Kelly Edvalson
Enterprise, Software, and Platform Architect
Selected projects from 19 years of designing the systems behind enterprise solutions and SaaS platforms. Each one lists what I did and what it changed.
Summary
I set the architecture strategy, standards, and guardrails that help engineering organizations design, scale, and ship with confidence. My work spans back-end and API architecture, distributed event-driven systems, enterprise data, cloud-native AWS, and AI-first platform design.
Recently that has meant treating AI as a first-class architectural concern, alongside monolith-to-microservice modernization, domain-driven design, and cloud migration. I also mentor architects and engineers.
Titles
- Platform Architect
- Enterprise Architect, Senior IT Architect
- Software Architect
- Software Engineer
- Web Developer
- Web Programmer
Projects
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Performance and flash-sale readiness
- Created, hired, and led a system performance team focused on performance and availability.
- Took corporate websites to 100,000+ concurrent users and 70,000+ orders per hour.
- Made multi-million dollar e-commerce flash sales possible.
- Onboarded a load test framework built on locust.io (Python) and deployed on AWS ECS on Fargate.
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Data center exit to AWS
- Designed the future state of IT inventory and hosting platforms.
- Guided a multi-year effort that deprecated three self-managed data centers.
- Migrated workloads to the AWS cloud.
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Monolith to microservices
- Led a multi-year overhaul that broke a monolith into smaller, independent components.
- Applied domain-driven design and data integration standards to set service boundaries.
- Each component deploys at any time through continuous deployment, with autonomous team ownership and less risky releases.
- Promoted CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and continuous delivery, moving teams to multiple deploys per day.
- Ran IT-wide brown bags and book clubs on monolith to microservices and event-driven design.
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Event-driven data integration with Temporal
- Designed an event-driven data integration strategy using Temporal.
- Spans development environments and enables distributed data integration and connectivity.
- Contributed distributed data design to reimagine data integration at scale across Origami clients.
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Central identity and API security
- Designed a plan to migrate a backend application's user context to Auth0 as a central identity provider.
- Designed and contributed to the API security strategy on cloud-native services.
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Application templates and engineering standards
- Designed standards and guidelines for distributed, event-driven, and microservice applications.
- Designed application templates that help teams deploy faster while setting guardrails against system sprawl.
- Implemented a code health platform to track and improve engineering code quality.
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Application modernization
- Contributed distributed designs for major application modernization initiatives that launched successfully.
- Planned refactors and modernization roadmaps with platform engineering teams.
- Mentored architects and engineering groups on distributed systems, domain-driven design, and modernization refactors.
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Mobile app architecture
- Designed the end-to-end system architecture for a new React Native mobile app.
- Backend built on API Gateway, Lambda, DynamoDB, and SQL on RDS.
- Expected to drive tens of thousands of new user engagements and millions of dollars in revenue.
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Modern data architecture
- Designed a data architecture for future growth using AWS best practices for a data lake.
- Paired the data lake with a Snowflake data warehouse.
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IT roadmaps and architecture governance
- Built yearly IT roadmaps with senior IT leadership and business stakeholders to align architecture with company goals.
- Defined software and technology standards across all IT domains, improving consistency and support from DB, DBA, and DevOps teams.
- Designed efforts to maintain PCI, GDPR, and ADA compliance.
- Led proofs of concept and guided teams through vendor selection.
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Sequence Tree Collaboration Process
- Created a lightweight, innovative approach to project management.
- Its own website is coming soon.
Earlier projects, 2007 – 2016
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Full-stack e-commerce systems
- Built full-stack systems with C#, .NET, Windows Server, MSSQL, jQuery, Knockout.js, SASS, and LESS.
- Mentored an engineering team delivering major user-facing features on tight deadlines.
- Integrated data between vendor software and in-house databases.
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Reusable DotNetNuke modules
- Built reusable modules in C# and VB.NET for e-commerce, real estate, and other industries.
- Made existing modules more user-friendly and secure, and built custom applications offered to clients as services.
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Custom business applications
- Designed and built web applications for small and medium-sized businesses with C#/ASP.NET and ColdFusion.
- Designed MSSQL databases, desktop applications, and reporting systems.
Contact
Interested in architecture, platform strategy, or AI-first engineering? The best way to reach me is email or LinkedIn.