Jon Culp

Profile

Technology leader with nearly 20 years of experience spanning data platforms, enterprise architecture, analytics, ERP transformation, and AI, progressing from hands-on DBA and BI engineering to enterprise technology leadership. Now Senior Director of Data, AI, & Automation at Steven Douglas Corp., leading technology strategy across IT, enterprise applications, data, AI, and automation. Previously the enterprise technical authority for data and analytical AI at Park Place Technologies, advising the CEO, CIO, CFO, and senior leadership on target architecture, platform investment, and responsible AI adoption. Pairs strategy and team leadership with hands-on delivery across Azure, SQL Server, D365, Power BI, Python, .NET/C#, and LLM-based systems.

Selected impact

Experience

1. Steven Douglas Corp.

   October 2026 – Present

   Senior Director of Data, AI, & Automation

   • Lead technology strategy across IT, enterprise applications, data, AI, and automation for an industrial automation and custom manufacturing company.
   • Applying AI to sales and engineering design processes.
   • Advancing robotic bin picking and machine vision.
   • Modernizing enterprise systems.
   • Building an AI knowledge platform that makes SDC’s engineering expertise more accessible.

2. Park Place Technologies

   Mayfield Heights, OH · August 2024 – October 2026

   Three stints at Park Place over nearly nine years, spanning data engineering leadership, a global D365 supply chain transformation, and enterprise data architecture and AI. Returned in 2024 after three years leading a data and analytics consulting firm.

   Principal Data and AI Architect

   May 2026 – October 2026

   • Served as the enterprise technical authority for data and analytical AI, advising the CEO, CIO, CFO, VPs, and directors on target architecture, platform investment, delivery sequencing, and responsible AI adoption.
   • Led four architects directly and approximately 10 data engineers through a matrixed model, partnering with 17 people across BI, data governance, business analysis, and master data management on a 4 TB warehouse with 20,000+ lineage relationships.
   • Stood up a new AI team, defining roles and hiring for AI data engineering, analysis, and QA.
   • Architected data foundations for the enterprise AI portfolio across D365 F&O, D365 CE, ServicePath CPQ, and ServiceNow, including customer sentiment ML, agent telemetry and self-healing feedback loops, and LLM cost routing.
   • Built Warehouse Chat, an AI assistant using Anthropic Claude with tool calling over the lineage graph, live schemas, and Query Store data, cutting research from hours to seconds with read-only, audited queries.
   • Designed Warehouse Chat’s hybrid retrieval layer (Azure AI Foundry and Cohere embeddings, SQL Server vectors, HyDE, rank fusion, reranking, graph embeddings) and added Prophet forecasting baselines so it can tell normal batch drift from real performance anomalies.
   • Established AI engineering and governance controls: grounded-answer evaluation, hallucination flagging, read-only tool access, auditability, token-cost and latency tracking, and AI coding assistant standards across Dev, QA, and Prod.
   • Redesigned pricing and quoting analytics using Kimball dimensional modeling, unifying CRM and ServicePath data at opportunity, quote, quote-line, contract, and renewal grain, with a phased BRD and test-case acceptance framework replacing the legacy Synapse model.
   • Led the contract data model rework behind annual recurring revenue (ARR) during the CRM-to-ServicePath migration, re-checking about 70,000 contract generations, and built Finance’s ARR reconciliation, raising the match rate from 40% to 96%.
   • Built a .NET data engineering toolkit (pipeline orchestrator, T-SQL lineage and ERD viewers, impact analysis) and strengthened governance with server-wide change auditing, a locked-down engineer role, and cleanup of 40+ misfiled objects.

   Director, Application Development (Supply Chain)

   August 2024 – May 2026

   • As Supply Chain Tower Director, led an approximately 30-person cross-functional delivery organization spanning engineering, QA, architecture, data, business analysis, and implementation-partner resources to replace Astea inventory and warehouse management with D365 F&O SCM across APAC, EMEA, North America, and LATAM for an enterprise operating 40+ legal entities.
   • Restructured the implementation-partner model and built internal D365 engineering capability, transitioning critical platform knowledge and ownership in-house while reducing dependency on external partners.
   • Directed architecture and integration across D365 SCM, ServiceNow, Choice Logistics’ 200+ inventory locations, product information management, carrier and shipment platforms, and enterprise data services, using REST APIs, Azure eventing, and SQL-based data mapping.
   • Designed and delivered the warehouse staging architecture for the CRM-to-ServicePath CPQ migration, partitioning high-volume loads to improve processing reliability, recoverability, and cutover control.
   • Established automation patterns for warehouse and order workflows (reservation, picking, shipment, packing slip, intercompany processing) to reduce manual touchpoints, errors, and exceptions.
   • Directed technical readiness, cutover, stabilization, and hypercare for regional go-lives, including an APAC cutover spanning nine legal entities; introduced a “Day in the Life” simulation framework to identify cross-system defects before production.
   • Designed pipelines, canonical events, and Power BI reporting for real-time inventory and fulfillment visibility, with KPI telemetry on cycle time, errors, inventory accuracy, and manual touches.
   • Defined CI/CD, version control, environment governance, and release standards, and served as technical authority over architecture, APIs, data models, and vendor deliverables.

3. DecisionTrek, LLC

   Managing Partner

   April 2021 – August 2024

   • Grew a data and analytics consultancy from 2 partners to a 10-consultant bench over 3 years, placing consultants directly with clients, and owned business strategy, financial planning, contracts, vendors, and partnerships.
   • Won and grew client accounts across restaurant, technology, medical education, insurance, and sports betting.
   • Senior Data Architect for Panera Bread (2021–2024): trained BI developers in Power BI and dimensional modeling during the move from OBIEE and Tableau, and built BigQuery and SSAS tabular models with Power BI CI/CD, row-level security, and incremental refresh.
   • TopCoder (2022–2023): delivered a data warehouse assessment, roadmap, and Power BI on Redshift proof of concept, then led execution, placing and managing developers, setting up data stewardship and two-week sprints, and helping the client hire its own team.
   • OnlineMedEd (2021–2022): built a cohort-based historical analysis and forecasting tool with Finance, plus dimensional models, Airflow and Python ELT, and Sisense dashboards.
   • Short engagements: SQL performance tuning for a sports betting platform and call-center data automation for an insurer.

4. Park Place Technologies

   Mayfield Heights, OH · March 2019 – April 2021

   Director, Data Engineering (promoted)

   March 2020 – April 2021

   • Expanded the Data Engineering team from five to eight and established intake, prioritization, capacity planning, and delivery governance across data warehouse, integration, and Power BI work.
   • Supported data integration for an acquisition that doubled the company’s size, aligning platforms, reporting, and development capacity with the combined organization.
   • Directed functional and strategic planning, including budgeting, requirements, project planning, and capitalized development expense classification.

   Business Intelligence Data Warehouse Architect

   March 2019 – March 2020

   • Partnered with Microsoft on the implementation path, design, and budget to move BI infrastructure to Azure (Synapse, SQL Managed Instance, Data Factory, Data Lake, Databricks).
   • Integrated D365 F&O and D365 CE into the data warehouse as they replaced legacy applications; implemented Power BI Premium and converted SSAS multidimensional models to tabular.

5. Race Winning Brands

   Mentor, OH

   Business Intelligence Analyst (Architect)

   July 2018 – March 2019

   • Owned the full BI architecture as lead developer, from integrations and warehouse design to dashboards, including Power BI row-level security.
   • Planned the BI redesign and Azure migration, unifying disparate sources with SSAS tabular and a common data model, and integrated acquired companies into the warehouse.

6. Park Place Technologies

   Mayfield Heights, OH

   Business Intelligence Developer II

   September 2017 – July 2018

   • Designed ELT processes (SSIS, stored procedures) and fact and dimension structures for self-service SSAS, using BIML to automate integration design.
   • Installed Power BI Report Server, streamed real-time data into Power BI, and ran weekly SQL Server 2017 training for multiple departments.

7. Dealer Tire LLC

   Cleveland, OH

   Database Administrator

   December 2015 – September 2017

   • Managed hundreds of SQL Server instances and thousands of databases, including failover clusters, backup and recovery, and migrations from 2005 through 2016.
   • Implemented partitioning and compression for a 500 GB BI database with automated archiving, and consolidated SSIS onto a dedicated server.
   • Automated DBA tasks and code promotions, reducing third-shift support and promotion errors, and identified a linked-server path to sysadmin rights.

8. Analytics Ontime, Inc.

   Cleveland, OH

   Managing Partner (concurrent consulting venture)

   September 2014 – December 2018

   • Delivered automated reporting and analytics as a service on Azure and SQL Server 2016, including SSIS ETL with near real-time error recovery, SSRS, and embedded Power BI.
   • Converted over 50,000 lines of code (about 50 procedures, functions, and views) from an on-premises application to a new web-based architecture.

9. Reverse Mortgage Solutions, Inc.

   Tempe, AZ

   Modeling & Analytics Manager

   October 2013 – December 2015

   • Built a team of 7 report developers and analysts supporting all areas of the company with reporting, financial and operational analysis, and forecasting.
   • Oversaw a data warehouse spanning 8+ internal and external sources and deployed an automated SSRS reporting environment.
   • Built an enterprise request process used for nearly all IT applications and a capacity model that auto-balanced work and set completion dates.

10. Green Tree Servicing

    Painesville, OH

    Business Analyst (Portfolio Management)

    2007 – September 2013

    • Analyzed and scored books of business for purchase and built predictive revenue forecasting models.

Technologies

AzureAzure AI FoundrySQL ServerSynapseData FactoryDatabricksPower BISSASSSISSSRSD365 F&OD365 CEServiceNowServicePathPythonC#/.NETREST APIsAnthropic ClaudeCohereVector searchPostgreSQLBigQueryAirflowSisense

Certifications

• Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals