Mark J Gardner

Software engineer specializing in Cloud and DevOps with 17+ years of experience developing enterprise solutions.

I am a highly skilled software engineer who specializes in DevOps and platform development. I enjoy building the tools and processes that enable application developers to deliver great experiences to their end users. I have broad experience with a diverse set of application frameworks, cloud platforms, operating systems, SaaS solutions and integrations. I get particularly excited about orchestrating disparate systems into complex functional flows to solve unique business problems. I am an agile enthusiast who prefers to work on a Kanban team. I have had great success leveraging SAFe to manage work within large organizations. I am a strong proponent of declarative syntax, loosely-coupled architectures and pragmatic DevOps.

Experience

Microsoft – Principal Technical Specialist

> 7.2023

Championed customer-centricity by gathering requirements and distilling voice-of-the-customer insights, empowering product teams to prioritize effectively and steer the roadmap towards impactful outcomes.
Collaborated closely with customers to facilitate the adoption of a platform-oriented IT model, strategically aligning business-of-IT practices with cutting-edge technical competencies (such as container orchestration or cloud platforms).
Partnered with sales organization to unblock customer workloads and deliver first iteration architectures.

Built a community of interest spanning multiple OUs around the Application Innovation solution area

Microsoft - Senior Cloud Solution Architect

10.2018 <> 06.2023

Worked with large enterprise customers to help define and implement cloud transformation strategies across their IT organization.
Assisted customers in solving technical challenges while migrating critical business applications to the cloud (brownfield, lift-and-shift).
Assisted customers in designing and implementing cloud native solutions from MVP through production iterations (greenfield).
Helped customers define and adopt DevOps practices to better align their solutions to business goals.

Humana - Cloud Platform Architect

01.2018 <> 09.2018

Technical leader focused on enabling cloud platform adoption across the enterprise. Focused on designing and implementing core platform architecture.
Integrated cloud platforms with existing datacenter-bound business applications and key infrastructure components (Active Directory, Network, Monitoring and Alerting).
Exposed cloud capabilities to application teams via self-service portal.
Modeled platform support and stewardship around Site Reliability Engineering principles: defined Service Level Objectives measured via Service Level Indicators.

Humana - Enterprise DevOps Architect

2015 <> 2018

Joint technical leader (and implementer) on a cross-functional team focused on building a DevOps strategy for the enterprise and driving adoption thereof.
Built, managed and supported an enterprise ALM platform (Microsoft Team Foundation Server + SonarQube). Integrated with cloud and on-prem platforms to optimize cycle time and business value delivery for product teams.
Collaborated on the strategy design for building an "Enterprise IT Platform" with the intent of automating existing IT process as self-service capabilities.

Humana - Digital Domain Architect

2014 <> 2015

Solely responsible for domain level design and strategy for Humana's digital web platform.
Focused on refactoring existing monolithic solution into loosely coupled capabilities that could be managed as independent products.

Humana - Application Architect

2012 <> 2014

Solely responsible for the technical design of web application for supporting group insurance policy administrators (e.g. medium to small businesses).
Managed delivery of design via contract based development team. Leveraged unit testing and gated continuous integration process to guarantee quality of delivery.

Homecare Homebase - Senior Software Engineer

2006 <> 2012

Solely responsible for the technical design of a financial accounting system for a HealthCare SaaS provider with customers processing over $1 billion annually.
Responsible for design, implementation and support of the entire system.
Integrated legacy acquired solutions (predominantly VB6) into modern .NET application stack.


Education

Masters of Computer Engineering and Computer Science, University of Louisville, 2010
Bachelors of Computer Engineering and Computer Science, University of Louisville, 2006