Travis Smith

Experience
Chief Architect, VP of Data & AI, Distinguished Engineer
The Weather CompanyJan 2024 - Present
  • Led the visionary creation and execution of both the Weather Engine, our AI-driven insights platform, and Mercury Platform, our generative AI platform, laying the groundwork for multiple revenue-generating SaaS offerings and product features driving multi-million dollars in revenue growth and improving internal engineering productivity by 30%.
  • Provided direct oversight of technology strategy and architecture for a $458M annual revenue business, achieving consistent 8% CAGR since 2019 and serving a global user base exceeding 450 million consumers and scaling our platform to serve 100+ billion requests per day.
  • Orchestrated transformative growth in Data & AI, scaling to 100+ professionals globally while also driving the team to research, develop, and productionize models 50% faster reducing model productionization from several WEEKS to a two DAYS launching 150+ models. Orchestrated holistic data utilization strategies, driving data-informed decision-making across the organization and catalyzing substantial revenue and profitability gains.
  • Pioneered the conceptualization and implementation of an offshore Development Center, resulting in a 40% year-over-year reduction in contractor expenditures, significantly optimizing operational costs.
  • Established and chair the company's first Patent/Invention strategy and AI Ethics Board, positioning the organization at the forefront of responsible AI development. As a pivotal member of the Senior Leadership Team, spearheaded initiatives that reduced technology-related risks and fortified the company's IP portfolio with the establishment of a patent board.
Chief Architect, Director of Data & AI, Distinguished Engineer
The Weather Company, an IBM BusinessApr 2023 - Jan 2024
  • Managed the the Consumer Data and AI teams to enable holistic data understanding and utilization creating a foundation for data-driven decision-making, feature and product development propelling TWC revenue and profitability.
  • Managed the enterprise architecture and consumer platform architecture teams, R&D team, and lead the Watson Advertising & Weather Architecture Guild to bring much needed maturity, cross-departmental collaboration and engineering discipline in the organization.
  • Responsible for the technical strategy, architecture, and delivery of a new TWC SaaS Platform that will be foundational to the development of additional SaaS platforms as well as our O&O properties.
  • Served as the TWC InnerSource champion partnering with Watson Core through component adoption, contribution and feedback, and open source collaboration while also representing TWC on the Watson Core & Watson Foundation Models Braintrust teams.
  • Served as the TWC representative on the Software Developer Profession Board, STSM appointment board, IBM CDO Board, IBM Cloud Architecture Guild, and two Invention Development Teams.
Chief Architect, Head of Data & AI, STSM
The Weather Company, an IBM BusinessMar 2022 - Mar 2023
  • Assumed the ownership and responsibility for the Consumer Data & AI team maintaining previous responsibilities as the Chief Architect.
  • Architected, designed, and deployed the CDP for The Weather Company.
  • Built a modern, highly governed and federated data fabric to deprecate and replace multiple legacy data lakes to drive revenue and data-driven decisions.
  • Led the improvement of our machine learning productionisation pipelines (decreasing time to production from 21 days to 5) to drive the infusion of AI into all of our products.
Chief Architect, STSM
The Weather Company, an IBM BusinessNov 2019 - Mar 2022
  • As an IBM Watson Executive Architect, I worked as a member of the IBM Cloud Architecture Guild responsible for guiding the development of IBM’s next generation Watson Cloud, Data and AI/Cognitive platforms with The Weather Company serving as a premiere case study on IBM Cloud.
  • As Chief Architect, I managed the enterprise architecture team, POC development team, and lead the Watson Advertising & Weather Architecture Guild to bring much needed maturity, cross-departmental collaboration and engineering discipline in the organization.
  • As a Chief Technologist, I evaluated various technologies and vendors developing proof-of-concepts and MVPs both collaboratively & individually.
  • As a Chief Developer, I was heavily involved in our Agile SDLC processes performing code reviews, kickoffs, retrospectives, and providing approvals as required ensuring security, privacy, and data governance.
  • I strategized, architected and sponsored the end-to-end privacy architecture capable of scaling to and serving any privacy regime onboarding new regimes quickly.
  • Architected the modernization of our applications and platforms into a cloud native, cloud agnostic, multi-cloud and multi-region architecture using Kubernetes, Cloud Functions, among other technologies including the web properties, mobile applications (50+ million MAUs), and APIs capable of serving over a trillion API requests/day during severe weather.
  • Led a cross-organization architecture and development effort of over 100 developers to deliver the COVID Data Platform in a matter of weeks demonstrating our time to market velocity using SAFe practices.
  • Developed, implemented, & currently manage a multi-CDN strategy for The Weather Company managing a $10M CDN budget across three different prominent CDNs.
Chief Architect, STSM
The Weather Company, an IBM BusinessNov 2019 - Mar 2022
  • Develop and/or maintain enterprise architecture artifacts including integration models, design documentation and system diagrams.
  • Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure the architecture is aligned with the business requirements, engaging in research and advocacy for new directions in software design, programming approaches and applications to provide new features and revenue sources.
  • Work closely with application architects and lead developers to align application architecture with Engineering Handbook including Reference Architectural Patterns, Rules and Standards. Help evolve Engineering Handbook to align with both product and development team’s needs.
  • Provide technical leadership to the application development and system administration teams, including guidance on open source solutions, industry best practices, and technical trends.
  • Build prototypes and working models of complex or new design elements.
  • Collaborate with development to define, document and communicate the architecture plan.
  • Mentor other architects and lead developers.
Senior Application Architect
The Weather Company, an IBM BusinessApr 2016 - Jun 2017
  • Provided architectural guidance to development teams. Work with development teams to derive solution architecture for specific product requirements or applications.
  • Developed and/or maintain application architecture artifacts including application models, design documentation and data flow diagrams.
  • Collaborated with stakeholders to ensure the architecture is aligned with the business requirements, engaging in research and advocacy for new directions in software design, programming approaches and applications to provide new features and revenue sources.
  • Worked closely with Enterprise Architecture to align application architecture with Engineering Handbook including Reference Architectural Patterns, Rules and Standards. Help evolve Engineering Handbook to align with both product and development team’s needs.
  • Provided technical leadership to the application development and system administration teams, including guidance on open source solutions, industry best practices, and technical trends.
  • Built prototypes and working models of complex or new design elements.
  • Collaborated with development to define, document and communicate the architecture plan.
  • Kept a critical eye on new design specifications and raise quality, performance or architectural concerns.
  • Managed risk identification and risk mitigation strategies associated with the architecture.
  • Mentored other developers with a constructive, results oriented approach.
  • Provideed architectural guidance to development teams. Work with development teams to derive solution architecture for specific product requirements or applications.
  • Developed and/or maintain application architecture artifacts including application models, design documentation and data flow diagrams.
  • Collaborated with stakeholders to ensure the architecture is aligned with the business requirements, engaging in research and advocacy for new directions in software design, programming approaches and applications to provide new features and revenue sources.
  • Worked closely with Enterprise Architecture to align application architecture with Engineering Handbook including Reference Architectural Patterns, Rules and Standards. Help evolve Engineering Handbook to align with both product and development team’s needs.
  • Provided technical leadership to the application development and system administration teams, including guidance on open source solutions, industry best practices, and technical trends.
  • Built prototypes and working models of complex or new design elements.
  • Collaborated with development to define, document and communicate the architecture plan.
  • Kept a critical eye on new design specifications and raise quality, performance or architectural concerns.
  • Managed risk identification and risk mitigation strategies associated with the architecture.
  • Mentored other developers with a constructive, results oriented approach.
Senior Software Engineer
The Weather CompanyNov 2015 - Apr 2016
  • Manage and automate the delivery of the "Local on the Eights" videos using nodejs, AutoDesk's scaleform, Adobe Flash & ActionScript3, and ffmpeg.
  • Using AngularJS extend, update, and develop solutions that implement designs, develop new features, and fix existing issues. Implemented an origin aggregation app using GOLang (for scaling and performance purposes). 
Education
Machine Learning, 2027
Georgia Institute of Technology2020-2027
Th.M. Theology, Higher Education
Dallas Theological Seminary2002-2006
B.S. Secondary Education, Theology
Columbia International University1999-2002

DISCLAIMER: My thoughts, words, and actions on this blog do not necessarily represent the views of any of the companies that I have worked for or am currently working in any way, shape, or form. Thus, the postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent my company's or my company's department's positions, strategies or opinions.