Amir Sehic
, MS, PMP, CSM, CSPO, CSD
Software Engineering Leader
Hixson, Greater Chattanooga, Tennessee, US
Summary
Amir is an experienced software engineering leader who delights in learning and aplying technologies, as well as building and leading high-performing teams. He has a strong background in software development, solution architecture design, process optimization, project management, and team leadership. Amir enjoys mentoring others to achieve their full potential, and is passionate about creating elegant, innovative solutions that drive business success, as well as the teams' pride, wonder and delight at our accomplishments and continuous learning.
Career Narative
My career progression has followed the evolution of my understanding of what truly drives software development success. Starting as a programmer and technical architect, I believed that technical architecture, elegant design and well written code including tests were paramount. And while they are important, experience taught me that software development process and methodology are also critical for project success. Just like there is no one best solution architecture applicable to every problem, there is not one best process or even a process framework applicable to every project. That led me to layer project management and process design expertise onto my technical foundation, so that I could lead teams to success. As I moved into project management and team leadership, I realized that the most crucial factor was actually people/HR. Capable and motivated people will find a way to be successful even without optimal technical architecture and process. That led me to improve my hiring, coaching, mentoring and leadership skills, and I am happiest when I lead teams not only to be more productive, but to be enthusiastic about learning and working together, and proud of the product we deliver. I lead by example, learn continuously, and maintain high level of technical expertise while also bringing deep expertise in process optimization, team dynamics and leadership. I am now exploring what the optimal use of AI is across all of these dimensions of software development, as that will probably be the most important factor driving project success.
With decades of experience selecting the best available technologies for specific problems, designing solutions, managing projects and leading teams, I have a deep understanding of what leads to software development success. I am equally comfortable discussing strategy, facilitating cross-functional communication, developing a project plan, designing technical architecture, writing code, or coaching and leading a development team. That now includes AI prompt engineering, for both spec-driven development, and AI (sub)agent development.
Work Experience
ACT
Lakewood, CO and remote since 2020
August 2017 - June 2025
Director, EIS Software Engineering Services
Managed several software engineering teams working on tools ACT uses to create and manage assessment content (questions and tests), as well as an AI/ML essay scoring engine.
Aided and guided ACT's adoption of cloud computing on AWS and serverless architecture
Designed serverless architecture of the essay scoring engine based on AWS API Gateway, Lambda and S3
Minimized the cloud computing costs while simultaneously maximizing the performance of the Automated Test Assembly (ATA) system by designing an architecture that launces a large EC2 instance for each ATA job (optimization performed by FICO Xpress solver) that can run from minutes to hours, and terminating the instance immediately after the job is complete
Eliminated some of the error-prone data copying and synchronization between different system databases by designing architecture of the ACT Common Assessment Content Repository (CCR) as a GraphQL API implemented with AWS AppSync, Lambda, S3 and RDS
Led the architecture design and implementation of the ACT's new Content Development Environment (CDE) that uses CCR and replaces some obsolete technologies (like Angular 1) with more modern ones (like React)
Hired and mentored software engineers
Facilitated software engineering Community of Practice to ensure that different teams all follow the same standards, and have an opportunity to share things they are excited about learning with their colleagues
Explored the most effective ways to boost my own and my teams' productivity by using AI coding assistants
August 2016 - August 2017
Software Architect
Designed software architecture solutions for assessment technology systems, implemented proofs of concept, and guided the development, testing and implementation of these systems in AWS cloud computing environment.
Designed Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT) Engine API using OpenAPI (Swagger) Specification. That API definition was used for both the IMS Global aQTI CAT standard, and the Echo-Adapt shadow test approach CAT product
Designed the Echo-Adapt data model for item pools, test configurations including constraints, actual and simulated test administrations, usage data for exposure control, audit data/simulation results, etc.
Analyzed the architecture of Content Development Environment (CDE) and Test Delivery Environment (TDE) applications, identified opportunities for improvement, and worked on evolving their architecture design
Designed and developed a POC of elastic Amazon SQS queue consumer implemented with Amazon Lambda functions
Designed almost completely serverless architecture (in AWS) for storing, analyzing, filtering, grouping and packaging assessment events data using IMS Global Caliper Analytics standard
Wrote (when it was needed in production on a very short notice) a configurable Caliper events parser in Python
Designed Assessment Results Repository system including its relational database schema
Evaluated several Identity as a Service (IDaaS) providers, and designed enterprise Identity and Authorization (IAM) architecture using Auth0 IDaaS provider. The design based on OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect protocols covered authentication and authorization of both users (using UIs) and client applications (using APIs) in multi-tenant environments. Implemented POC/example/reference architecture applications to supplement the design documentation
Perficient, Inc.
June 2001 - February 2016
Sr. Technical Architect
Delivered business-driven technology solutions to a variety of clients in diverse industries.
Established agile software development methodologies on new projects including defining roles, deliverables and responsibilities, documenting design and coding standards, setting up version control, issue tracking, change management, review, build, deployment and test processes.
Led teams performing business and systems analysis, specifications writing, solution design, development, testing, implementation and maintenance of complex mission critical systems.
Worked on small and large projects in a variety of industries, and consistently met the challenges, overcame the obstacles, and delivered high quality solutions.
Primary roles: Project Manager, Integration Architect, Cloud Computing Architect, Full Stack Developer, ScrumMaster
Clients:
April 2015 - February 2016
December 2013 - June 2014
March 2013 - November 2013
October 2012 - February 2013
November 2010 - September 2012
September 2010 - October 2010
Electric Reliability Council of Texas
October 2007 - June 2009
HSBC Technology and Services
September 2007 - October 2007
December 2005 - April 2006
November 2005 - December 2005
July 2005 - November 2005
August 2005 - September 2005
London Borough of Ealing Council
April 2005 - July 2005
Bonneville Power Administration
April 2002 - April 2005
October 2001 - April 2002
February 2000 - March 2001
Product Architect
Worked on a web application written in Sybase PowerDynamo, and redesigned its architecture to take advantage of Java and J2EE technologies including Java Server Pages and Enterprise Java Beans on Sybase Jaguar CTS application server.
Led a team of developers on their first J2EE project, and helped them learn a new programming language as well as a completely different software development paradigm.
Developed a document management system using Servlets and Java Server Pages, and a template email EJB component utilizing XML technology.
Evaluated and participated in selection of vendors for Java IDE, application servers, rules engine and other components of the overall architecture.
Interviewed employee and contractor candidates for technical and management position, and participated in the hiring process.
October 1998 - February 2000
Sr. Software Developer
Worked on WorldStreet Sales, a customer relationship management system for brokerage firms written in Java.
Integrated Technimetrics holdings data into WorldStreet Sales. Negotiated data formats and delivery with the vendor. Developed Java classes to extend the data model, and implemented loading and front-end functionality to allow users access to the subset of that data they were entitled to.
Designed and implemented Servlet based Contact Import Tool that allowed users to import their contacts data from a comma separated values file through a web browser.
Implemented management reporting feature of WorldStreet Sales. Evaluated commercially available reporting products, and selected Actuate e.Reporting suite as the most applicable. Designed architecture for integrating Actuate e.Reporting with WorldStreet Sales, and developed servlets and build scripts needed to implement that architecture. Learned and then taught others how to build Actuate reports, program in Actuate Basic, and administer Actuate report server.
February 1998 - October 1998
Consultant
Worked for DST Systems on the Securities Transfer System written in IBM Visual Age Smalltalk.
Collaborated with a business analyst and two other developers to design, implement and test the automatic issue capitalization feature. This was the first project ever at DST Systems to be delivered to Quality Assurance with no defects.
Implemented several reusable custom GUI components that requirements described, but were not available in Visual Age Smalltalk.
United States Fidelity and Guaranty
April 1996 - February 1998
Programmer Analyst
Worked on the Business Foundation System, a client-server policy writing system written in ParcPlace Digitalk Visual Smalltalk with The Object People TOPLink object-relational mapping persistence framework.
Defined requirements with the business partners, and then designed, implemented and coordinated testing of a feature that allowed users to compare two versions of a policy and highlight the changes.
Made a significant contribution to the success of the team that designed and implemented user profiles with different access permissions and other security features that made it possible to allow agents access to the system over the Internet for the first time.
Prepared training materials for "Object Oriented Bootcamp". Taught basic object oriented concepts and Smalltalk programming to colleagues with no prior object oriented programming experience, and organized team-building activities.
As a member of the frameworks team, provided leadership and support on different projects in the form of technical consulting, code reviews and application frameworks development.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
September 1994 - April 1996
Teaching Assistant
Taught object oriented analysis and design, and C++ programming in a UNIX environment.
Prepared and delivered lectures, administered and graded exams, and mentored students individually.
Certifications
Project Management Professional
July 30, 2013 - July 30, 2028
Project Management Institute
PMP Number: 1654970
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
November 01, 2023 - November 30, 2026
Amazon Web Services
Credential
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional
February 13, 2017 - February 13, 2023
Amazon Web Services
AWS-PSA-3744
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
February 13, 2015 - February 13, 2023
Amazon Web Services
AWS-ASA-5927
AWS TCO and Cloud Economics
April 24, 2015
Amazon Web Services
AWS Business Professional
December 01, 2014
Amazon Web Services
AWS Technical Professional
November 24, 2014
Amazon Web Services
TIBCO Certified Professional for TIBCO BusinessWorks
November 29, 2004
TIBCO Software Inc.
Business Process Management with BEA WebLogic
December 16, 2002
BEA Systems, Inc.
Sun Certified Architect for Java Technology
January 05, 2000
Sun Microsystems
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform
December 28, 1999
Sun Microsystems
Object Oriented Analysis and Design
July 01, 1997
ObjectSpace
Instructional Design for New Designers Workshop
December 11, 1996
Langevin Learning Services
Education
Master of Science in Computer Science
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science