Greg Ball

About Me

Summary

Experienced software leader with a proven track record of architecting scalable systems, leading large engineering teams, and delivering mission-critical solutions across defense, enterprise, and commercial sectors.

Core Competencies

MicroservicesSoftware ArchitectureReactive ArchitecturesDomain Driven DesignDistributed SystemsKubernetes & DockerCloud Native SolutionsEngineering LeadershipTechnical ConsultingSystems Engineering

Technologies

KotlinJavaSpringJavaScriptReactTypeScriptGraphQLNext.jsDockerKubernetesLinux

Honors & Accomplishments

🏆2015 NAVAIR Mentor of the Year

🏆Learning as Leadership We-Lead Graduate

🏆Best Paper in Collaboration, Integration, and Innovation - 2018 Technical Exchange

🏆Staff 2 Level Promotion (Director Equivalent)

🏆Top Secret Clearance

Additional Achievements

  • Worked with nearly all branches of the military
  • Developed curriculum and taught courses to 3 US agencies and 3 foreign countries
  • Mission Data Subject Matter Expert before graduating college
  • Recruiter and interviewer for engineering talent
  • Steered highly opinionated clients to better engineering practices through consulting influence

Experience

Principal Solutions Architect

October 2024 - Present · Current
  • Works directly with customer leadership to steer technical direction
  • Operates as the Lead Architect of an Air Force mission system
  • Makes team leadership decisions including team structure, staffing, and tasking
  • Develops patterns and architectural components leveraged by apps and services within the mission system suite
  • Derived mission system architectural patterns using Domain Driven Design

Staff Engineer II (Director Equivalent)

April 2021 - October 2024 · 3 years 6 months
  • Led organizations through complicated consulting relationships
  • Architect of complex mission software systems including Air Force mission system and Army Software Factory applications
  • Supported Army as Engineering Practice Lead for 60+ soldier engineers
  • Developed evaluation rubrics and criteria to drive consistent evaluation of skills across numerous cohorts
  • Supported numerous DoD agencies in production and modernization of software solutions
  • Taught service members of various skill levels software engineering techniques and practices
  • Instituted best engineering practices across large organizations including lean and extreme programming
  • Achieved Staff 2 level promotion in extremely competitive, volatile corporate environment

Chief Engineer

January 2019 - April 2021 · 2 years 4 months·📍 Rockwall, Texas
  • Lead engineer over complex Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) system of record
  • Managed a team of 40+ software, systems, and test engineers
  • Grew and trained a leadership team to effectively lead the large team
  • Successfully transitioned the large program to agile software methodologies
  • Developed an architecture enabling deployment of complex mission system to the cloud
  • Changed engineering tracking and task management to better inform future bids
  • Actively involved in all phases of proposal and bidding lifecycle for multi-million dollar contracts
  • Primary Engineering point of contact for customer, fostering healthy relationship that lasted years after leaving
  • Engineered complex testing and software solutions around airborne Radar Warning Receivers (RWRs)
  • Developed curriculum and taught highly technical course to multiple DoD services and countries

Tech Lead

March 2017 - January 2019 · 1 year 10 months·📍 Greenville, Texas
  • Led an R&D project team from idea to successful demonstration in 1 year
  • Worked with distributed systems, reactive architectures, microservices, containerization, and asynchronous programming
  • Designed a scalable, resilient software architecture from the ground up
  • Applications included mission systems, ground systems, big-data analytics, and more
  • Successfully advocated for newer technologies resulting in more capable products with less time and money spent
  • Developed and delivered briefs to multiple potential customers and collaborators

Software Team Lead

January 2013 - March 2017 · 4 years 3 months·📍 Point Mugu, CA
  • Defined, documented, designed, and developed software applications for engineers and analysts to aggregate, analyze and visualize flight and lab test data
  • Managed up to seven simultaneous engineers and interns, including tasking, training, teaching, and technical guidance
  • Interviewed and hired eight interns
  • Designed and implemented a plug-in architecture for quick addition of new features
  • Created custom Java Swing elements for enhanced user experience
  • Increased user base from one customer to four through technical meetings and demonstrations
  • Project funding increased to nearly $400,000
  • Set-up and managed closed development network including enterprise tools

Mission Data Generator Software Engineer

August 2012 - March 2013 · 8 months·📍 Point Mugu, CA
  • Participated in entire life-cycle of software tool-set for Naval Air Radar Warning Receiver (RWR)
  • Gathered requirements and wrote software requirement documentation
  • Worked with government contractors on implementation of new features
  • Tested software and documented anomalies with suggested solutions
  • Implemented features using C#
  • Created and utilized training curriculum for foreign and domestic customers
  • Designed database schema upgrades

Engineering Aid/Mission Data Engineer/System Engineer

March 2008 - August 2012 · 4 years 6 months·📍 Point Mugu, CA
  • Developed mission data libraries for Naval Air RWR to protect aircrew
  • Tested hardware and software, documented and analyzed issues
  • Trained mission data and system engineers on RWR and intelligence analysis
  • Started and maintained closed network wiki for technical knowledge
  • Assisted in teaching technical courses overseas
  • Chaired technical reviews

Education & Certifications

California State University-Channel Islands

2010 - 2012

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science Minor in Mathematics

Security Clearance

Top Secret

Leadership Training

Learning as Leadership We-Lead Graduate