Education

Masters of Science in Engineering:
Software Engineering
The University of Texas at El Paso

Bachelors in Computer Science
The University of Texas at El Paso

Work

IT Business Analyst

Multinational Company (2024-Present)

Applications Division Manager

City of El Paso (2022-2024)

• Negotiated and served as Project Manager for the Accela migration from On-Premise to Accela SaaS.
  Researched the feasibility and risk of moving from Peoplesoft On-Premise 9.1 to Peoplesoft SaaS 9.2. Negotiated the contract and served as project liaison.
• Supervised 10 Tier 3 Application Support Specialists and a Database Administrator.
• Planned, documented and communicated configuration changes for projects while assessing risk to ensure business continuity.
• Prepared financial regression analysis to CFO to request funds for application upgrades.
  Achieved 98% monthly average ticket resolution Monthly in 2023.
• Created policies and procedures for Forrester security audits.
• Assisted auditors identify and make corrections for segregation of duties procedures.
• Collaborated in cross functional teams.
• Ensured application vendors have disaster recovery plans, data backup, and archiving plans.
• Established proper data retention limits in accordance with Federal, State and local laws.
• Prioritized and fast tracked mission critical product procurement.
• Established governance and prioritization framework for key applications.
• Reviewed more than $1,000,000 USD of Software Purchase Requests for the city in 2023. All requests were reviewed for suitability, security, and longevity.
• Implemented a standardized interview process for Applications talent.
• Diagnosed engagement and retention problems within Applications and implemented a plan to recruit and retain talent.
• Analyzed and refactored PowerShell Scripts.
• Conducted Code reviews and assessed security risks.
• Coordinated problem resolution outside of regular work hours to restore systems and key services.

Technology Implementation Manager

The University of Texas at El Paso (2013 - 2022)

• Extracting data from PDF forms in Python to create a JSON data repository for reports.
• Consulting departments and programs on data collection and analysis.
• Creating visualizations for data and learning outcome presentations.
• Achieved an increase of 10X times more people reached for a total of 30,000 through social media analysis and decision making.
• Creating custom PHP/jQuery/MySQL/XML Joomla plugin for Integrated Medical Education (A-PRIME) Transformation in Medical Education (TIME) program admissions to track electronic applications and collect faculty and professional recommendations.
• Training faculty and staff on the use of Microsoft Office, web meeting software, backup tools, and multimedia software.
• Training and managing four students on HTML5, JavaScript Visualization libraries, jQuery, Bootstrap 3, CSS3, Client-Server Architecture, PHP, Adobe Photoshop, databases, source control, and web accessibility best practices.
• Achieved a 15% yearly website traffic increase.
• Analyzing Wordpress, Joomla, and work terminals for the discovery of security vulnerabilities.
• Sending timely notices of recently discovered security threats to the university Information Technology department and staff.
• Designing and automating Google Analytics reports for departments’ monthly impact dashboard.
• Monitoring and updating Apache Server.

Research Scholar (2008-2012)

The University of Texas at El Paso

• Creating UML diagrams from IDL software used to analyze images from the NASA Cassini Satellite.
• Coordinating a team of 9 developers to produce visualization software in C++ for a SAGE: Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment visualization computer cluster.
• Designing RESTful API webservices in Java and Tomcat for ontology deployment in Sesame and OWLIM Lite.
• Implementing a parallel seismic tomography algorithm developed by geologist John A. Hole using NVIDIA CUDA C improving the speed by more than double.
• Eliciting requirements, designed, implemented, and tested a Java application for execution of seismic tomography algorithms on a CentOS Linux server.

Publications

Romero, R., Olaya, J., Chacon, C., Licea, F., ‘STg: Cyberinfrastructure for Seismic Travel Time Tomography’, Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions, 2010.

Olaya, J., Chacon, C., Quinonez, S., Velasco, A., ’Accelerating Smoothing of Velocity Perturbations in Seismic Tomography’, Society for Advancement of Hispanics/Chicanos and Native Americans in Science National Conference, 2012.