Kelly Edvalson | Enterprise, Software, and Platform Architect

About

I define and govern the architecture behind enterprise solutions and SaaS platforms. That means setting the strategy, standards, and guardrails that help engineering organizations design, scale, and ship with confidence, across back-end and API architecture, distributed event-driven systems, distributed enterprise data, cloud-native AWS infrastructure, and AI-first platform design.

Recent work treats AI as a first-class architectural concern: agentic workflows, AI-driven SDLC tooling, and client-facing AI features. It sits alongside monolith-to-microservice modernization, domain-driven design, and cloud migration. I work closely with engineering managers, product teams, and senior leadership to turn architectural vision into working systems, and I mentor architects and engineers to build long-term technical capability.

Years in software: 19
Concurrent users supported: 100,000+
Orders per hour handled: 70,000+
Data centers retired for AWS: 3

Experience

Origami Risk

Chicago, Illinois (remote)

Platform Architect

Nov 2024 – Present

Designed distributed, event-driven, and microservice application standards and guidelines.
Designed an event-driven data integration strategy using Temporal that spans development environments and enables distributed data integration and connectivity.
Designed a plan to migrate a backend application's user context to Auth0 as a central identity provider, and designed API security strategy on cloud-native services.
Designed application templates that help teams deploy faster while setting guardrails against system sprawl and promoting consistent standards.

More details

Contributed distributed designs aligned with major application modernization initiatives, which enabled the project to launch successfully.
Contributed distributed data design to reimagine data integration at scale across Origami clients.
Mentored architects and engineering groups on distributed systems, domain-driven design, and modernization refactors.
Worked closely with product design, development, and platform engineering teams to architect client solutions and plan refactors and modernization roadmaps.
Implemented a code health platform to track and improve engineering code quality.

Scentsy, Inc

Meridian, Idaho · 2010 – 2024

Enterprise Architect, Senior IT Architect

Jun 2020 – Nov 2024

Designed the future state of IT inventory and hosting platforms, leading a multi-year effort that deprecated three self-managed data centers and migrated to AWS.
Led a multi-year monolith-to-microservice overhaul using domain-driven design and data integration standards, producing independent components that deploy at any time through continuous deployment.
Led a system performance team whose work let corporate websites support 100,000+ concurrent users and accept 70,000+ orders per hour, enabling multi-million dollar e-commerce flash sales.
Designed the end-to-end architecture for a new React Native mobile app 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.

More details

Promoted CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and continuous delivery, which allowed us to deploy multiple times per day.
Designed a modern data architecture for future growth: an AWS data lake alongside a Snowflake data warehouse.
Built yearly IT roadmaps with senior IT leadership and business stakeholders to align architecture with company goals.
Created a lightweight project management approach, the sequence tree collaboration process.
Onboarded a load test framework using locust.io (Python) deployed on AWS ECS on Fargate.
Designed efforts to maintain PCI, GDPR, and ADA compliance.
Led proofs of concept and guided teams through vendor selection.
Led IT-wide training, including brown bags and book clubs on monolith to microservices, data management at scale, and event-driven microservices.
Presented future architecture to business and IT stakeholders and worked with engineering teams to define standards across all IT domains.

Software Architect

May 2016 – Jun 2020

Created, hired, and led a system performance team to improve performance and availability, supporting 100,000+ concurrent users and multi-million dollar flash sales.
Designed software and technology standards across development groups, improving consistency and support from DB developer, DBA, and DevOps teams.
Led the effort to break a monolith into microservices, enabling deployment at any time, autonomous team ownership, and less risky production releases.

More details

Promoted standardization on RESTful APIs, SQL versus NoSQL selection, serverless infrastructure, event-driven data integration, CI/CD, and load testing.
Worked with business stakeholders and engineering teams to design solutions for complex business problems, and guided major legacy refactors for easier maintenance.

Earlier career, 2007 – 2016

Software Engineer, Scentsy, Inc

Dec 2010 – May 2016

Developed full-stack systems with C#, .NET, Windows Server, MSSQL, jQuery, Knockout.js, HTML, CSS, SASS, and LESS.
Mentored an engineering team delivering major user-facing features under tight deadlines, and integrated data between vendor software and in-house databases.

Web Developer, Valice, Inc Boise, Idaho

Aug 2009 – Dec 2010

Built reusable DotNetNuke modules in C# and VB.NET for e-commerce, real estate, and other industries, and custom applications offered to clients as services.

Web Programmer, IntegriNet Solutions Boise, Idaho

Aug 2007 – Aug 2009

Designed and built custom web and desktop applications, MSSQL databases, and reporting systems for small to medium-sized businesses using C#/ASP.NET and ColdFusion.

Selected work

Data center exit to AWS

Designed the future-state IT inventory and hosting platform behind a multi-year migration that retired three self-managed data centers.

AWS
Cloud migration
IT strategy

Scentsy

Monolith to microservices

Led a multi-year overhaul using domain-driven design, splitting a monolith into components that deploy at any time.

Domain-driven design
CI/CD
Data integration

Scentsy

Performance and flash-sale readiness

Built and led a performance team that took corporate sites to 100,000+ concurrent users and 70,000+ orders per hour.

Load testing
locust.io
ECS Fargate

Scentsy

Event-driven data integration

Designed a strategy on Temporal for distributed data integration and connectivity across development environments.

Temporal
Event-driven
Distributed data

Origami Risk

Application templates with guardrails

Created templates that let teams deploy faster while limiting system sprawl and keeping standards consistent.

Standards
Platform engineering
Code health

Origami Risk

Sequence Tree Collaboration Process

A lightweight, innovative approach to project management that I created and introduced at Scentsy.

Project management
Collaboration

Website coming soon

Skills

Architecture: Distributed microservices
Event-driven messaging
Domain-driven design
Monolith to microservice
Data integration
System reliability
Disaster recovery and ransomware mitigation
Security risk assessment
Performance and cost optimization
Cloud and delivery: AWS
CloudFormation
Lambda
SQS/SNS
DynamoDB
S3
IAM
ECS/Fargate
Docker
LocalStack
CI/CD
Infrastructure as code
Data: SQL
MongoDB
Redis
Snowflake
Data lakes and warehouses
Languages: C#
.NET
Python
JavaScript
HTML/CSS
Identity and compliance: OIDC/OAuth2
Auth0
PCI
GDPR
ADA
AI tooling: Claude
MS Copilot
Cursor
MCP servers
Agentic tooling
Leadership: Mentoring architects and engineers
Stakeholder communication
Roadmap planning
Training programs
Vendor selection

Education and certifications

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate 2025
Bachelor of Computer Science, Utah Valley University 2003 – 2007

Contact

Interested in architecture, platform strategy, or AI-first engineering? The best way to reach me is email or LinkedIn.

kellyedvalson@gmail.com