ERICH DONAHUE
Decision Science Product & Data Platform Leader
Orlando, FL area | erichdonahue.com | github.com/edonahue | linkedin.com/in/erichdonahue


SUMMARY

Decision-science product and data-platform leader with 15+ years across two Fortune 500 companies — The Walt Disney Company and Capital One — spanning resort demand forecasting, digital product analytics, payments, lending, and regulated financial services. I modernize legacy analytical systems into maintainable Python, SQL, cloud, CI/CD, and BI workflows that improve data freshness, reliability, adoption, and decision speed. A former people manager and current hands-on technical lead, I am equally comfortable building backend pipelines, directing contractors, supporting internal users, and translating complex analytical systems for senior stakeholders.


EXPERIENCE

Senior Decision Science Product Consultant
The Walt Disney Company — Disney Parks & Resorts / Disney Experiences
Sep 2024 – Present
- Support and help maintain the data-product backbone for resort demand forecasting, dashboards, analytics, and internal reporting, serving 50+ internal users across three teams.
- Led a year-long modernization that retired all 58 legacy SAS jobs and the supporting SAS server footprint, replacing its compute, messaging, storage, and scheduling needs with modern cloud services.
- Built the replacement architecture on Python-based GitLab CI/CD pipelines integrated with Snowflake, Oracle, Tableau, Docker, and Linux; just-in-time pipeline triggering and automated Tableau deployment improved data freshness and got data to users sooner.
- Maintain and enhance 60+ Tableau dashboards spanning mixed analytical and reporting use cases.
- Provide technical enablement, triage, training, and troubleshooting for internal users of a web-based forecasting application and its surrounding data products.
- Use AI-assisted development tools — Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, and Microsoft Copilot — as human-reviewed acceleration for refactoring, documentation, test scaffolding, and delivery quality.

Analysis Manager
Capital One — McLean, VA
Jan 2019 – Sep 2024
- Managed a team of six analysts supporting a 300+ person digital product organization of product managers, with pods of engineers, designers, and project managers.
- Owned analytics delivery across feature launches, controls, monitoring, and executive and product reporting.
- Established governance procedures for departmental analytic controls, scripts, recurring reports, and production-facing data assets.
- Led standardization of API and clickstream data across GA4 (Google Analytics 4), Snowplow, Adobe Analytics, and Tealium.
- Directed data pipelines for controls and executive reporting, and operations for the batch migration of 6M+ customers to a new money-movement platform vendor.
- Built PySpark machine learning (ML) challenger models for rules-based systems and analyzed profitability, customer impact, and fee structures for digital features.
- Hosted a 100+ person internal analytics community meetup.

Principal Data Analyst
Capital One — McLean, VA
Aug 2014 – Jan 2019
- Built automated monitoring and alerting using Tableau, custom Python web apps, real-time Slack webhooks, Splunk, Kibana, Grafana, and Google Analytics.
- Developed and taught full-day courses on Snowflake, Teradata, Hadoop/Hive, and AWS to 100+ data users; led a cloud migration of processes and terabytes of data.
- Modeled legal liabilities for securities claims and valuation analytics under a Sarbanes-Oxley control framework.

Senior Data Analyst / Data Analyst
Capital One — McLean, VA
Nov 2010 – Aug 2014
- Lead analyst for mortgage loss forecasting on a $200B+ portfolio; developed and validated SAS survival models on Linux.
- Produced and validated inputs for OCC/FDIC regulatory exams, Federal Reserve stress tests, and public credit loss metrics.
- Led replacement of a legacy database with a Third Normal Form relational model (Teradata SQL, SAS, UNIX) and supported the ING Direct acquisition integration.

Early Career — Branch Operations & Financial Services
Chevy Chase Bank, a Division of Capital One — La Plata, MD
2009 – 2010
- Managed branch operations and staff through the Chevy Chase Bank to Capital One transition, including audit readiness, cash controls, and front-line customer operations.


SKILLS

Current hands-on: Python, SQL, Snowflake, Oracle, GitLab CI/CD, Docker, Linux, Git, Tableau, VS Code, automated deployment, documentation
Prior / working knowledge: AWS, Databricks, Teradata, Spark/PySpark, R, Looker, GA4 (Google Analytics 4), Adobe Analytics, Snowplow, Tealium
Product & decision-science practice: Forecasting workflows, demand modeling, data governance, controls, dashboard ecosystems, stakeholder enablement, executive storytelling, stakeholder intake and prioritization support, internal product operations
AI-assisted development: Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Copilot


OPEN WORKBENCH
Selected public projects demonstrating applied product thinking across music, hardware, data, and local-first software.
- Discogs Spinner: Local-first Python desktop/web/CLI app for vinyl collectors; syncs Discogs collection and wantlist data, supports random album discovery, collection views, collection health, export/share workflows, playback handoff, tests, packaging, and installer workflows.
- FxPatchSDK / Endless DSP: C++/DSP experimentation for the Polyend Endless pedal, with custom effects, validation scripts, documentation, compiled artifacts, and local build workflows.
- Endless Loader: Mobile-friendly Python web server for Raspberry Pi and Ubuntu-family Linux that browses .endl patches, discovers and mounts a connected Polyend Endless pedal, loads selected patches, and verifies writes with read-back hashes.
- Home lab & hardware systems: 4-node Raspberry Pi cluster, Zimaboard server experimentation, ESP32/Arduino sensor networks, Home Assistant integrations, Linux automation, local LLM experimentation with Ollama/OpenWebUI on workstation infrastructure, guitar/effects electronics repair, and small hardware/software tools.


EDUCATION

Coursera / Johns Hopkins University — Data Science Specialization, 2015
University of Maryland Global Campus — B.A. Computer & Information Science (2014); B.A. Accounting (2011)
University of Maryland, College Park — B.A. Economics (2009)