Markus Westerholz
Providing Leadership In Tech
North Vancouver,BC
Summary
- 12+ years of experience with building and leading in-house and overseas teams.
- 16+ years experience with Agile methodologies (SCRUM and Kanban)
- 10+ years experience with system architecture designs and implementation
- 10+ years experience implementing best practices, development guidelines, and workflows at various software companies.
- Natural and proven team builder and lead, always keen to teach, learn, and help others grow.
- Great communicator with 20+ years of experience in presenting ideas and designs in written form or in person.
Overview
12
12
years of professional experience
12
12
years of post-secondary education
1
1
Certification
2
2
Languages
Work History
Consultant
Real Estate Board Of Greater Vancouver
08.2023 - Current
- Analyze all aspects of the technical capabilities of the Real Estate Board's IT offerings, including integrations of SAS and self-hosted solutions with MS Dynamics CRM and MS Business Central.
- Analyze organizational structures of IT and integration with other departments.
- Provide strategic and tactical recommendations to align technical plans with business targets for staffing, technical, and non-technical solutions.
- Establish coding standards for the organization and provide training for IT staff through hands-on development of new features.
CTO
Hero Innovation Group Inc.
06.2021 - 11.2023
- Multi-faceted role: from high-level business goal alignment to product planning, system architecture design, code reviews, programming
- Delivered highly scalable, secure Financial Service solution on top of AWS, implemented as a headless, event-driven, serverless Microservice architecture in alignment with business needs and financial constraints.
- Software Development: Overseeing and participating in the design and implementation of new payment products following industry standards and software development best practices
- Team management: Recruit new team members, improve team structure and processes, and build team culture
CTO
Venzee Technologies Inc.
09.2018 - 06.2021
- Hands-on CTO - involved at high level business goal alignment, product planning and code reviews and programming levels.
- Close alignment with CTO and CFO on Business strategy, drive technology changes as company pivoted from targeting SMB target to tech partnerships.
- Reorganized team of 23+ remote and local, multi-discipline team members from multiple siloed, competing teams into single, integrated, synergetic team.
- Oversaw completion of migration to Serverless in alignment with company pivot, reducing overall cost from US $13k to US$1.5k per month, while increasing system performance 10 fold.
- Role evolved into mix of Product and Technology lead, main focus on 3HAG tech strategies, while supporting product owners and tech team on 1HAG implementation.
Senior Software Architect
Venzee Technologies Inc.
06.2017 - 09.2018
- Hands-on architect - involved at strategy review, product planning, code review and programming levels.
- Introduced and oversaw implementation of best practices like Coding Standards, TDD, Coverage Analysis, Test Automation
- Introduced and oversaw reoccurring webinars, allowing team members to showcase their own ideas, cool features they implemented, etc. to facilitate knowledge sharing between team members
- Changed team workflow from mini-waterfall to true agile, using approaches like atomic change flow, supported though Jira workflows as well branching strategies. Allowed team to successfully implement CI/CD.
- Coached Product Team on feature planning, User Story writing, User Story breakdowns, Poker Planning
- Steered team away from monolithic, tightly coupled application towards more cost effective approaches, with increased emphasis on Serverless Technologies and Cloud-Native (Microservices, Event-Based Architecture).
Team Lead/Senior Software Developer
Copperleaf Technologies
02.2016 - 05.2017
- Hands-on team lead - involved at strategy review, product planning, code review and programming levels.
- Build/hired and lead team of 6 developers to build new, multi-tiered, multi-service-based application
- Design based on initial set of requirements as provided by Customer Experience Team
- Design full architecture, choosing hardware, service architecture, languages/packages choices, etc.
- Define team workflow, both conceptually and in software (Jira), combining Kanban and Atomic Change Flow •Introduced role of Product Owner to Copperleaf, resulting in transition of Customer Experience Team member onto team.
- Closely collaborated with Product Owner, Business Leads, to successfully complete very ambitious project to successful product release within 1 year.
Team Lead / Senior Software Developer / Architect
MediaValet
09.2013 - 02.2016
- Hands-on team lead - involved at strategy review, product planning, code review and programming levels.
- Lead team of 10 developers, split overseas and local.
- Design modular, maintainable web portal for Azure Hosted Media Management SaaS application.
- Design RESTful API (RMM Level 3) to interact with legacy backend implementation of the Application.
- Work closely with BA and Project Manager to determine best practices to address to client/stakeholder feedback of life application.
Senior Software Developer
Rocket Gaming Systems
12.2011 - 09.2013
- Mentored peers in use of scripting, general design and best practices in title development
- Drove change from copy-and-paste-type coding ot core library
- Oversaw adherence to standards in Code Library through code reviews/peer mentoring
- Manage documentation for static library/scripting engine/designs and approaches in Confluence
- Designed and developed scripting system, using late-binding and XML technologies
Education
Diploma of Technology (incomplete) - Computer Systems
British Columbia Institute Of Technology
Vancouver, BC, Canada 09.2009 - 11.2018
Associates Certificate - Applied Computer Information Systems
British Columbia Institute Of Technology
Vancouver, BC, Canada 12.2011 - 12.2012
Associate Certificate - Computer Science
British Columbia Institute Of Technology
Vancouver, BC, Canada 09.2009 - 12.2011
Skills
Strategic thinking - analyze business needs and translate them into product and tech requirements
Communication - identify appropriate means of communication depending on audience and situation, clearly communicate goals, accomplishments and challenges
Vision - after understanding the business problem to solve, define a clear product and technical vision of how to address the issue, without getting lost in details
Customer/Client/Board Interaction - provide application overviews or discuss features with technical and non-technical clients, partners or other stakeholders
Code/Architecture - bring plans and designs to life
Team Leadership - build strong teams by fostering open and honest communication, leading by example, providing solutions and listening the opinion of others
Team Building - emphasize common goals, celebrate common successes as well as individual accomplishments
Team Mentorship - mentor team members in their field where possible or empower them to grow with support of others or on their own
Certification
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
Timeline
Consultant
Real Estate Board Of Greater Vancouver
08.2023 - Current
CTO
Hero Innovation Group Inc.
06.2021 - 11.2023
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
10-2019
CTO
Venzee Technologies Inc.
09.2018 - 06.2021
Senior Software Architect
Venzee Technologies Inc.
06.2017 - 09.2018
Team Lead/Senior Software Developer
Copperleaf Technologies
02.2016 - 05.2017
Team Lead / Senior Software Developer / Architect
MediaValet
09.2013 - 02.2016
Senior Software Developer
Rocket Gaming Systems
12.2011 - 09.2013
Associates Certificate - Applied Computer Information Systems
British Columbia Institute Of Technology
12.2011 - 12.2012
Diploma of Technology (incomplete) - Computer Systems
British Columbia Institute Of Technology
09.2009 - 11.2018
Associate Certificate - Computer Science
British Columbia Institute Of Technology
09.2009 - 12.2011