Resume
Rachel Switzer is an experienced Software Architect based in Austin, Texas, specializing in designing and implementing scalable enterprise solutions across cloud infrastructure and application development. With a diverse background that spans roles such as Solutions Architect, Software Engineering Architect, and DevOps Architect, along with hands-on experience as a Site Reliability Engineer, she brings a unique end-to-end perspective that connects advanced technical execution with core business strategy.
Rachel is a recognized leader known for mentoring and guiding high-performing onshore, offshore, and remote teams. She excels at driving strategic initiatives, solving complex technical challenges, and aligning modern technology roadmaps with long-term organizational goals. Her work consistently blends architectural vision, operational excellence, and strong business acumen to deliver impactful solutions in fast-moving enterprise environments.
SKILLS
Cloud & Platform Architecture
- Azure Architecture and Governance
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Bicep, ARM Templates)
- Cloud Migration & Modernization
Programming Languages & Platforms
- .NET Core, C#, Python, JavaScript, SQL, No-SQL, Terraform
Application Architecture
- Application Modernization & Replatforming
- Microservices & Distributed Systems
- API Design
- Event-Driven Architectures
DevOps, SRE & Platform Engineering
- CI/CD
- Release Management
- Observability & Telemetry (Azure Monitor, App Insights, Splunk, OpenTelemetry)
- Platform Reliability & Resilience Patterns
- Automation
Tooling, SDLC & Developer Experience
- Git, GitHub Enterprise, GitLab, Azure DevOps, Jira
- Developer Productivity Engineering
- Branching Strategies
- Governance
- Test Strategy & Quality Engineering
Data & Analytics Enablement
- Familiar with core data engineering concepts such as data lakes, bronze/silver/gold layers, and ETL pipelines
Leadership & Strategic Execution
- Technical Team Leadership
- Architecture Governance
- Roadmapping
- Cross-functional Collaboration
- Mentoring Onshore/Offshore Teams
- Executive Communication
EMPLOYMENT
3Cloud Solutions — January 2026 to Current
Architect – Automation and Innovation (February 2025 to Current)
Serve as a Solutions Architect within 3Cloud’s DevOps practice, leading tooling strategy, modernization initiatives, and engineering ecosystem transformation for a major tax and accounting client. Act as the organization’s “tools czar,” responsible for evaluating, procuring, integrating, and governing engineering tools across the enterprise. Partner with vendor sales and technical teams to craft solutions and guide technology decisions aligned with client objectives.
Key Achievements:
- Led the migration from Jira to Azure DevOps, unifying work management and reporting across organizations.
- Defined the tooling roadmap and modernization strategy to ensure scalability, security, and DevOps maturity.
- Collaborated with industry vendors to evaluate solutions, negotiate technical fit, and shape tailored proposals.
- Delivered strategic recommendations to improve developer tooling, governance, and engineering velocity.
- Provided architectural leadership on DevOps transformation efforts and modernization practices.
- Acted as a trusted advisor during an acquisition-driven consolidation of engineering operations.
Solutions Architect — January 2024 to February 2025
Served as a Sales Engineer and Solutions Architect advising clients on their Azure modernization journeys. Worked closely with technical and business stakeholders to design cloud migration strategies, develop technical proposals, and define modernization roadmaps aligned to enterprise goals. Played a key role in presales engineering, solution architecture, and strategic technical guidance.
Key Achievements:
- Designed and scoped end-to-end cloud migration strategies for moving workloads to Azure, including IaC foundations, CI/CD pipeline design, workload optimization, and governance alignment.
- Authored detailed Statements of Work (SOWs) and technical proposals covering cloud migrations, DevOps implementations, observability improvements, security enhancements, and data architecture modernization.
- Led technical discussions on observability strategy, telemetry modernization, Azure Monitor, and OpenTelemetry adoption.
- Architected a medical imaging data monetization solution, defining a phased approach for de-identification, parallel high-throughput processing, and cross-cloud transfers from Azure Blob Storage to AWS S3.
- Established DevOps and DevSecOps best practices to improve CI/CD maturity, strengthen security posture, and enhance cloud governance within enterprise environments.
- Collaborated with clients to identify modernization opportunities, assess current-state architectures, and provide strategic guidance for scalable cloud-native adoption.
NearForm — February 2023 to December 2023
Solutions Architect
Served as a Consultant Solutions Architect for an insurance rating agency, guiding the client through a large-scale application modernization effort. Acted as a strategic advisor and technical leader, aligning modernization goals with business priorities while ensuring architectural integrity and risk mitigation throughout the project.
Key Achievements:
- Led the design and implementation of an event-driven microservices architecture on Microsoft Azure to support future scalability, resilience, and modularity.
- Applied the Strangler Fig and Anti-Corruption Layer patterns to modernize legacy systems without disrupting existing business operations.
- Defined a phased transformation roadmap enabling incremental upgrades, safe parallel operation, and controlled decommissioning of legacy components.
- Partnered with engineering and business stakeholders to ensure system integrity, maintainability, and performance throughout the modernization journey.
- Provided architectural guidance, best practices, and decision frameworks to support long-term platform evolution.
ThoughtWorks — June 2021 to February 2023
Lead Consultant
Served as a Lead Consultant specializing in cloud engineering, DevOps, and SRE practices to solve complex business and operational challenges for enterprise clients. Provided hands-on delivery, architectural guidance, and cross-team leadership to modernize systems, improve reliability, and accelerate development workflows.
Key Achievements:
Large Construction Equipment Manufacturer — Azure SRE/DevOps Lead
- Acted as the Azure SRE and DevOps engineer for a global repair and maintenance customer portal hosted on Microsoft Azure.
- Designed and implemented Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using ARM templates, enabling consistent, automated deployments through CI/CD pipelines.
- Developed Azure Functions using Python and C# to automate operational tasks, integrations, and data processing workflows.
- Built multiple monitoring dashboards with proactive, automated alerting to improve system reliability and operational visibility.
- Implemented an Azure Batch solution to support offline data accessibility for field operations.
- Collaborated closely with Microsoft engineers to troubleshoot and resolve complex cloud infrastructure challenges, ensuring platform stability and performance.
- Guided the client’s agile transformation, improving operational excellence, team velocity, and delivery practices.
Magenic Technologies — August 2016 to May 2021
Lead Consultant
Served as a Lead Consultant delivering enterprise-scale solutions for Fortune 500 clients across hospitality, retail, financial services, and tax/accounting industries. Provided architectural guidance, led distributed engineering teams, and drove end-to-end delivery of modern cloud, microservices, and web platforms. Acted as a trusted advisor to clients, aligning technical strategy with business needs and long-term modernization goals.
Key Achievements:
Restaurant & Hospitality Industry
- Served as the technical lead and architect for a global custom point-of-sale (POS) platform deployed to 17,600+ stores in 90 countries.
- Implemented .NET Core microservices, integration patterns, and deployment strategies to support international scalability and high reliability.
- Guided feature development, enforced coding standards, and collaborated with product owners and architects to define architecture aligned with global operational needs.
Tax & Accounting Firm — Travel Tax Portal
- Acted as technical lead for a cloud-hosted tax review application built with .NET Core and deployed on Azure.
- Managed onshore and offshore developers, defining architecture, release plans, and best practices for scalable cloud services.
- Worked closely with enterprise architects to align cloud deployment, monitoring, and security with organizational standards.
Large Hardware/Software Company
- Led architecture and delivery for a high-volume eCommerce homepage and interior pages, built using .NET Core microservices running on PCF.
- Built micro-frontends enabling shared components across multiple site experiences, improving modularity and release velocity.
- Drove major performance improvements, nearly doubling page speed from previous version, through architectural refactoring and service optimizations.
Large Financial Services Organization
- Enhanced a high-volume digital messaging system supporting personalized SMS, push notification, and email delivery.
- Implemented Splunk dashboards, real-time telemetry, and operational insights for system reliability.
- Conducted performance and load testing, identifying architectural improvements to support large-scale financial communications.
Tax & Accounting Firm — SharePoint Workflow Automation
- Designed and built SharePoint workflows to automate tax reporting processes, increasing efficiency and reducing manual workload.
- Developed Kendo UI dashboards and customized SharePoint master pages to support unique branding and reporting requirements.
A Place for Mom — December 2014 to August 2016
Senior Developer
Developed and maintained Xamarin mobile applications (iOS and Android) for the CareGivers.com and A Place for Mom brands. Brought on as the first engineer for the CareGivers mobile initiative to design and build a healthcare-focused app supporting caregiver time tracking, visit verification, family communication, and billing workflows.
Key Achievements:
- First engineer for the CareGivers mobile app initiative.
- Built cross-platform Xamarin.Forms apps for time tracking, verification, and communication.
- Integrated Stripe for secure billing.
- Led full mobile development lifecycle.
- Delivered solutions improving caregiver accountability and transparency.
Romman Inc. — March 2014 to December 2014
Senior Software Developer
Joined a newly formed engineering team to build a greenfield, multi-tenant e-commerce platform intended to unify backend operations for multiple acquired companies. Although in the role for less than a year, contributed significantly to the first release of the platform, helping the organization transition away from legacy Yahoo Stores and ASP Classic systems.
Key Achievements:
- Contributed to the initial release of a custom multi-tenant e-commerce platform designed to support multiple brands from a single scalable architecture.
- Replaced legacy Yahoo Stores and ASP Classic components with modern, maintainable, event based solutions.
- Built early platform features focused on order management and fulfillment, enabling acquired businesses to operate through a unified workflow.
- Collaborated with the core engineering team to refine requirements, ensure cross-tenant consistency, and define foundational architecture decisions.
- Helped establish coding standards and development patterns that supported long-term scalability for future acquisitions.
Catapult Systems — August 2007 to February 2014
Consultant – November 2013 to February 2014
Client-facing software consultant delivering Microsoft-based solutions across state government, higher education, and regulated industries. Focused on understanding client business needs, troubleshooting complex technical issues, and delivering high-quality implementations under tight timelines.
Key Achievements:
- Built full Microsoft technology solutions to help clients modernize processes and solve critical business challenges.
- Led a SharePoint branding upgrade from 2007 to 2010 for a major state university, improving usability and visual consistency.
- Debugged and resolved high-impact event receiver issues ahead of an intranet go-live for a biomedical company.
- Contributed to the final delivery phase of a State and Local Government program, completing back-end bug fixes and developing new SharePoint 2010 front-end components.
Senior Developer – August 2007 to October 2013
Senior full-stack developer responsible for designing, building, and maintaining internal and back-office applications that supported consulting operations, accounting workflows, and enterprise-wide productivity. Served as a technical lead for junior developers and a key contributor to the company’s early cloud and mobile initiatives.
Key Achievements:
- Developed and maintained mission-critical internal applications used by consultants, leadership, and back-office teams.
- Designed and built a social collaborative portal for reusable company assets on Microsoft Azure, including claims-based authentication through ADFS.
- Led SharePoint upgrades from 2007 to 2010 across internal environments, resolving web part conflicts and modernizing styling.
- Mentored and trained two entry-level developers within an Agile team, improving team delivery capacity and coding standards.
- Built a responsive desktop and mobile web time-tracking application used to support accurate client billing across the consulting practice.
- Created a custom expense management system that eliminated the need for seat-based licensing, reducing recurring costs and providing greater flexibility for finance and field consultants.
- Developed the fully responsive CatapultSystems.com website on SharePoint 2013, used as a showcase of the company’s SharePoint and mobile capabilities during sales cycles.
- Selected for a five-person mobile evangelist team, receiving advanced training across mobile platforms to help establish the company’s core mobile development practice.
CERTIFICATIONS
- GitHub Foundations - October 2025
- Terraform - June 2025
- Power Platform Fundamentals - May 2024
- Azure AI Fundamentals - January 2024
- Azure Fundamentals - October 2021
- Xamarin Certified Mobile Developer - January 2016
- MCPD: SharePoint 2010, Application Development - February 2014
- MCSD: Windows Store Apps Using HTML5 – June 2013
- Programming in C# Specialist - April 2013
- Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Specialist - March 2013
- MCPD Web Development .NET 4.0 - March 2012
- MCTS Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - December 2011
EDUCATION
Stephen F. Austin State University
BBA, Computer Information Systems (2007)
PROFESSIONAL AWARDS
- Consultant of the Year @ Magenic Technologies - 2020
- Consultant of the Quarter @ Magenic Technologies - 2019
- Computer Science Student of the Year - 2007
VOLUNTEERING ACTIVITIES
Grace Hopper Open Source Day - 2023 Led a dedicated track/session at the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) Open Source Day, providing hands-on training and mentorship to first-time open source contributors, championing diversity and inclusion in the global technology community.
Girls Who Code - 2015 Served as a Technical Workshop Leader for Girls Who Code, designing and leading an HTML coding workshop to empower young women with foundational programming skills and championing early-career diversity in technology.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Texas - February 2014 to June 2020 Dedicated over six years to mentoring a high-risk pre-teen through consistent, goal-oriented educational and recreational activities (3-4 times per month).
Meals on Wheels and More - July 2008 to March 2014 Delivered meals to elderly and homebound patients weekly.