Profile
Geospatial technology leader with nearly a decade at the
convergence of GIS, cloud infrastructure, and machine learning,
following an earlier career in systems and infrastructure engineering.
Currently leading the Geo and ML team at NetImpact Strategies on the
USDA-FPAC-NRCS IT Operations contract, overseeing an ArcGIS Enterprise
migration to AWS, supporting in-house machine learning development,
and automating geospatial workflows through IaC and CI/CD. Experienced
across technical decision-making, team leadership, and coordination
with government stakeholders.
Skills
Leadership & Delivery: Team Leadership,
Technical Direction, Stakeholder Management, Agile, Roadmapping, Cloud
Architecture, Solution Design, Federal Contracting, Technical
Documentation
Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS (Solutions
Architect – Associate), Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, Docker, DynamoDB,
Amazon ECS (Fargate/EC2), Amazon RDS and Aurora, CloudFront, Elastic
Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, SageMaker, Glue, Infrastructure as Code
(IaC), CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub Actions
Geospatial: ESRI ArcGIS Enterprise, ESRI ArcGIS
Server, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, QGIS, PostGIS, Leaflet, Mapbox,
Remote Sensing, Spatial Data Analysis, ETL Pipelines, Cartography
Machine Learning & Data: MLOps, Machine
Learning, Model Training & Deployment, Image Processing
Programming & Databases: Python, SQL,
JavaScript, R, Shell, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, MySQL/MariaDB,
Oracle
Experience
NetImpact Strategies
Inc., Remote (https://netimpactstrategies.com/)
Geospatial and Machine Learning Team Lead February
2025 - Current
- Manage cutover of multiple environments from an on-prem datacenter
to AWS and manage ongoing support
- Coordinate and schedule changes with multiple teams to minimize
impact on application development and testing
- Lead implementation of highly available ArcGIS Enterprise
environments and ArcGIS Server clusters in AWS utilizing cloud-native
best practices
- Provide guidance on terraform changes to conform with
Infrastructure as Code best practices
- Architect technical solutions as needed to support business
goals
- Led migration of the SOILS machine learning process from
interactive RStudio sessions on high-memory GCP instances to a fully
automated Jenkins pipeline in AWS
- Develop and present executive-level briefings on project status
and delivery milestones, securing leadership approval for a novel
system architecture to support an in-house machine learning
workflow
- Nominated by company leadership to a six-month Cloud Architect
incubator program (10-person cohort) covering solution architecture,
technical communication, and documentation practices; earned AWS
Solutions Architect – Associate certification through the program
- Architected and presented a plan to migrate a legacy on-premises
application to a serverless AWS architecture, prioritizing cost
reduction without sacrificing performance
Senior Devops Engineer - GIS, October 2023 -
February 2025
- Plan and implement the migration of multiple ArcGIS Enterprise
environments to a cloud environment
- Create and manage cloud infrastructure in AWS using Terraform
- Design and implement an automated Amazon Aurora for Postgres
database environment
- Design and implement ETL pipelines and automate application
workflows using Python
- Create CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and Python to automate
provisioning servers and deploying services
- Analyze and map the memory-intensive R-based SOILS machine
learning workflow from GCP to an automated CI/CD-driven AWS
architecture, documenting design decisions and constraints across
compute, security, and internal policy requirements
Element 84, Philadelphia, PA
(https://www.element84.com/)
Devops Engineer, February 2023 - May 2023
My role at Azavea continued at Element 84 as a result of the
acquisition
Azavea, Philadelphia, PA
(https://www.azavea.com/)
Devops Engineer, November 2021 - February 2023
Acquired by Element
84 in February 2023
- Provisioned and managed resources in Amazon Web Services using
Terraform and Ansible
- Configured docker images using docker-compose for deployment in
AWS ECS (Fargate and EC2)
- Optimized performance of hosted web applications using AWS
Cloudfront, Elastic Load Balancers, and autoscaling rules
- Developed bugfixes and performance enhancements for Django and
other python-based backend services
- Provisioned and managed CI/CD workflows on Jenkins and Github
Actions
American Aerospace
Technologies, Inc, Conshohocken, PA
(https://americanaerospace.com)
GIS Database Developer, August 2019 - October
2021
- Managed development, training, and optimization of our machine
learning based threat detection system
- Planned and executed the integration of IT environments from two
subsidiary companies across four locations
- Architected an automated workflow to publish raster and vector
data to ArcGIS Server from an in-flight payload
- Created a roadmap and specifications for proprietary geoprocessing
and visualization software
- Automated GIS and business workflows with python, shell, and batch
scripts
- Created geospatial analyses using ArcGIS Pro and QGIS to support
business and sales objectives
Temple University
Remote Sensing and Sustainability Lab, Philadelphia, PA
(https://sites.temple.edu/rsensus/)
Graduate Research Assistant, November 2018 - May
2019
- Researched the implementation of deep learning technologies for
Remote Sensing Data
- Created a convolutional neural network for classification of
satellite images using Keras/Tensorflow
- Used ENVI and R to preprocess and stack satellite images
- Normalized, masked clouds, and mosaicked multiple images using R,
ENVI, and Machine Learning Tools
Temple University, Philadelphia,
PA (https://www.temple.edu)
Full Time Student, January 2018 - May 2019
The Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, PA
(http://wistar.org)
Linux System Administrator, October 2015 - January
2018
- Managed a VMware virtualization environment and EMC Isilon storage
to support scientific research labs
- Modernized a large scale HPC cluster (CentOS, Slurm Workload
Manager, Bright Cluster Manager) serving multiple teams of
researchers
Telvue Corporation, Mount Laurel, NJ
(https://telvue.com)
Devops Engineer, July 2013 - October 2015
- Designed and managed high-availability streaming infrastructure
for live and on-demand video distribution
Hit the Sticks, LLC, Devon, PA
Systems Engineer, March 2012 - May 2013
- Designed and built a high-availability game server network using
Ubuntu and Tiny Core Linux
(https://claudeschrader.com/building-a-diskless-tinycore-linux-cluster/)
University of Pennsylvania Center for Functional Neuroimaging,
Philadelphia, PA
System Administrator, February 2010 - March 2012
- Managed and upgraded multiple HPC clusters to support the
departments of Neurology and Radiology
Education
- Professional Science Master’s in GIS, Temple
University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Bachelor of Science in Information Systems,
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Certifications
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, Amazon Web
Services, December 2025
- AIOps Foundation - Devops Institute, November 2024