Summary
Thomas Paine is an independent contractor and database architect in Santa Barbara with 25+ years of software development experience and a decade of focused consulting practice. He specializes in pragmatic, risk-managed database modernizations and migrations—most notably moving systems from SQL Server and MariaDB to MySQL using AWS DMS—while minimizing business disruption. At Gold Medal Wine Club he led a full-stack rebuild that doubled revenue, quadrupled fulfillment efficiency, and slashed customer service load, demonstrating his ability to align technical change with measurable business outcomes. Thomas is obsessive about detail and performance tuning, preferring schema designs that reflect the business model rather than forcing workarounds. He combines hands-on coding history across web, geospatial, and high-traffic systems with practical cutover and fallback planning, making him a go-to local expert for hard database problems. Available for face-to-face engagements, he delivers durable, low-risk systems that keep working long after deployment.
10 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer