Craig Vitter

Craig Vitter – Currently I am a Solutions Architect at Basho Technologies, Inc. where I assist new and existing customers realize the full potential of our distributed database Riak and our cloud storage solution Riak CS. In my role as a Solution Architect I frequently serve as a product owner helping clients develop their use cases into user stories with Basho’s Professional Services team.

As Principle Information Engineer within the Enterprise Application Branch of the United States Marshals Service I assisted the organization in the selection of new technologies and guided them in the transition to agile software development practices. During my tenure I led the successful adoption of Scrum within the team responsible for developing custom applications for the agency. This adoption established a pattern of successful releases that integrated personnel from multiple branches (program management, development, security, infrastructure, database) and demonstrated that agile methodologies have a place within the USMS. During the initial Scrum implementation I served as the team’s Scrum Master and provided coaching to the product owner and program management team in the areas of story development and release management. In addition to implementing Scrum I guided the Business Intelligence team in the implementation of Kanban in support of Operations and Maintenance activities to improve scheduling and visibility into the organization’s activities.

During my time as a Senior Software Engineer with Steel Thread Software I worked at the United States Patent and Trademark Office to help the organization realize the benefits of agile software development best practices through implementation of application lifecycle management software (Jenkins, Subversion, Nexus, Sonar, etc.), consulting, and coaching. As part of the team implementing USPTO’s Continuous Integration Configuration Management (CICM) platform my responsibilities included:

• Implementing Jenkins, Nexus, Subversion, Sonar, and Selenium (key components of the CICM platform) within the enterprise to support continuous integration and delivery and automating the installation and maintenance of the applications with Puppet;
• Migrating existing software development projects to the CICM platform and training the development teams in the platform’s features and use;
• Conducting audits of software development practices and authoring reports with recommendations for improvements;
• Working with USPTO’s Enterprise Architects to develop organizational best practices and standards around agile software development methodologies and continuous integration;
• Coaching development teams in the implementation of continuous integration and delivery techniques supporting their Scrum based software development methodologies;
• Briefing executive leadership at USPTO on the CICM project and progress towards achieving the organization’s goals.

As a Senior Software Engineer and Product Evangelist at Ikanow I was member of the product team that created and open sourced the Infinit.e document analysis platform (https://github.com/IKANOW/Infinit.e). As part of the product team I participated in the daily standups, weekly sprint planning sessions, sprint reviews, and release planning sessions. Within the team each engineer was responsible for self selecting the user stories that they would develop including clarification of the story, acceptance criteria, and reviewing progress with executive management. Additionally, in my role as a Product Evangelist I worked with the Infinit.e developer community to capture and develop new user stories for the Infinit.e platform.