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 a cloud engineer supporting utility GIS platforms at UDC;
previously led 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 leadership.
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
UDC (contract via Beacon Hill
Solutions Group), Remote (https://www.udcus.com)
Cloud Engineer October 2026 - Present
Esri-focused GIS systems integrator delivering asset management and
operational technology solutions
- Deploy and support ArcGIS Enterprise environments on AWS for gas
and electric utility clients
NetImpact Strategies
Inc., Remote (https://netimpactstrategies.com/)
Geospatial and Machine Learning Team Lead February
2025 - August 2026
- Managed cutover of multiple environments from an on-prem
datacenter to AWS and managed ongoing support
- Coordinated and scheduled changes with multiple teams to minimize
impact on application development and testing
- Led implementation of highly available ArcGIS Enterprise
environments and ArcGIS Server clusters in AWS utilizing cloud-native
best practices
- Provided guidance on terraform changes to conform with
Infrastructure as Code best practices
- Architected 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
- Developed and presented 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
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