About Eric

Starting in St. Louis, I dropped out of my Chemistry major to work on developing websites. A librarian at UMSL turned me on to Perl and UNIX. This was 1994 when everyone wanted a website, but didn't really know why, they just knew they had to have one.  

This led to years of consulting/contract programming work and the realization that I really didn't want to be a web designer. One client's quote that ended it all, "Can we have that background be hunter green?"

I moved into more programming, Visual Basic and Java. I learned early on how to make the best of tools.  I didn't know VB so I taught myself. The client need a Mac version of the PC software I wrote in VB, so I didn't learn Java then, I found a tool that converted VB code into a Java app and then I adapted that app to run on the Mac.  

Then everything changed when I got a full time job, with an affiliate marketing startup.  I build a team and we built their custom CRM, Email Marketing, Website platform for 25 ecom websites, credit cart fraud prevention, and a globally redundant system for keeping a 99.999 (only 3 nines) uptime on our affiliate platform and website. This was pre cloud days when we had to manage this across multiple data centers, Vancouver, Toronto, Berlin, Singapore and even the Bahamas.  I ended up being called CTO.

The first analytics pixel I put on a website, was one I designed.  Processing log files with Urchin on 25 sites was a pretty bad plan vs a real time data stream. This later led to my working for another startup that was building ecom website optimization software.  I highly optimized their performance and built an addition that could use near real time weather forecasts to control what content was presented to any given website visitor depending on their location.

That led to my working for ELC Online. They are the department of Estee Lauder that manage their online platform across all of Estee Lauder's brands.  There I built a custom tag management system and worked with IBM Coremetrics at a very large scale.  Later I was the technical lead on ELC's move to Adobe Analytics and several other major global migrations, the last one being their move to the Google 360 platform.  Outside of Marketing Technology I helped them start a major move towards building their website platform on Drupal and lead the team that build the first version of that for Smashbox.  

UPDATES:

I wrote the above about 3 years ago. I recently made a focused resume and with the help of Claude managed to be brief, for me. I am still leaving out a number of fairly major projects for our client Botanic Tonics, will get that out soon. That was a year of our lives :) It is important to note that none of these projects were done solo by me. OSB has grown and adjusted to fit many different kinds of projects.

Tealium Shopify App (2024)

Developed Tealium's first Shopify app to meet enterprise-grade analytics requirements while adhering to Shopify's app development framework and more recent "web pixel" changes. The solution included server-side tracking via AWS API Gateway to support multiple enterprise customers.

• Worked with Tealium's Sr. Product Manager for Data Privacy Products in designing a CMP (Consent Management Platform) integration with Tealium iQ that aligned with Shopify's privacy settings
• Architected solution balancing Shopify's app requirements with enterprise tracking needs

iDTech DBT/GA4 Implementation (2023-2024)

Created a comprehensive data engineering solution for iDTech using modern cloud analytics tools to replace capabilities lost in the transition from Universal Analytics to GA4. The implementation leveraged DBT Cloud, BigQuery, and the Velir/dbt-ga4 open-source project to deliver sophisticated marketing analytics.

• Implemented GA4 schema flattening and ETL processes using DBT Cloud and the Velir/dbt-ga4 open-source project, creating the foundation for a comprehensive marketing performance reporting system
• Integrated spend and performance data using Fivetran to synchronize daily into BigQuery
• Later managed a full backup of Universal Analytics data into BigQuery and integrated this historical data with the larger system
• Collaborated with my wife, Qi Jiang, who developed iDTech's reporting system that replaced historical Universal Analytics reporting capabilities that weren't possible to replicate in GA4

Tealium Magento Plugin (2023)

Led complete revamp of Tealium's Magento integration to align with current platform architecture, modernizing the code base while ensuring compatibility with the latest Magento versions.

EQ C&C (2020-2023)

Established a data engineering and analytics service working with approximately 20 clients across diverse industries. The product was focused on addressing data signal limitations created by Apple's ITP changes through first-party data collection strategies and server-side tracking implementations.

• Partnered with various Marketing Agencies to implement first-party data collection strategies addressing Apple's ITP changes
• Developed more reliable attribution solution to counter the impact of third-party cookie restrictions
• Designed server-side tracking implementations to maintain marketing measurement capabilities

For J.Jill, implemented a high-performance, scalable data processing solution handling large data volumes with exceptional response times.

• Implemented large-scale data processing solution that processed one trillion rows in a partitioned BigQuery table
• Built auto-scaling infrastructure on AWS that handled traffic from 150,000 requests per hour on average to peaks of 400,000 requests per hour while maintaining a median 25ms response time
• Designed dynamic EC2 load balancing system that automatically scaled from 2-10 nodes based on demand
• Developed dashboard reporting for real time 1st party conversion data which also reflected on Facebook ads API sourced data

Facebook Marketing Technology Partner (2021-2022)

Selected as one of 250 global technology partners to support Facebook's largest advertisers, providing technical consulting to approximately 30 clients with focus on Shopify implementations and developing integration strategies between Facebook's marketing tools and client platforms. This included all aspects of web site tracking, CAPI, Lead Ad Chat Bots.

Michael Kors Analytics Implementation (2018-2022)

Managed analytics strategy and implementation for Michael Kors over a four-year engagement, overseeing both technical implementation and team leadership aspects of this major retail brand's analytics transformation.

• Hired and supervised a full-time Open Source Brokers employee dedicated to the Michael Kors account
• Implemented Adobe Launch and Adobe Analytics solutions in collaboration with internal teams
• Integrated analytics validation directly into Michael Kors' existing Selenium test suite, leveraging their substantial website test coverage to simultaneously validate data collection and tagging
• Participated in weekly brainstorming sessions with key stakeholders to evolve analytics capabilities

QFD Analytics (2018-2019)

• Developed Adobe Analytics data quality monitoring RUM solution
• One of the first Edge CDN data collection applications
• Designed high-performance data ingestion system for enterprise-scale implementation
• Created test environment capable of sustaining 40,000 POST requests per second
• Implemented with Sephora as initial enterprise client

Estee Lauder Companies (ELC) Analytics Transformation (2008-2018)

Architected Estee Lauder's global analytics platform transformation, supplementing Adobe Analytics to Google Analytics Premium across 300+ e-commerce sites spanning multiple brands and locales. This multi-year initiative established standardized approaches to analytics implementation and data collection. The intention over time was to eventually reduce costs regarding Adobe Analytics which ran into the tens of millions.

• Evaluated and selected the Google Analytics partner that would design Estee Lauder's entire global GA 360 solution (Now named WPromote)
• Did a POC comparison between Tealium and Segment.io (Segment later introduced me to the Facebook Marketing partner program)
• Recommended Tealium to ELC and helped design a global/multi-brand implementation approach for Tealium iQ with consideration for future Tealium Audience Stream integration
• Created standardized templates and comprehensive documentation for Cognizant teams to execute Tealium and GA360 rollouts across 300+ global e-commerce sites
• Helped establish cross-brand analytics standards that maintained global consistency while accommodating brand-specific requirements
• Assisted in building a Drupal team as starting point for a global project (Smashbox.com continued using this original system)
• Participated in Estee Lauder Online's global planning summit (2012)
• Served as technical liaison between frontend/backend developers and Perl/PHP developers