Thomas Yager-Madden

Summary

20-plus-year veteran database administrator and data architect with a proven track record building data platform and business intelligence practices across a variety of industries. Strong open source contributor, maintainer, and advocate, with highly developed skills in PostgreSQL and Python. Accomplished ELT/ETL engineer with a deep background in data modeling and API integration.

Experience

BenchPrep, Chicago, IL
Data Architect (October 2018 - Present)

Solo database administrator, managing multiple highly-available PostgreSQL application databases averaging 4000 transactions per second (TPS) serving a 24x7 multi-tenant application with 9 million total users (50k active daily)
Set up active-active database replication using Postgres-BDR and took system through multiple rounds of system upgrades with minimal downtime
In first year, improved overall mean query time from 12ms to 4ms, effectively improving overall throughput threefold
Managing a team of data analysts and engineers building the company's first data warehouse on Snowflake database, ELT/ETL pipelines using Fivetran and dbt, and reporting dashboards in Sisense and Tableau
Designing data mart models for the Snowflake warehouse to meet reporting requirements

OAO, Chicago, IL
Data Architect (2015 - 2018)

Migrated legacy databases from MySQL 5.1 at Rackspace to PostgreSQL on Google Cloud SQL
Designed and built corporate information factory using BigQuery and Postgres
Developed ETL processes and orchestration (Python Luigi) for populating data warehouse from Google Ad Manager and other external APIs
Developed open-source microservice Nerium for delivering analytic query results as JSON endpoints
In final year (2017 - 2018) was given management of all software engineers (a five-person team) and enterprise application architecture

OptionsHouse, Chicago, IL
Senior Database Administrator (2012 - 2015)

Administered several highly-available, doubly-redundant (failover and off-site) PostgreSQL databases handling 15,000+ TPS during market hours

Leapfrog Online, Evanston, IL
Enterprise Data Architect (2006 - 2012)

Newly-designed SSAS data cube allowed media buyers to save $2.5 million (a 20% reduction) in ad spend in a single year, while improving conversion rates and increasing revenue.

Solucient, Evanston, IL/Bellevue, WA
Business Intelligence Engineer and Data Modeler (1997 - 2006)

Data modeling lead for UB-04 hospital inpatient repository on Oracle database, still in production use 15 years later

Education

St. John's College, Annapolis, MD
Bachelor of Liberal Arts, 1991