Name

Daniel W. Collier — Senior Software Engineer

dan@digitaldilettante.com ·linkedin.com/in/dan-collier ·digitaldilettante.com

Synopsis

Results-oriented engineer with 25 years of experience across the full software development lifecycle — architecting systems, writing production code, and leading cross-functional teams. Deep roots in C#/.NET and Azure; passionate about automation, DevOps, cloud computing, and mentoring.

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Competencies

Languages & platforms: C# · ASP.NET · .NET Core · JavaScript · TypeScript · C++ · PowerShell

Cloud & DevOps: Azure · Azure DevOps · GitHub Actions · CI/CD · Infrastructure as Code · SRE

Data: SQL Server · Cosmos DB · Cassandra · MongoDB · Azure Table Storage

Practice: Agile/Scrum/Kanban · Architecture · Mentoring · Incident response

Experience

Microsoft (via Nuance)

Dec 2022 – present

Senior Software Engineer — Business & Industry Copilot (Mar 2025 – present)

  • Design and implement C# services for the Business & Industry Copilot group; establish and promote scalable design patterns.
  • Drive development of monitoring and automation tooling for system reliability; key contributor to incident response and on-call for production systems.
  • Own work across the full SDLC — architecture, production code, automated testing — and mentor peers on engineering excellence.

Site Reliability Engineer (Dec 2022 – Mar 2025)

  • Built and maintained DevOps pipelines, infrastructure, and IaC; drove continuous-improvement initiatives.
  • Monitoring, incident response, and root-cause analysis for production cloud systems.

GEICO

Oct 2020 – Oct 2022

Senior DevOps Engineer II

  • Core DevOps team building internal .NET Core and PowerShell tooling that application teams used to deploy and manage their infrastructure.
  • Extended and supported the proprietary provisioning system for Windows and Linux IaaS VMs in Azure (ASP.NET Core, Cosmos DB, Azure Service Bus).
  • Developed and supported an ASP.NET Core API with Cosmos DB and SQL Server persistence, integrated into multiple web applications with Aurelia front ends.

Double Positive

Jan 2019 – Sep 2020

Senior Solutions Architect

  • Led the .NET-focused team — solution architecture, DevOps initiatives, day-to-day task management, one-on-one mentoring, and hands-on development and ops support.

Mind Over Machines

Jan 2015 – Jan 2019

Senior Consultant

  • Architected and delivered Microsoft-stack solutions across many clients, often owning requirements, architecture, implementation, and project management end to end.
  • Architected and led a five-consultant team building a SaaS auction platform (MVC/Angular/Web API) with real-time live and online bidding, payments, and reporting.
  • Led a legacy ASP.NET cloud migration to Azure including a full DevOps pipeline (VSTS, New Relic) and trained the in-house team on the practices.
  • Built API-to-SQL data integration for a real-estate firm (EF Core, .NET, SQL Server 2016); mentored an offshore team on security and coding best practices.
  • Backend development on an Azure-based learning management system (ASP.NET WebAPI, Cassandra, SQL Server) and internal NuGet library rollout for Pearson Online & Blended Learning.

Pieran

Mar 2013 – Jan 2015

Software Engineer

  • Built and maintained Clinical Quality Measures software for Meaningful Use compliance; set up and ran the CI server automating build, test, and deployment.

Videology

Jan 2009 – Feb 2013

Software Engineer

  • Developed MVC and WCF features (C#, jQuery, nHibernate); team lead for configuration management and project lead for application globalization.
  • Built a distributed log-processing application feeding the reporting engine; maintained SSRS reports.

Aquilent

Aug 2006 – Jan 2009

Senior Consultant

  • Maintained and extended Epic, the US Navy's web-based eProcurement system (ASP.NET, MOSS 2007, SQL Server 2005).

The Computer Solution Company

Jan 2003 – Aug 2006

Senior Consultant / Technical Lead

  • Delivered an NIH/NIAID content management solution on Microsoft CMS 2002 (ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET) — requirements through release management, mentoring the development team.

Earlier roles — Northrop Grumman, Digimo, NIST

Jan 1999 – Jan 2003

Developer / Research Assistant

  • Rebuilt the FDA Office of Regulatory Affairs website (508-compliant) at Northrop Grumman; built desktop, e-commerce, and early-mobile (BlackBerry RIM 957) applications at Digimo.
  • Research at NIST/NIH on image-recognition algorithms for CAT-scan diagnostics (Java on Solaris) and at Northrop Grumman on synthetic aperture radar target recognition (C, Matlab).

Education & Certifications