Hello, I’m a Technical Lead at Resource Data in Portland, Oregon. I got my start in GIS in 2010 and have spent the last 13 years at Resource Data growing from GIS programming into full stack development, and more recently into site reliability engineering and cloud infrastructure.

What I do

I work as a consultant, so most of what I build is for clients, from early architecture decisions through to running the thing in production. Day to day I build and maintain web applications end to end, own the cloud infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines they run on, and lead small teams delivering those projects. Lately a lot of that work has been modernizing older applications, moving them to the cloud, and hardening the automation and infrastructure around them.

Experience

Technical Lead, Resource Data (2013 to present)

I started as a GIS Programmer in 2013, moved into a Senior GIS Developer role in 2016, and have been a Technical Lead since 2019. A few of the projects I’ve led:

• Provide technical leadership and help build a dynamic org chart application (Orgo, “DOD’s Smartest Directory”) for a U.S. Air Force test group in the DoD space, using React on AWS
• Led the modernization of Washington State DNR’s Burn Permit tracking system, architecting and deploying an offline-capable Progressive Web App in React and Redux with RESTful JSON, running on AWS over a .NET Core backend and still support it to this day
• Co-led the FAA Weather Cameras program as Technical Lead and Site Reliability Engineer. The program delivers aviation weather camera imagery and flight-planning tools to pilots and forecasters. I ran the migration of the application and its databases off Google Cloud Platform and onto AWS, on PostgreSQL and Terraform

Earlier GIS roles (2010 to 2013)

Before Resource Data I built a public wildlife-sighting web map as a GIS Developer for the City of Glendale, and built a geometric network of LA County’s storm drain system for flow analysis as a GIS Specialist at the LA County Department of Public Works.

Full stack development

I’ve designed, developed and maintained web application stacks for over 13 years. These days I mostly work in:

• PostgreSQL / SQL Server on the data side
• Node.js and .NET (Core and Framework) on the back end
• React, Redux and TypeScript on the front end, with a lot of C# and SQL underneath

Over the years I’ve also shipped production work on ASP.NET MVC with Bootstrap, .NET Core MVC, Django with Foundation, and WPF desktop and tablet apps on .NET with SQL Server.

Cloud infrastructure and SRE

I design and manage cloud infrastructure on AWS and GCP with Terraform, and build the automation that keeps it running:

• Infrastructure as Code with Terraform
• CI/CD with GitHub Actions and ArgoCD
• Containers and orchestration with Docker and Kubernetes
• Automated container security scanning with Trivy, Anchore and Grype

On AWS I work across EC2, S3, VPC, RDS, EKS, IAM and CloudFront.

AI-assisted development

I use AI coding tools daily to accelerate both spec-driven and agentic development, with hands-on experience across GitHub Copilot, Claude Code and Gemini. What that looks like in practice:

• General, cross-tool skills for driving these agents well, plus project-specific setups tuned to a given codebase or client
• Advising teammates and clients on evaluating and selecting the right agentic harness and provider for the work in front of them
• Coaching teams on how to use these tools effectively once they’ve settled on one

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

GIS is where I started and it still runs through most of what I build. I hold a master’s in GIS and have years of experience building web and enterprise mapping applications. I work across:

• Esri ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online
• ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript and the ArcGIS REST API
• ArcGIS Server, ArcSDE and ArcPy
• Leaflet for lighter web mapping

Education

• M.A., Geographic Information Systems, California State University, Northridge (2013)
• B.A., Geography, California State University, Northridge (2010)

What people say

A former CSUN classmate and coworker described me as having “a very deep understanding of the GIS discipline.” You can find that and other recommendations on my LinkedIn.

Interests

Away from the keyboard I’m usually:

• Snowboarding
• Brewing beer
• Top roping and bouldering
• Playing with my kids

Contact

Got a project in mind, or just want to talk shop? Send me an email at chadmarchdev@gmail.com or find me on LinkedIn.