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Jason Williams
Profile
Jason Williams says that he could never have imagined the career he has had when he first entered WVU. “Originally I thought I would be a Chemical Engineer, but the Industrial Engineering presentation just blew me away. I liked the idea of connecting engineering with business.”
Jason decided to join a fraternity and that decision has had a great impact on his career. “A member of another fraternity was also an IE and took an interest in me. He liked how active I was in the fraternity system, but also a good engineering student. He had created an IT company, which specialized in industrial automation software. He hired me as an intern and I continued working with him during the school year. It was this experience that led me to pursue a career in Information Technology.”
When Jason graduated, he joined New Channel Technologies as a systems consultant. Almost from the beginning of his career, he was managing development teams for intranet applications.
Over the next 13 years, Jason had increasing responsibilities in IT development in such firms as Printcafe Solutions, EFI, Printellect, and Digital River.
Jason made a career change when he moved from Software as a Service based companies to becoming involved in the applications of IT at Dick’s Sporting Goods. Jason has taken the lead in supporting the ecommerce side of Dick’s. When asked about the difference in working in an IT development business and supporting the integration of IT in a retail business, Jason comments: “Our work at Dick’s has to focus on the smooth transition from existing technology to new technology, so that there is no disruption for customers. It’s imperative that the sites and up and operational, as any downtime can be extremely impactful to a $1B ecommerce retail business.”
In Jason’s current position, he works closely with various business operations groups to ensure that the technology that Dick’s uses is the most helpful to customers. “We also have to make sure that our technology captures the key metrics that are critical to running the business.”
For students interested in an IT career, Jason emphasizes that “nothing is more important than experience. You can take a lot of computer courses, but I really want to see what students have done in IT development in a real job environment.”
Bio
Accomplished technology leader with 20 years of experience in software application design and development; Expertise in a diverse range of technologies in multiple industry settings with an emphasis on e-Commerce platform architecture. Decisive leader responsible for managing both local and remote teams of experienced software developers dedicated to the completion of projects and enhancing the technology landscape.
Qualifications/Highlights:
• Software development management
• E-Commerce architecture
• Software engineering process definition
• SDLC management & definition
• Technical architecture and solution modeling
• High transactional performance architecture
• Emerging technology evaluation and integration
• Enterprise Architecture/Application Development
• Agile/Scrum Project Management
• IT standards and methodology definition
• Project and resource estimation
• Employee Leadership and Mentoring
• Cross Group Collaboration
• Customer IT Relationship management
• IT Support and Operations
Specialties:
* Application Back-End/Internet Programming
* Application Back-End/Business Intelligence Tools
* Application Front -End/Client Side Programming
* Database Application Administration
* Application/Web Servers
