Platform Solutions Architect · 20+ yrs

The platform is the easy part. I architect the layer underneath — data, identity, and the decisions that run on them.

Twenty years across CRM, CDP, marketing automation, and the data platforms that feed them. I read the substrate under the feature layer, find where it's actually broken, and make the call that holds up under scale and rollback — not the one that demos well.

Fig. 01 — the stack § substrate

Campaigns & Content

Platform Features

Orchestration

Identity & Data Model

Decisions & Governance

the layer I work

▸ How I read a stack

A portfolio is judgment, not a gallery. Here's the judgment.

01 — data first

Start at the data model and the identity graph, not the dashboard. The dashboard is downstream of every real problem.

02 — name the failure mode

Before choosing a feature, name how the current thing fails — brittle orchestration, email-keyed identity, deletes that suppress instead of transition.

03 — fit over hype

The right platform fits the substrate, not the loudest demo. Choosing the tool — and knowing when to decline one — is the work.

04 — build for rollback

Recommend what survives scale, staging, and a bad day. If there's no safe way to test or reverse it, it isn't a system yet.

▸ Selected work · sheet index

Exhibits

Sheet A-01

Anthropic Claude
MCP · agent design
Bloomreach

Sawyer — an AI stack-diagnostic agent

Problem

Platform audits happen after scoping, when the misconfigurations are already baked into the plan.

Read

The reasoning that catches a broken stack lives in people's heads and gets displaced onto humans one relay at a time. That reasoning can be modeled.

Call

Build a reasoning agent that reads a stack's configuration integrity before scoping begins — platform-agnostic, evidence-first.

Outcome

Named a standout at a field of ~250 agents from 35 agencies. Lives at codedrovers.com.

Sheet A-02

Unica → Acoustic
Amazon Pinpoint / AWS
deliverability · identity

Re-platforming an enterprise messaging engine

Problem

A Fortune-100 telecom on aging on-prem messaging (Unica/Acoustic), carrying deliverability and identity debt through every migration attempt.

Read

The blocker wasn't the send engine — it was identity resolution and deliverability posture underneath it. Move those first or the new platform inherits the same debt.

Call

Re-platform onto Amazon Pinpoint / AWS with identity and deliverability re-architected as the foundation, not a follow-on.

Outcome

A messaging platform that scaled without carrying the old failure modes forward.

Sheet A-03

Snowflake · SQL
MessageGears
warehouse-native

Warehouse-native decisioning at scale

Problem

A Fortune-500 quick-service brand needed decisioning that could operate against the real system of record — at a scale most ESPs quietly can't hold.

Read

Copying the data into the messaging tool recreates the staleness problem. Evaluate the logic against the warehouse, where the truth already lives.

Call

A SQL-to-MessageGears blueprint — warehouse-native decisioning evaluated directly against Snowflake, weighed honestly against a more expensive alternative.

Outcome

Decisioning that reads the source of record instead of a lagging copy of it.

Sheet A-04 · HELD

enterprise · internal

Decision-engine architecture review

One exhibit is held. An internal enterprise engagement — an architecture and identity-semantics review of a decision engine at scale — is under review and stays off a public page until it clears. The short version travels well in conversation, de-identified. Available on request.

▸ Range

Marketing is one domain in the range — not the range.

The through-line is data and platform architecture. CRM outscopes marketing; the substrate outlasts the feature set.

Platforms

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Power Platform Adobe Workfront MessageGears Bloomreach Segment mParticle Amperity Braze Klaviyo Zeta MoEngage Amazon Pinpoint Acoustic Unica Microsoft Copilot Anthropic Claude

Specialties

Identity resolution Deliverability Data governance Journey orchestration Warehouse-native architecture Migration & re-platforming API integration

37+ platform certifications · Dynamics 365 (all modules), MB-910 · Claude Certified Architect — Foundations (in progress).

▸ The newest platform in the range

I build on AI. I don't just use it.

AI is the newest platform I architect on, and I treat it the way I treat any platform: build on it, evaluate it honestly, know when to decline it. Sawyer is a reasoning agent I built, not a chatbot I prompted.

Deep on Microsoft Copilot and Claude. Built agents on OpenAI and Glean too — and formed a preference by building, not by reading the brochure. Tool choice is the expertise.

▸ Title block

Let's look at your substrate.

Architect of record

Kelly Orkin Brady
Platform Solutions Architect · Acworth, GA

Contact

kelly.orkin@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/kellyq