Joe Adair

Enterprise Software & Platform Leader

jadair06@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/joe-adair joe-adair.com

Experience

Over 20 years building and leading software platforms across higher education, research, and healthcare — from individual contributor to technical director.

2023-Present

Current Role

Associate Director of Platform and Software Development

Drexel University

Leads enterprise application strategy, platform stewardship, technical direction, and operational continuity across academic, research, and administrative systems.

  • Platform Leadership
  • Technical Direction
  • Infrastructure & Operations
  • Mentoring

Key contributions

  • Directs platform architecture, lifecycle stewardship, and modernization efforts across enterprise applications serving academic, research, and administrative initiatives.
  • Carries leadership responsibility beyond software delivery into infrastructure planning, stakeholder alignment, mentoring, and long-term operational continuity.
  • Maintains hands-on ownership across infrastructure, database administration, production support, and the continued evolution of institutional systems.

Selected work

2014-2023

Senior Software Developer

Drexel University

Served as lead architect and principal software engineer during the largest expansion of the College's internally developed software ecosystem.

  • Platform Engineering
  • Research Systems
  • Full-Stack Delivery
  • Production Operations

Key contributions

  • Led development across CCI Apps, Proposal Tracking, ACE Clinical Research Platform, TYS, ECHOASDER, PAST, Philly Codefest, and other internal workflow systems.
  • Designed production environments, configured web and database servers, deployed applications, and supported long-lived production systems after launch.
  • Expanded internally developed software from departmental tools into a broader portfolio of academic, research, healthcare, and operational platforms.

Selected work

2009-2014

Web Services Architect

Drexel University

Managed the College's website and small application portfolio while establishing the architectural and delivery foundation for future platform growth.

  • Web Services
  • Application Architecture
  • Stakeholder Delivery
  • Systems Foundation

Key contributions

  • Oversaw the College's public web presence while delivering custom applications for departmental and operational needs.
  • Established early application architecture, delivery practices, and stakeholder relationships that supported later scale.
  • Created the technical and organizational base that made subsequent platform engineering growth possible.

Selected work

  • College website ecosystem
  • Departmental applications
  • Early workflow applications

2003-2009

IT Specialist

Pennoni Associates

Developed database-driven business applications and contributed to enterprise data migration work spanning marketing, operations, and shared business systems.

  • Business Applications
  • Process Automation
  • Database Systems
  • Data Migration

Key contributions

  • Built and improved systems supporting proposal development, proposal management, and business development workflows.
  • Expanded into enterprise application development, reporting, automation, and broader business systems support.
  • Developed ETL pipelines to extract, normalize, and migrate data from FoxPro, Microsoft Access, and SQL Server source systems into BST as part of a multi-year enterprise platform migration.

Selected work

  • Proposal management systems
  • Marketing technology workflows
  • Enterprise data migration program

Beyond Delivery

Teaching, research, and mentorship

Teaching

Adjunct faculty experience teaching university-level database administration and computer security at Drexel University.

Courses include INFO 101, INFO 210, INFO 315, INFO 365, and INFO 366.

Research

Co-author of HIVE-4-MAT: Advancing the Ontology Infrastructure for Materials Science, published in Metadata and Semantic Research (MTSR 2020), CCIS 1355, Springer.

View publication

Mentorship

Ongoing mentorship of developers, student workers, and early-career technical staff, alongside hiring, onboarding, and practical technical growth.