This involved overseeing logical and physical data modeling and stored procedure programming of 15 developers. This project implementation was started without a lead data architect and had run into major trouble. I was brought in as a data architecture expert in order to fix numerous database design problems while keeping the project on schedule. This meant setting design and coding standards, centralizing data modeling decisions, implementing code review and mentoring processes, and leading the database development efforts of 15 developers. Much of this work was hands on as many of the developers were not database experts. I drove major changes to the data model in order to implement a fully normalized design in order to enforce the hyper critical data consistency requirements. Over the course of the project I identified and eliminated over 100 logical data model flaws that had the potential for extremely costly data inconsistencies. In addition to this I directed efforts to identify and eliminate all poorly performing queries. The application environment was Microsoft .Net and is written in C#. Using this new technology also presented unique problem solving challenges.

 

Hewlet Packard                  April 2002 - October 2002   Database Development Lead

Mountain View, CA                                                                         Contract

 

Project Summary and Goals: Implement data model and stored procedure improvements to the database used for world wide customer support of HP business customers. Redesign the data model to support a multi-language site navigation model. The database used is SQL Server, and the application server platform is BEA WebLogic.

 

Participation: Lead database position. Led database efforts on a team of seven developers in all aspects of database architecture, data modeling, and stored procedure programming. This was a hands on role where I wrote approximately 40% of all database stored procedure code. This included identifying areas for logical data model improvements and rewriting existing T-SQL stored procedures with the primary goal of improving system performance.

 

Smith and Hawken            December 2001 - April 2002          Database Architect

Mill Valley, CA                                                                                  Contract

 

Project Summary and Goals: Project #1: Implement a data warehouse for analysis of click stream and sales data from the Smith and Hawken on-line store.

Project #2: Improve search functionality in the on-line store database. Improve multi-word search results, implement fuzzy search, and sectioning search features. The search technology used was Oracle Text.

 

Participation: Project #1: Designed and implemented a reporting data model to meet existing and future anticipated reporting requirements. The data model was based on a star schema design (dimensional data warehouse) and had fact tables for click stream and sales data. I also designed and directed the implementation of a new means of data collection for this database. This is a unique approach that collects click stream data from the application server’s servlet pipeline. This enabled reporting on many metrics that are impossible with traditional approaches using web and application server logs, but are critical to effective management of an on-line store. I also wrote all ETL procedures in Oralce PL/SQL.

 

Project#2: Completely redesigned and implemented product search functionality using Oralce Text. This included changing the indexing strategy, modifying the database search tables, completely rewriting the PL/SQL stored procedures and shell scripts used to rebuild search tables and indexes, and rewrite the SQL queries statements used by the web application. I also recommended changes to the content included in search in order to target results more accurately.

 

The Sharper Image            July 2000 - December 2001           Database Architect

San Francisco, CA                                                                         Contract

 

 

Project Summary and Goals: Project #1: Lead a team of four developers in the implementation of a second generation auction site. Lead the development effort of the integration of the auction and on-line store databases.

 

Project #2: Ongoing Oracle database support for on-line store and on-line auction sites. This is an extension of a project listed below under “Intel”. Ongoing application design enhancements and database performance improvements.

 

Participation: Responsible for all business requirements analysis, data modeling, and leading database implementation efforts for the on-line store and auction databases. Defined data flows and system architecture to meet business requirements and seamlessly integrate the on-line store with the on-line auction. Lead implementation of  physical database objects and tuning SQL queries. Defined software architecture to manage user registration and sign-in processes across two different application server platforms. Served as the project technical lead and technical liaison to the management team on an auction implementation project. Wrote custom data conversion programs in Java. Defined application interface design and application server data cache for optimum database performance. Tuned all SQL queries as required. Also had responsibility for all ongoing data model design decisions and database implementation strategies for any new business requirements.

 

PeoplePC                             March 2001 - October 2001            Lead Data Modeler

San Francisco, CA                                                                          Contract

 

Position: Lead Data Modeler – complete enterprise database redesign

Project Summary and Goals: Complete redesign of an existing enterprise database used for on-line business-to-business and business-to-consumer services. Logical data model, physical data model, and stored procedures. Provide data modeling mentoring to database developers and programmers.

 

Participation: Responsible for leading all aspects of a redesign of legacy database applications. I gave technical direction to approximately 15 developers involved in this project. This included setting modeling and programming standards, code review procedures, code release procedures, query tuning, and all database development efforts. The legacy database was designed by application programmers and web developers with various disciplines. Virtually every design rule in the book was violated and data integrity issues came up constantly. This entire legacy design was scrapped in favor of a complete custom redesign. I lead this redesign effort. This involved implementing correct standards and training application programmers on correct data modeling practices. The redesign was a highly normalized (fourth and fifth normal forms) database used for on-line transaction processing. Main subject areas included customers, products, orders, logistics, client specific pricing, content delivery, and billing. Also worked with DBA staff to optimize database queries and application interfaces.

 

Intel                            October 1999 - December 2000    Data architect, Business Analyst

 Santa Clara, CA                                                                  Contract

 

Project Summary and Goals: Various web projects for outside clients: Second Generation On-line store for The Sharper Image – complete site redesign, integrate with existing business systems to support the brick and mortar and catalog sales, add customer personalization features, deploy multi-language site on a single system; Portal Site for the People’s Republic of China; Web based business management system for Free Trade Zones in China; Web based teaching community for teachers and education professionals.

 

Participation: Lead all aspects of the data implementation during the full project life cycle of The Sharper Image on-line store project. Got involved with the project at the business requirements analysis phase. Worked with Sharper Image senior management to develop business requirements documentation, define high level data flows, and supplied technical solutions to specific business requirements. Led all database development efforts on a team of 12 developers. Led development effort of the logical and physical data models to meet the needs for The Sharper Image’s unique business requirements. Led development of a comprehensive normalized data model to meet the needs of delivering real-time content to the sharperimage.com website. Defined system and software architectures to support business requirements. Defined database system architecture for hot standby databases and geographically load balanced databases, selected hardware, defined physical server architecture for optimum database performance (using modified Oracle OFA), lead implementation efforts of database objects and PL/SQL code to enforce business rules and application logic, lead analysis and tuning of SQL queries for optimum response time. Optimized Oracle memory management for optimum performance under loads experienced in production environment. Wrote custom Java programs for importing users and product information from legacy web database and file system sources. On other projects defined logical and physical data models and consulted on data architectures to support business requirements. Acted as mentor to junior data modelers, DBAs, and programmers on other projects done by the group.

 

Distilled Images      January 2000 - July 2000   Data Modeler, Business Analyst

San Francisco, CA                                                  Contract

 

Project Summary and Goals: Implement web based business-to-business and business-to-consumer commerce system. Implement a unique business model which enabled businesses with marketable photographic images to sell those images to consumers. Prints were created by Distilled Images on an on-demand basis eliminating the need for product inventory.

 

Participation: Initially consulted on technical feasibility and recommended the approach to implementation based on funding schedules. Led a group of four other developers. Analyzed the business process and workflow from the corporate business plan, led the data modeling, architecture, and database implementation efforts. Defined the computing platforms, system and CORBA based software architecture which fulfilled the need for a real-time order processing API into the Distilled Images system. Managed three developers who wrote Pl/SQL code, Java application code, and user interface code.

 

TimeShift                  March 1997 - October 1999 Database Architect/Programmer

San Francisco, CA

 

Project Summary and Goals: Implement custom data warehouse for reporting phone call billing, customer acquisition, and system performance information. Implement a real-time billing system based on Portal Infranet with an Oracle back end. Design custom database driven fraud controls and integrate them with the billing database. Design database interfaces to allow TimeShift customer service representatives real time web access to information in the Infranet/Oracle billing system. Develop strategy to implement real time database replication from west coast to east coast.

 

Participation: Involved as a hands on database architect and technical lead during the full life cycle of this project. Lead all database efforts on a team of 15 developers. Designed and lead implementation of data warehouse databases for billing, customer acquisition, and system performance databases. Designed OLTP databases for conference calling, real-time fraud prevention, and customer service. Defined software and hardware architecture to support business requirements, projected customer growth, and real-time processing requirements. Tuned Oracle queries, stored procedures, and application interfaces to optimize system performance. Implemented Oracle OFA to support performance requirements. Interfaced with management to define all business processes relating to the company’s core software applications. Developed data model to support real-time fraud prevention, conference calling, and real-time phone call billing, and ODS for billing, customer acquisition, and system performance. Redesigned flawed data replication strategy.

 

Intel                            September 1996 - March 1997      Database Architect/

Santa Clara, CA                                                                   Data Modeler – Contract

 

Project Summary and Goals: Implement web based business-to-business and system to automate Intel marketing programs targeted to small businesses in emerging markets. Implement OLTP and data warehouse databases to support business requirements. This system had to support multiple languages from a single database and single computing platform.

 

Participation: Responsible for leading the entire life cycle of database design and implementation of transaction processing and data warehouse databases. Led all database development efforts of five developers. Designed and implemented the logical and physical data models, lead development efforts of stored procedures, triggers, and SQL queries. Developed a design that allowed Intel to implemented four independent marketing territories into a single database without impacting divisional operations. Led design and implementation efforts of an ODS and ETL tasks. Led development of software interfaces to the enterprise SAP system. Designed support for National Language Support (NLS) support for Asian languages with double byte character sets, designed application level security. Wrote custom data conversion programs for each divisional database using Delphi. Tuned all database queries. Worked with DBA staff to implement physical architecture that met Intel standards and sill optimized database performance.

 

Western Digital                   May 1996 - January 1997               Data Modeler – Contract

San Jose, CA

 

Project Summary and Goals: Design, develop, and implement a database to support a client server system that automated the management and reporting of work flow processes in Western Digital’s Advanced Manufacturing Engineering group.

 

Participation: Responsible for the entire database during the entire life cycle of the project. Interfaced with design managers, designers, and system users. Did the logical and physical data model with ERWin. Implemented the database and managed it through turnover to production personnel. Tuned all database queries. Worked with DBA staff to implement physical architecture that met Intel standards and sill optimized database performance. Programmed some custom front end forms with Delphi under Windows NT.

 

The Ticket Machine           November 1992 - April 1996          CTO, Co-founder

 San Francisco, CA

 

Summary: Start-up company that built the worlds first self-service entertainment ticketing system.

 

Job function: Conceived, developed and implemented the world’s first automated event ticket distribution system via client server multimedia kiosks. Responsible for the hardware and software architecture of the entire system. Responsible for all technology decisions and company technology direction. Managed six programmers doing custom program development and system implementation. Multimedia kiosks are Windows based, connected to a central UNIX database server via a Pacific Bell frame relay network. Back end based on Oracle 7.0.

 

Westech Automation         September 1988 - October 1992   Systems Engineer

Novato, CA

 

Summary: Systems integrator and distributor of factory automation hardware and software.

 

Job function: Designed and implemented custom Factory Automation solutions. These systems were process control systems for both continuous and discrete manufacturing processes, and SCADA systems. My duties included functional specification development, system design, implementation, start-up and training.

 

Education

 

Syracuse University

May 1984

Bachelor of Science

Chemical Engineering

Syracuse, NY