Jim is a software development leader with over 20 years of experience helping teams and organizations succeed. Leading transformative software development is his bread and butter; his passion is helping businesses succeed at their strategic goals while creating a collaborative and inclusive environment where people can do their best work, feel fulfilled, and meet both their personal and professional goals.

Work Experience

Founder

Jim Leonardo Development Services - Chicago, IL

From January 2023

Providing software development leadership, architecture, and development services to organizations large and small.

Senior Technology Advisor-M&A

West Monroe - Chicago, IL

July 2021 to January 2023

As a Senior Advisor at West Monroe, Jim used his experience in developing software and leading development teams to analyze the custom software of firms that our Mergers & Acquisitions clients are considering buying or selling. Once analysis was complete, Jim provided strategic direction and practical recommendations to implement that direction to our client. The companies I focused on are those with their own software offerings or who business is driven by the proprietary technology they build.

The areas that Jim analyzed and provided guidance for include architecture, quality, development processes, team structure, application security, and team effectiveness. Jim was also looked upon as a thought leader within West Monroe for application security practices and helped lead their innovation efforts in this area.

Vice President: Modern Solutions/Innovations (VP, Software Engineering)

Hitachi Solutions - Chicago, IL

November 2018 to July 2021

As VP: Modern Solutions, Jim was the hands-on leader of Hitachi Solutions’ practice that created custom enterprise solutions for their clients and later led their product development group. Over two years, Jim grew the development practice from twelve to more than sixty employees. The team that Jim built covered all aspects of solution development from business analysis through quality assurance. Jim achieved high quality and high development velocity across clients by implementing processes and standards such as CI/CD, TDD, IaC, DevOps, and microservices using tools such as Microsoft Azure, .NET, SQL Server, CosmosDB, JavaScript (incl. Angular, AngularJS), and more.

In addition to technical management, Jim defined the practice’s budget and revenue targets, created the hiring plans, and led the technical portion of many sales pursuits. He led the practice to the highest gross margins within the firm both in absolute dollars and as a percent of revenue.

While with Hitachi Solutions, Jim was also a member of the Azure Application Development Partner Advisory Council for Microsoft. As part of this voluntary board, he helped advise Microsoft on cloud strategy, technologies, and tools.

Key Client Industries: Technology (Software/Cloud), Insurance (P&C, Health), Health Care, Professional Services, Automotive

Staff Software Engineer

Relativity (formerly kCura) - Chicago, IL

April 2017 to October 2017

Jim architected and implemented improved data and file storage platforms on Linux/Azure to support multiple petabytes of legal case data in kCura’s Relativity One Azure SaaS platform.

Director of Innovation

Capax Global (now part of Hitachi Solutions) - Chicago, IL

October 2010 to January 2017

Jim started with Capax Global as a Senior Manager/Engineer leading creation of custom software solutions for customers. Over six years, he grew into an engagement leader, associate partner and ultimately the Director of Innovation. As Director, he created the strategy for Capax’s custom application development consulting practice, led engagements, and engaged in sales pursuits and go-to-market activities. Regardless of what title he held, Jim worked with his clients to define their requirements, create the solution architecture, and then be the hands-on leader for a team of software engineers building their solutions. Solutions were built primarily on the Microsoft.Net stack and Azure.

Principal Product Engineer

MedeAnalytics - Emeryville, CA

October 2009 to October 2010

Jim developed and mentored other developers in growing a hosted/SaaS Patient Access workflow web application. The system was built with .NET, JavaScript, IIS, and SQL Server.

Application Development Manager

PriceWaterhouseCoopers

October 2000 to October 2009

Jim started at PwC as a Senior Associate Software engineer and progressed to Manager. At PwC, he worked on eight software development projects of significant size in addition to smaller projects.

Jim’s role on these projects often extended through all application life cycle phases (requirements through maintenance). Projects included desktop and web applications built on a mix of .NET, JavaScript, Java, SQL Server, and Oracle. I was also responsible for team leadership using a variety of SDLC methodologies, both traditional and Agile.

The projects included, PwC’s global audit management system, used by more than half of PwC’s users for their daily work. My role on this project of ≈ 50 developers was to act as hands-on Scrum Master for a sub team of 8, act as part of the project’s architecture board, execute code security scans, and manage the performance optimization efforts.

Lead Systems Developer

Irwin Siegel Agency

December 1997 to October 2000

Jim started his software development journey as an IT support technician and became the Lead Systems Developer at ISA, responsible for developing and maintaining the new agency management using technologies such as SQL Server and Visual Basic.

Education

• Master of Science in Computer Science: Pace University, September 2003
• Bachelor of Science in Biology: Binghamton University, May 1993

Skills

General

• Practice Leadership
• Team Leadership
• Project Planning
• Digital Transformation
• SDLC
• Scrum/Agile
• Systems Design
• Requirements Gathering/Analysis
• Object Oriented Analysis, Design
• Object Oriented Programming
• Web Development
• Desktop Development
• Backend Engineering
• Frontend Engineering
• Application Security
• DevOps
• Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment
• Infrastructure as Code
• Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Automated Testing (e.g., Unit Testing)
• UML
• Design Patterns
• Regulatory Compliance
• HIPAA, ISO 27001

Architecture Patterns

• Cloud Architecture - PaaS and IaaS
• Microservices Architecture
• Service Oriented Architecture
• Client/Server Architecture
• N-tier Architecture
• Single Page Application Architecture
• REST Architecture
• Multi-Tenant SaaS Architecture
• Asynchronous Architecture
• Enterprise Integration Patterns

Key Cloud Technologies

• Azure Active Directory
• Azure App Services/Web Sites
• Azure Functions
• Azure SQL Database
• Azure Service Bus
• Azure API Management
• Azure Cosmos DB
• Azure Storage
• Azure Virtual Machines
• Azure Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS)
• Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS)
• Power BI

Development Technologies

• C#/Visual Studio - 19+ years
• .NET - 20+ years
• Microsoft Azure - 10+ Years
• ASP, ASP.NET - 20+ years
• HTML, CSS - 20+ years
• XML - 20+ years
• JavaScript - 20+ years
• ASP.NET MVC - 13+ years
• Angular/AngularJS - 6+year
• Web Services -20+ years
• WCF - 13+ years
• WebAPI - 10+ years
• MSTest, NUnit, Moq - 14+ years
• PowerShell - 8+ years
• SQL Server - 24+ Years
• T-SQL - 24+ years
• Stored Procedures - 24+ years
• ADO, ADO.NET - 24+years
• WinForms - 6+ years
• Git - 12+ years
• TFS - 15+ Years
• Azure DevOps/VSTS/VSO - 6+ years
• GitHub - 3+ years