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Resume

by Mike Thompson, 12/25/2025

This was the state of my resume shortly before my retirement. At the end, my resume was targeted toward finding a position as a data analyst, which I did in 2018 when I started with AmTrust at Microsoft in Redmond. To the Experience section I have added my very last paying job, which was running the Boathouse at Cama Beach State Park for the Center for Wooden Boats during the summer of 2021.

It does not include the early but formative work experiences of my youth, such as picking fruit in the orchards of the Yakima Valley, baling hops and doing farm work at the Desserault Ranch in Moxee, teaching tennis in Yakima and Sunnyside, or pulling veneer in a plywood mill during my last year of college in Eugene, Oregon. Neither does it include my first two software jobs, at Western Data where I met and worked with the founders of WRQ, and at Great Northern Annuity in downtown Seattle. Nor does it include the volunteer work that I did after retirement at the PAWS Wildlife Center, the Sharing Wheels Community Bike Shop in Everett, or for the Washington Water Trails Association.

RESUME

Mike Thompson
Email: mike929t@gmail.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike929t
Phone: (425)742-6319

Skilled, experienced software professional with a passion for data analysis and a fifteen-year track record of navigating large, complex computing infrastructures to extract insight. A problem solver able to quickly master information and technologies and produce results. Strong background in information systems and software development, with experience successfully leading complex projects while working with a wide variety of stakeholders.

Extraordinary drive to learn new skills and explore new fields, especially computer algorithms, languages, data structures, and tools. Wrote a decision tree machine learner in Python as my capstone project for the UW Data Science certificate program. US National Champion in the Masters division for sprint canoe racing. Long-time volunteer at the Center for Wooden Boats.

EXPERIENCE

The Center for Wooden Boats, Seattle, WA, 5/2021-9/2021
Cama Beach Manager

Manage the Boathouse at Cama Beach Historical State Park on Camano Island. Run the livery (boat rental) operation for a small fleet of wooden boats including powerboats, rowboats, kayaks, and canoes. Manage two summer livery assistants, volunteers, coordination with Washington State Parks personnel, cash, boat repair and maintenance, and reporting and analysis of the boat rental data. Contribute as a volunteer off-season, supervising the Toy Boats activity for children and doing boat and equipment repair.

AmTrust Financial at Microsoft, Redmond, WA, 8/2018-3/2021
Data Analyst

Serve as the subject matter expert on the Microsoft Account Management team for policy, claims, and earnings data and its processing, and as liaison to the IT team in Dallas. Perform ad hoc data analysis in response to questions from Legal, Actuarial, Accounting, Finance, and Tax.

Develop queries and charts to track flows from our data sources through the data warehouse, where financial reporting and data analysis are done. These detect data flow interruptions and data quality problems that interfere with the processing of policies and claims.

Improve the accuracy of, and drastically simplify, the financial reporting. Replaced over five thousand lines of old, hard-to-maintain code with three hundred lines of general-purpose SQL, driven by a one hundred fifty-row, effective-dated table of business partners over time in countries around the world.

Wrote an automated scanner that detects errors and computes premium taxes in the rates table that's used to rate insurance policies. It improved the accuracy of the rates as well as increasing the speed at which we could implement new rates, supporting Microsoft's expansion of their Surface product line and their entry into new international markets.

Wrote a sales forecasting tool in Excel using exponential smoothing.

The Boeing Company, Renton & Everett, WA, 5/2006 - 4/2017
Data Analyst

Maintained the financial planning and cost management classification system (AKA "the Rule Tool") for Boeing Commercial Airplanes' $40 Billion dollar per year, multi-million transaction cost data stream for Puget Sound and Charleston, SC. Dramatically improved business rule change accuracy. Wrote a simulator in Perl to enable a major re-write of the business rules for cost classification for the 787 Program. Proved that the business rules could be converted to the company’s new transaction format with a decision tree machine learner that I wrote in Python as my capstone project for the University of Washington’s Data Science certificate program.

Wrote SQL using a variety of query and reporting tools for a number of different DBMS’s: Teradata, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Cognos, and Microsoft Access.

Authored and taught training classes on the data warehouse.

Served as a data mining, analysis, and problem-solving resource for people in Accounting, Financial Planning, and Cost Management.

Completed the Kimball Group’s Data Warehouse Lifecycle class and developed data flow diagrams and ER diagrams to model the accounting/finance systems and data warehouse.
Cost Accountant

Cost Accounting focal for the Everett Delivery Center and for warranty expense for all the Puget Sound airplane programs. Made accounting journal entries, did troubleshooting of suspended transactions, and supported end-users in manufacturing and engineering and their associated finance and cost management communities.

Performed batch loads into upstream systems in support of process changes, resolving merge conflicts and confirming correct ETL results in the data warehouse.

Participated in the Finance Transformation project to convert data and processes from a mainframe-based project costing system to a PeopleSoft/Oracle system, and to transition reporting to a Teradata enterprise data warehouse.

Converted queries and reports to new platforms and new data format.

Implemented a proof-of-concept Cognos query/report server on top of the Boeing Commercial Airplanes finance data warehouse and did performance testing.

Saint Thomas More School, Lynnwood, WA, 8/2001 - 6/2004.
6th Grade Teacher

Taught math, science, social studies and literature.

Developed the school's first classroom web site.

Earned high school math teaching certification.

WRQ, Seattle, WA, 4/1986 - 1/2001
Software Developer, Development Group Manager

Beginning as the 20th employee of WRQ, a provider of communications software, I helped grow the company to employ over 700 people worldwide with 140 million dollars in annual revenue.

From 1986 until 1994 I served the company as a software developer, writing, debugging, testing, documenting, and maintaining application-level and interrupt-level communications software. Provided technical support and education to external and internal customers. Our Reflection Series software provided connectivity to IBM mainframe, AS /400, HP, DEC, and Unix computers/operating systems.

From 1994 until 2001 I served the company as a development group manager, ultimately leading the flagship Reflection for IBM product group. Responsibilities included product planning, sales support for key accounts, and project management, as well as hiring, evaluation, and compensation for a team of software developers.

While part of WRQ's management team, the company was recognized as a great place to work (#16 on Fortune Magazine's list of 100 Best Companies to Work for in America in 1999) and was a generous contributor to the community, including support for The Nature Conservancy and Childhaven.

EDUCATION

University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
Bachelor of Science, Economics.

University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Data Science certificate.

Relational and NoSQL data stores, data cleansing and normalization, statistical analysis, modeling, and machine learning with R and Weka. Wrote a decision tree machine learner in Python as my Capstone project.

City University, Seattle, WA
Accounting certificate

North Seattle Community College, Seattle, WA
Software Development certificate

OTHER CERTIFICATIONS

Querying Data with Transact-SQL (SQL Server, Azure SQL Database) [Microsoft, 2018]
The Complete SQL Bootcamp (PostgreSQL, Amazon Redshift) [Udemy, 2017]
Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Power BI [Microsoft, 2018]
Data Visualization with Advanced Excel [Coursera, 2017]
R Programming, [Coursera, 2018]