Craig Harsip, Developer in Boston, MA, United States
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Craig Harsip

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Data Engineer and Developer

Location
Boston, MA, United States
Toptal Member Since
May 17, 2021

Craig has 20 years of experience with custom software development and API integrations in high-scale eCommerce environments. An AWS Certified Solution Architect, Craig specializes in the design, implementation, and optimization of databases and workload migration to the cloud. Craig has a track record of leading teams and collaborating with diverse stakeholders of all levels to assess priorities and develop technology strategies.

Portfolio

EF Education First
Snowflake, Data Build Tool (dbt), Fivetran, Data Strategy
EF Education First
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache Kafka, StreamSets, RabbitMQ, Amazon RDS...
Freelance Clients
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS Lambda, Node.js, Python, Gatsby...

Experience

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, Python, Amazon RDS, MacOS

The most amazing...

...innovation I've made was an IVR call flow generator, allowing the system to scale to meet the company's expansion while reducing the developer support required.

Work Experience

Senior Director, Data and Analytics

2023 - PRESENT
EF Education First
  • Drove the development of the technology and organizational strategy for a data and analytics organization, migrating the company's BI environment from SQL server/analysis services to a Snowflake/dbt/Prefect/Fivetran stack.
  • Initiated the replacement of Power Apps with Streamlit.
  • Oversaw the data architecture guild, resulting in company-wide standards for the silver layer of the medallion architecture.
  • Reimplemented the data models powering sales dashboards in Snowflake and Power BI, reducing the largest consumer of resources in the legacy environment by a projected 40%.
Technologies: Snowflake, Data Build Tool (dbt), Fivetran, Data Strategy

Senior Director of Engineering

2021 - 2023
EF Education First
  • Directed the development and execution of multiple projects, establishing the scope and schedule, and balancing the work and needs of the in-house and offshore contract team members.
  • Developed the strategy and vision for replacing monolithic apps with a distributed architecture. The new architecture is hosted in Kubernetes and centers around .NET Core microservices, which communicate to external systems via Kafka and StreamSets.
  • Drove a series of process improvements which resulted in increased velocity and reduction in post-release outages.
  • Developed a repeatable process for migrating the company's on-premise SQL Server databases to AWS RDS PostgreSQL via the AWS Database Migration Service.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache Kafka, StreamSets, RabbitMQ, Amazon RDS, PostgreSQL, .NET Core, .NET, C#, React, ETL Tools, ETL, AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), AWS Lambda, Database Migration, Business Intelligence (BI), Cloud, Architecture, Agile, Amazon Cognito, APIs, Terraform

AWS Architect

2021 - 2022
Freelance Clients
  • Assisted several startups in onboarding to the AWS cloud.
  • Architected solutions inclusive of VPC, database, and application layers.
  • Implemented application logic in AWS Lambda (Node.js and Python) and API Gateway.
  • Handled serverless website development using React (Gatsby), Cognito, and CloudFront, hosted in S3.
  • Earned a 5.0 client rating in the AWS IQ portal across 11 reviews.
Technologies: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS Lambda, Node.js, Python, Gatsby, Amazon Cognito, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Amazon API Gateway, AWS CloudFormation, Database Architecture, Data Integration

Data Engineer

2021 - 2022
Potion AI, Inc
  • Developed pipelines in Azure Data Factory to transform data from multiple source systems into a unified schema consisting of dozens of tables, migrating millions of records daily.
  • Designed and implemented network architecture to allow on-premise databases to be exposed to Azure via VPN.
  • Implemented SQL Server to PostgreSQL replication scheme in Azure, leveraging CDC.
Technologies: Data Engineering, Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure Data Factory, PostgreSQL, AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), Azure Virtual Networks, Data Architecture, Fivetran, Change Data Capture, Database Architecture, Data Integration

Director of Technology

2016 - 2020
Vistaprint
  • Defined the roadmap, communicated with developers and stakeholders, and led the delivery and operational success of seven software development squads.
  • Delivered several components of Vistaprint’s new eCommerce platform. These components were primarily Node.js services which were hosted in Kubernetes and then published to a Snowflake data lake.
  • Collaborated with other teams to ensure that the processes ran smoothly, i.e., that they could easily refine our platform APIs (which we would later consume) and design APIs that we could later publish.
  • Migrated Vistaprint's contact center operations from 45 globally distributed on-premise Cisco and NICE servers to Amazon Connect.
  • Implemented data pipelines and speech analytics capabilities using AWS machine learning APIs such as Transcribe and Comprehend, Lambda, Python, and Snowflake SQL.
Technologies: AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Connect, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Python, Snowflake, Salesforce Service Cloud, Node.js, Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS, React, Gatsby, Looker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), eCommerce APIs, REST APIs, Business Intelligence (BI), Cloud, Architecture, Agile, APIs

Senior Manager of Technology

2011 - 2016
Vistaprint
  • Developed and delivered a multiyear technology roadmap.
  • Designed and built a set of .NET APIs that abstracted the complexity of Vistaprint's monolithic site architecture from the CRM. These APIs allowed the CRM to support other sites and brands without requiring code changes to the CRM.
  • Established Vistaprint's first full-stack software development team in an offshore office. Recruited and grew the team from the first hire to eight engineers and integrated them into the organization.
  • Built the ETL in SQL Server SSIS to populate a data mart sourced from multiple third-party and custom software packages. This data was then imported into Vistaprint's data warehouse for inclusion in multiple cubes and business operations reports.
Technologies: Ruby, Workforce Management (WFM), Jira REST API, NICE Systems, REST, SOAP, Data Modeling, Data Queries, Database Administration (DBA), Data Visualization, eCommerce APIs, REST APIs, Relational Databases, Database Performance, ETL, ETL Tools, Agile, Data, Data Architecture, APIs, Data Structures, Database Architecture

Senior Lead Software Engineer

2002 - 2011
VistaPrint
  • Designed and implemented innovative contact center solutions, including an IVR-based payment collection system that allowed agents to securely process orders and a data-driven menu system that enabled us to scale to hundreds of unique call flows.
  • Rearchitected data pipelines and tools for the creative team to design and deploy a variety of digital product offerings and templates.
  • Implemented and designed a customer recognition engine in a database of 10 million customers, which enabled a 30-second per-call savings at the contact center.
  • Led several projects, including three new digital product offerings, and was in charge of the requirements definition, technical specification, implementation, and post-launch analysis.
Technologies: SQL Server 2010, Data Transformation, ETL, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), VB.NET, C#, ASP.NET, .NET, CTI, Call Centers, Contact Centers, Cisco UCCE, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), SQL, Data Queries, Data Visualization, SQL Server DBA, Database Administration (DBA), Data Reporting, Databases, Database Design, Microsoft Excel, Data Modeling, Data Pipelines, Microsoft SQL Server, DB, Stored Procedure, SQL Stored Procedures, Data Engineering, Microsoft DBA, SQL Views, Views, Query Plan, Query Optimization, eCommerce APIs, Relational Databases, Database Performance, ETL Tools, Database Optimization, CSV, Data, Data Architecture, T-SQL (Transact-SQL), Data Migration, SQL DML, Performance Tuning, SQL Performance, Data Structures, Database Architecture

Amazon Connect Migration

This project involved replacing a legacy call center platform with Amazon Connect, AWS's SaaS call center in the cloud product. The goal was to have a modern platform that would significantly lower the effort required to build more intuitive customer service interactions and to extract insights from the data logged about these interactions.

To make the business case for investment, I authored a 1-page document outlining the limitations of the legacy solution, the promise of the AWS solution, and the cost difference, and presented this to the CEO and chief data officer.

I wrote some scripts to migrate the output of AWS's text analysis services to our data warehouse so that the customer analytics teams could answer the question: "What types of questions can we answer with this data?"

I also led the development team responsible for integrating Connect into our website and CRM and identifying and implementing the networking infrastructure changes required.

CRM Replatform

The goal of this product was to replace a legacy on-premise CRM system with Salesforce Service Cloud while allowing the CRM to scale to support a growing number of eCommerce sites.

I was the architect and team lead responsible for designing and implementing the solution.

To support the migration and expansion, I:
• Created microservices layer to abstract the CRM from the knowledge of the implementation details of either site.
• Defined a common interface, enforced that the new site adheres to this interface, and built an adapter on top of the monolith.
• Created an adapter to convert the new interface to the old one so that we would not need to make changes to the legacy CRM and to reduce risk.

optiontrader.tools

https://optiontrader.tools/
I developed this site to provide an easy interface for several Python-based scripts that I had developed to analyze the stock market and get more hands-on experience with React. This is an entirely serverless site, hosted in S3 and backed by Python scripts running in Lambda.
1997 - 2001

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Troy, NY, United States

MAY 2023 - MAY 2026

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty

AWS

JANUARY 2021 - PRESENT

Classical Machine Learning for Financial Engineering

New York University

JUNE 2020 - JUNE 2023

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate

AWS

Languages

SQL, Stored Procedure, JavaScript, Python, VB.NET, C#, Snowflake, T-SQL (Transact-SQL), Ruby, SQL DML

Tools

Cisco UCCE, Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise, Amazon Connect, Query Plan, AWS IAM, Microsoft Excel, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Amazon Athena, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Looker, RabbitMQ, Amazon Cognito, Terraform, AWS Glue, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS CloudFormation

Paradigms

ETL, Database Design, Agile, Microservices, REST, Business Intelligence (BI), Data Science

Platforms

AWS Lambda, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Jupyter Notebook, MacOS, Amazon EC2, Apache Kafka, Azure

Storage

Databases, Microsoft SQL Server, DB, SQL Stored Procedures, SQL Views, Relational Databases, JSON, Amazon Aurora, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), SQL Server DBA, Database Administration (DBA), Data Pipelines, Microsoft DBA, Database Migration, Amazon DynamoDB, SQL Server 2010, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Database Performance, SQL Performance, Redshift, Database Architecture, Data Integration

Other

Amazon RDS, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), CTI, Call Centers, Contact Centers, Data Queries, Data Reporting, Data Modeling, Data Engineering, Query Optimization, Database Optimization, Cloud, Architecture, English, Amazon API Gateway, Data Transformation, Workforce Management (WFM), AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), Data Visualization, eCommerce APIs, CSV File Processing, CSV, Data, Data Architecture, Amazon Route 53, Machine Learning, Linear Regression, Logistic Regression, NICE Systems, SOAP, Amazon Kinesis, Salesforce Service Cloud, Gatsby, Views, StreamSets, ETL Tools, Finance, Data Migration, APIs, Performance Tuning, EMR, Azure Data Factory, Azure Virtual Networks, Fivetran, Change Data Capture, Data Build Tool (dbt), Data Structures, Data Strategy

Frameworks

.NET, ASP.NET, .NET Core

Libraries/APIs

Pandas, REST APIs, Scikit-learn, NumPy, Jira REST API, Node.js, React

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