Chuck Lathrope

About Chuck Lathrope

I sit at the intersection of Product Engineering and Professional Services.With a unique background combining 20+ years as a Director of IT & Operations (the buyer, builder, and implementor) and 4 years as a Strategic Solution Architect (the implementer), I bridge the gap between what software companies build and what enterprise customers actually need to succeed.My focus is on transforming \"billable hours\" into scalable, productized assets. I don\'t just solve technical problems one-off; I build the frameworks, tools, and easy buttons that allow delivery organizations to scale and drive higher margins.Strategic Focus Areas:* Services Product Strategy: Turning ad-hoc delivery into repeatable solutions (IP). I specialize in identifying product gaps and building service-based bridges that unlock customer adoption.* FinOps & Consumption: Architecting the internal frameworks that give customers the financial confidence to scale. I recently productized a FinOps framework using Snowflake Cortex (AI) that saved a key client $300k and gave them confidence to stay on the platform vs. move to a competitor.* Operational Excellence: Bringing the rigor of a former IT Director—managing a $3M OpEx budget and critical infrastructure—to the world of Professional Services. I use this operational maturity to help Sales teams close complex enterprise deals (e.g, Microsoft).* AI-Native Transformation: Prototyping Human-in-the-Loop AI solutions to solve governance and forecasting challenges that pure software cannot yet handle. Using AI to review and augment my role as an Architect.Core Leadership Philosophy: I am a servant leader who believes that clarity is kindness. Whether managing global engineering teams or aligning legal, security, and product stakeholders, I focus on removing friction so technical teams can move fast and customers can see value sooner.Career Highlights:* Snowflake: Productized the internal FinOps Framework, driving consumption and predictability for enterprise accounts.* Limeade: Founded the Data Governance Program Office and played a key technical role in winning the Microsoft enterprise contract by selling my newly revamped Operational Excellence Framework.* Rouse Services: Directed the modernization of the data product portfolio, reducing COGS by eliminating legacy licensing and improving Time-to-Value by 40%.

Experience

1. Sr Solutions Architect

   Snowflake

   May 2022 — Present · Bellevue, WA, US

   Sr. Solution Architect partnering with large enterprise customers to accelerate time-to-value on strategic data initiatives. I also translate operational friction points into new service delivery assets and actionable feedback for the Product & Engineering teams.* FinOps & Performance Visibility (Hands-On): Directly architected cost/performance dashboards for major accounts, utilizing Snowflake Cortex (ML) and linear regression to forecast spend. This hands-on work identified a critical product gap, leading me to develop the internal FinOps Framework—a standardized approach now used to provide customers with a framework to attribute costs in customizable way (saving one client $300k by identifying wasteful use of compute).* Accelerating Value & Delivery Quality: Audited and overhauled the Service Delivery content library, modernizing outdated assets and improving visual standards. By remediating these subpar materials, I reduced reinvention time for the field team and established a repeatable, high-quality delivery process for new customer onboarding.* The Bridge to Product: Actively working as the feedback loop between Field Delivery and Engineering. I use my daily implementation work (identifying friction points in cost attribution and query performance) to provide data-driven roadmap recommendations to Product Management, ensuring we fix the root causes of delivery delays, and visualizing the correct metrics to identify opportunities for improvement.* Mentorship & Enablement: Scaled my personal subject matter expertise by creating technical guides on Cost per Query optimization, helping the broader consulting team understand and explain complex FinOps concepts to business stakeholders.Skills: FinOps, Snowflake Cortex, Performance Tuning, Service Standardization, Cross-Functional Leadership, Data Visualization, Strategic Planning.

Education

• Quantic School of Business and Technology

  Executive MBA

• University of Washington

  B.S., Civil Engineering

  1990 — 1995

Skills

• Microsoft Sql Server
• Software Documentation
• Sql Server Integration Services (Ssis)
• Replication
• Security
• Etl
• Enterprise Architecture
• Extract, Transform, Load (Etl)
• Architectures
• Networking
• Servers
• Access
• T-Sql
• Business Intelligence
• Software Development
• Python
• Ssrs
• Data Management
• High Availability
• Sql
• Linux
• Performance Tuning
• Visual Studio
• San
• Database Administration
• Active Directory
• Data Modeling
• Windows Server
• E-Commerce
• Clustering
• Disaster Recovery
• Iis
• Sql Tuning
• Troubleshooting
• Dns
• Server Architecture
• .net
• Transact-Sql (T-Sql)
• Ssis
• Data Migration