Solution architecture
Business goals into system design
Translate business capabilities and constraints into target architectures, service boundaries, integration patterns, and actionable technical direction.
Resume
David Hayes
Solution Architect / Principal Software Engineer
Solution architect and principal-level engineer with over 25 years of experience turning business strategy into secure, scalable systems. I lead discovery, architecture, and product decomposition; align stakeholders and engineering teams; and remain hands-on across interfaces, services, data, cloud, delivery, and operations from concept through production.
Solution architecture
How I turn strategy into production
End-to-end engineering
Across the full technology stack
Lead across user interfaces, APIs, services, data models, infrastructure, and delivery pipelines while keeping the system coherent.
Architecture practice
Decisions teams can build from
Create HLDs, detailed designs, C4 diagrams, ADRs, interface contracts, and quality-attribute scenarios that make tradeoffs and constraints explicit.
Team development
Train and lead by example
Design sessions, onboarding, documentation, and Communities of Practice so developers own services instead of depending on one expert.
Product and delivery
Architecture through execution
Turn discovery into roadmaps, release plans, epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, and prioritized backlogs, then guide delivery through production.
Production ownership
Own the outcome
Operate what you design. Observability, delivery practices, and reliability are part of leading the team, not a handoff.
Experience
Professional experience
Principal Software DeveloperArchitecture & Technical Product Ownership
Medi-Share (Christian Care Ministry)
Organization-widecross-team technical influence
340K+members served
40%less integration downtime
25%+reduction in support backlog
- Architected and owned the end-to-end delivery of enterprise systems and cross-team initiatives, translating business needs through solution design, planning, implementation, release, and production operations.
- Produced high-level designs (HLDs), detailed designs (DDs), C4 and integration diagrams, architecture decision records (ADRs), API and event contracts, data models, and current-state / target-state designs; reviewed solutions with the broader architecture team.
- Translated business outcomes into functional and non-functional requirements, quality attributes, technical roadmaps, release plans, epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, and prioritized backlogs for iterative delivery.
- Led architecture and delivery across the full stack, from React and TypeScript experiences through Node.js and .NET services, PostgreSQL and SQL Server data models, messaging infrastructure, cloud deployments, and CI/CD pipelines.
- Modernized tightly coupled legacy integrations into cloud-native, event-driven services with queues, idempotent processing, retries, and delivery guarantees, cutting integration downtime by 40 percent.
- Facilitated discovery, design reviews, and tradeoff analysis with architects, business leaders, product, security, data, portal, operations, SRE, and partner teams; defined validation, observability, rollback, and runbook requirements.
- Architected and delivered more than 10 durable membership workflows across teams and dozens of systems, preserving state across failures so long-running processes were observable, recoverable, and safe to resume.
- Reduced the support backlog by at least 25 percent and saved an estimated two to five analyst hours weekly by replacing manual data-correction and production-support SQL with audited self-service tools.
- Stood up core domain and integration services: reusable APIs, event feeds, durable workers, batch pipelines, SDKs, command-line tools, and shared packages adopted across teams.
- Through solution design, documentation, training, design sessions, and mentoring, shaped engineering practices across the organization and enabled teams to own and extend the work.
- Established organization-wide practices for observability, OpenAPI, contract testing, automated quality gates, and responsible AI with developer review.
- Improved cloud delivery with containers, automated quality gates, repeatable deployments, and one-command local environments, reducing CI runtime by roughly 50 to 75 percent.
Technology
- TypeScript
- Node.js
- NestJS / Nest.js
- Next.js
- React
- Design systems
- PostgreSQL
- C#
- .NET Core
- ASP.NET Core
- SQL Server
- RabbitMQ
- REST APIs
- OpenAPI
- Docker
- Heroku
- New Relic
- Microservices
- Modular monoliths
- Event-driven systems
- Durable workflows
- Cloud-native modernization
- Domain-driven design
- Hexagonal architecture
- Secure auth (OAuth2 / OIDC)
- Solution architecture
- Cross-team architecture collaboration
- AI
Principal Applications Architect
Academy District 20
250K+students and families served
40+managed digital communities and platforms
$100Kssaved over my tenure
Production AIML and LLM capabilities shipped
- Served as solution architect, technical lead, and product partner for the agile team building a cloud-native, multi-tenant K-12 communications platform used by more than 30 school communities and 250,000 students and family members.
- Led stakeholder discovery and capability mapping; converted business needs into HLDs, detailed designs, functional and non-functional requirements, roadmaps, epics, stories, release plans, and an ordered delivery backlog.
- Established core platform services for content, publishing, identity-aware administration, calendars, reporting, notifications, and automated email and SMS across more than 40 managed digital communities and millions of daily requests.
- Adopted machine learning early and integrated LLM capabilities directly into the product for writing assistance, summarization, translation, content generation, and other communication workflows.
- Designed and built a full design system and custom UI library with reusable components and interaction patterns, earning multiple UX awards and unifying experiences across the platform.
- Modernized the legacy CMS into a cloud-native, multi-tenant platform of containers, serverless functions, managed data stores, GraphQL APIs, and real-time messaging, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Designed service and tenant boundaries, shared platform capabilities, deployment automation, and delegated-administration controls so individual schools could publish and operate independently without fragmenting the architecture.
- Aligned architecture with security, scalability, availability, accessibility, operability, cost, and user-experience goals; guided implementation, testing, rollout, support, and continuous improvement in production.
Technology
- TypeScript
- Node.js
- React
- Vue.js
- Design systems
- C#
- .NET Core
- Azure Functions
- PostgreSQL
- Azure Cosmos DB
- GraphQL
- WebSockets
- Docker
- Azure Kubernetes Service
- Terraform
- GitOps
- Microservices
- Micro-frontends
- AI
- Machine learning
- LLM integration
- Solution architecture
- Product ownership
- Cloud-native modernization
Lead Application DeveloperSolution Architecture & Product Delivery
Pikes Peak State College
Institution-wideapplication architecture and delivery
Web to edgeapps, APIs, mobile, IoT, and embedded systems
$100Ksoutsourcing costs avoided
National awardssoftware and UX recognized
- Led solution architecture, product planning, and delivery for the team responsible for all application and web development, working directly with institutional leadership, infrastructure, database, design, and department stakeholders.
- Architected and stood up dozens of institutional applications, APIs, shared services, databases, integrations, and packages; documented contexts, components, interfaces, data flows, decisions, deployments, and operational requirements.
- Elicited and reconciled cross-department requirements, assessed buy-versus-build and technology options, defined phased roadmaps and release scope, decomposed solutions into epics and stories, and saw delivery through rollout and support.
- Modernized fragmented departmental solutions into shared web, mobile, and cloud capabilities while also designing real-time, offline-first, IoT, microcontroller, and embedded systems that remained useful through unreliable connectivity.
- Avoided hundreds of thousands of dollars in outsourcing costs while delivering award-winning software, presenting nationally at industry conferences and workshops, and mentoring junior developers into stronger engineers.
Technology
- C#
- .NET Core
- ASP.NET
- SQL Server
- PHP
- ColdFusion
- Laravel
- Ruby
- Ruby on Rails
- C++
- C
- React
- Vue.js
- Angular
- Objective-C
- Swift
- Java
- Spring
- Kotlin
- NuGet
- Mobile
- IoT / connected devices
- Embedded systems
- Real-time
- Offline-first
- Solution architecture
- Requirements engineering
Principal Engineer/ArchitectOwner/Partner
Altitude Studios
- Designed and built more than 50 client applications and a large portfolio of public sites across many industries, audiences, and business models.
- Owned product strategy, architecture, full-stack development, visual design, and UX, drawing on a graphic design and marketing background.
- Delivered products that supported revenue, customer acquisition, brand recognition, traffic, and operations, including award-winning design and UX work.
- Selected and evolved technology per customer rather than forcing unlike clients onto one stack, including PHP, Java, Go, .NET, SQL, JavaScript, and React.
Technology
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- React
- Vue.js
- jQuery
- Backbone.js
- C#
- .NET
- PHP
- Java
- Go
- Python
- Ruby
- Ruby on Rails
- C++
- C
- SQL Server
- Responsive web
- User experience
- Enterprise integrations
Web Developer
The Navigators
- Developed and maintained major public sites including navigators.org, navpress.com, gleneyrie.org, and related digital systems with complex publishing and content workflows.
- Built internal and public web applications in Java and PHP, along with content platforms, databases, and enterprise integrations on Oracle and SQL Server.
- Collaborated across development, database, infrastructure, design, communications, and stakeholder teams.
Technology
- JavaScript
- PHP
- Java
- jQuery
- Oracle Portal
- Oracle Database
- SQL Server
- Enterprise web platforms
Capabilities
Technical breadth
Solution architecture and delivery
Systems and integration
Full-stack development
Cloud and production engineering
Selected work
Recent personal projects
Most of my professional work cannot be shown publicly, so these personal projects are a few recent examples people can look at.
Engineering Notes
Technical writing and live diagrams about architecture, distributed systems, durable execution, modernization, and production engineering.
engineering.david-hayes.com
Kekonic Diagrams
A semantic diagram-as-code platform with automatic layout, live embeds, animation, a studio, command-line tooling, and editor integrations.
diagrams.kekonic.com
ProjectDrafter
An interactive woodworking-planning product with synchronized 2D and 3D experiences, cut lists, and shopping lists.
projectdrafter.comEducation
Education and continued learning
Degree
Associate of Applied Science, Graphic Design and Multimedia
Pikes Peak State College, 2005
Continuous learning
25+ years of deliberate study
Online courses, deep technical reading, conference talks, certifications, and practice, including WebAIM accessibility, Agile Scrum / ITIL, plus ongoing work in distributed systems, cloud, security, and modern architecture (Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft, vendor deep-dives).
Teaching
Mentoring, CoPs, and public teaching
Mentoring engineers, running Communities of Practice, presenting locally and nationally, and publishing technical writing and diagrams. Study, build, teach, revise keeps skills current without waiting on classroom credentials.
Associate of Applied Science, Graphic Design and Multimedia, Pikes Peak State College, 2005. Continuous independent study, certifications, mentoring, Communities of Practice, and public teaching. Writing and diagrams: engineering.david-hayes.com