Portfolio of Keith Elder

Portfolio of Keith Elder

This portfolio is a collection of projects highlighting my service as an engineer, architect, inventor, thought-leader, and leader of development teams during my tenure at Rocket Mortgage. I have built systems that have generated billions of dollars in revenue, and worked on a variety of technical projects that created value for the entire company.

As you navigate the site, please note the various leadership articles, blog articles, projects, as well as supportive quotes from leaders and various team members. Items are tagged for your ease of reference.

Within this content there is interesting history related to the development of various technologies. Included you will also find screen shots and videos, as well as links to PowerPoint presentations, source code, and multi-day workshops.

keith elder

Leadership Articles and Projects

Hacking Your Schedule To Stay Productive
Created: 2021-12-15 by Keith Elder

It is no secret that as leaders our calendars are often full of meetings. Juggling one-on-ones, team meetings, and even required leadership meetings can be stressful. At times, it can be difficult to know what to do when you have a lot of meetings coming up. Especially when you are a new leader or team member at the Rocket FOC. I was recently asked to help a new leader with managing their calendar. Here are the tips I came up with from that conversation that might help you stay productive and get things done.

Articles

10 Tips for Building Effective Proof of Concepts (POCs) - Lessons from a 20-Year Veteran
Created: 2024-09-18 by Keith Elder

Building effective proof of concepts (POCs) requires flexibility, a willingness to experiment, and the ability to learn quickly. Based on 20 years of experience, the key to successful POCs lies in taking the path of least resistance, avoiding unnecessary complexity, and being open to discarding your best work. It’s important to focus on rapid learning rather than production-ready code, remain unattached to initial solutions, and welcome feedback from others. Ultimately, a successful POC isn't just about solving technical problems but also about refining your ability to pitch and present your ideas effectively.

20 Year Anniversary
Created: 2024-01-15 by Keith Elder

Staying in one place for 20 years is a long time. I've been at Rocket Mortgage for 20 years as of January 15th, 2024. During this time I've had the opportunity to work on some amazing projects, with some amazing people. I've also had the opportunity to grow and learn. I'm grateful for the opportunities I've been given and the people I've worked with. I'm looking forward to the next 20 years.

Projects

Tradeweb - A $5.5-Million Dollar Annual Hedge Cost Avoidance for Rocket Exchange

2024-02-15

By integrating with Tradeweb, Capital Markets users can seamlessly capture and approve accurate, real-time TBA prices from the go-to source for TBA prices. This is crucial for generating accurate Rate Sheets and effectively hedging our loan pipeline to a tune of $5.5 million in annual hedge cost avoidance.

Durations - A $6-Million Dollar Inch with Simplified Duration Management for Rocket Exchange

2023-04-02

As markets move, interest rates move. As interest rates rise, the value of existing lower interest rate bonds like mortgage-backed securities decrease. This relationship between how bond values and interest rate changes is called “duration,” and is a key metric used by the secondary market to make investment decisions.

Pricing Execution Website and Playbooks

2021-09-01

I created our train's playbooks, exported our existing Confluence spaces and created the train's website using mkdocs.

PriceX

2021-01-01

State of the art pricing engine for Capital Markets Pricing Desk.

An Inside Look at Tech Con ‘19

2019-10-31

Go behind the scenes with me at TechCon '19.

Robotic Process Automation

2019-07-23

RPA, or Robotic Process Automation is the automation of repeatable computing tasks typically done by humans. Watch a full presentation on RPA I put together along with several separate demo videos.

Tech Con '18

2018-09-21

I helped plan and put on Tech Con '18.

Michigan State University Capstone Project 2018

2018-09-01

I developed and designed a capstone project for a team of students at Michigan State University entitled "Walter, you gotta go". For the fall semester of 2018 I met weekly with the students to support them in delivering the project for their final for the class. The students came to Quicken Loans and presented it technology in December of 2018.

Tech Con '17

2017-10-31

I helped plan and put on Tech Con '17.

DevOps

2016-06-28

I lead the cloud DevOps initiatives to support deployments for the cloud with Electric Cloud.

Universal Messaging

2014-12-30

Universal Messaging is our Enterprise messaging platform. I worked extensively to integrate it with Rock Framework along with Brian Friesen. We assisted team Nexus with POCs during the vendor bake-off as part of the Center of Excellence.

QText

2014-06-01

QText was a text messaging interface in LOLA with the ability to send/receive text messages to clients plus view message history.

ERB - English Rules Builder

2013-03-05

ERB (English Rules Builder) is another rule engine I created to allow business analysts to write rules for Marketing to be processed by Mobius.

Messenger

2013-03-01

Messenger provides a standardized way for applications to send a variety of messages including, email, text messages, and in the future can support additional needs like instant messaging. Messenger was built first to send text messages to any cell phone. It provides the infrastructure to handle large volumes of SMS Text messages using Sonic to queue messages delivered to cell phones via a third party. All messages sent are saved for auditing purposes which can be then consumed or shown in other applications like Mobius.

QChat

2012-12-02

QChat was a real-time web-application based on SignalR and Asp.Net MVC. When launched, the company only had Microsoft Communicator to communicate, which had its drawbacks.

QBook

2012-06-02

QBook - Imagine if Twitter and Facebook got married and had a child that lived inside of corporate America? That was the idea behind QBook.

Texting Short Codes

2012-03-30

I worked with telecom carriers and marketing to establish two short codes for our company. These enabled the business to send texts to clients and team members. The code for texting our team members spelled THEGUY(843489). The guy short code was used for technology to send alerts. Messenger was used to send texts to clients and integrated with Responsys, a third party vendor.

Mobius

2011-06-01

Mobius was a Marketing Operations application I was the technical lead for that allowed Marketing and Technology the ability to harness marketing and client data in a way that we have not been able to previously.

Sonic ESB

2009-06-01

Sonic ESB was our Enterprise messaging system until replaced by Universal Messaging in 2015. Sonic integrated with AMP and was the only way for us to get messages in and out of AMP.

Github Enterprise

2008-11-07

One day in November 2008, I found a presentation Linus Torvalds (creator of git), gave at Google on how and why he created git. I was intrigued because Linus created the Linux operating system. I knew he had very distinctive use cases he was trying to address with distributed source control.

Rock Framework

2008-01-01

Rock Framework is a collection of utilities and functionality that .NET engineers use to build applications.

ORB

2006-11-01

ORB - Object Rules Builder is a rule engine that I initially built to handle and execute rules in CARI. It leveraged the Workflow Foundation APIs part of .NET 3.0.

WhoAmI Service

2005-01-01

A service that used integrated active directory to lookup the user that was calling it.

CORE

2005-01-01

CORE - A team responsible for centralizing the *ilities for in-house applications and storing application metadata and application management.

CARI

2005-01-01

I started working on CARI in January of 2005 and deployed it to production in August of 2005. I was the only Engineer assigned to the project and David Little was the only Business Analyst working on the project initially.

Active Directory Service

2005-01-01

An active directory service for locating and finding team member information in apps.

SharePoint

2004-11-01

From 2004 - 2018 our intranet, Rockworld, was built on top of SharePoint. I helped bring SharePoint into the company, train team members how to use it and ported our old intranet to it.

Rockworld

2004-11-01

Rockworld is the company's intranet. I built Rockworld in late 2004 and brought SharePoint into the company with it. I then trained all the company team member's on how to manage and leverage SharePoint.

Roster Search

2004-06-01

Application used from 2004-2018 for team members to locate other team members within the company. It was replaced with SIFT when the new Rockworld launched.

Quotes

You rock Keith. I'm very impressed. I just checked that reddit thread and i appreciate you really hustling to build those relationships. - Brian Woodring

Incredible impact, Keith. Referrals for some critical needs, first 2 day Speaker Workshop completed to help train more evangelists, and mentoring the Capstone group who helped prototype RPA functionality. And this was all in just 1 week! - Kristina Kolbas

We appreciated you taking your time to attend and participate! Lots of excellent feedback coming in, quite a few attendees responded to our survey and specifically mentioned enjoying your talk. - John Hubbarth, QL Summit

Thank you Keith, for volunteering your time and effort and sharing your knowledge about Lucid. It was great to see how you and your team leverage this suite of tools so creatively. As always, your presentation was engaging, informative, and fun. Great job! - Bryant Bayles

Just wanted to say great job and thanks for taking the time to provide this simple, easy to read documentation to get folks going with it. The new version of Rock.Framework looks awesome! You guys have built some truly valuable stuff. - Bryan Bedard, Director Architecture, Amrock

Keith is an excellent communicator--whether speaking internally or externally. He created a class to spread his knowledge and is not working on speaker guidelines to help certify Quicken Loans team members to speak externally. He is truly an outstanding communicator. - Anonymous

Keith Elder’s impact on the local software development community was one of the reasons I was excited to join QL. From acting as the MC for events like Codemash a few years back to more recently helping plan the QL Tech Conference, Keith continues to be a great evangelist for QL Technology! - Anonymous

Keith, is awesome! He has more stories than skyscraper, and is a master of his craft in so many ways. He’s an excellent communicator and spokesperson; an excellent engineer; an excellent angler; he can plan the best parties; and he has the respect of all of us here at QL! I enjoy working with Keith every day and appreciate all that he contributes to our team and company. - Anonymous

When we look back over the past 14 years there are so many things that have been accomplished that you have been a part of whether as an engineer, a leader or an evangelist. Your presence, warmth and willingness to help is something that I truly admire about you. I feel very honored and privileged to work with you but also to call you a friend. - Anonymous

Mobius team rocks, and I wouldn't want to work with anyone else, I'm truly grateful we took the time to do this right. - Bryan Lyons

I was nervous about being on a panel for the first time at the QL Tech Conference but you made me feel at ease. You gave us a ton of great tips to help prepare us but also to make us want to be good. That’s what you do…you want us to be our best and represent this company in the best possible way. Thank you for 14 years of caring and for making us better. - Stacey Basa

I appreciated your tips and tricks on working remote when I started. It have enjoyed getting to know you better. I am looking forward to working together for years to come. - Paul Buhler

You are an amazing inspiration to so many. - Tammy Maxon

Your leadership and vision has opened up a world of opportunity for many folks, including myself. I am forever great full. - Jasen Sams

Thanks again for your presentation on “Productivity - How to Get Things Done in Digital Age”… it was very helpful! - Annette Witczak

I was most nervous about the demo, but that went smooth. I got the hang of ZoomIt and zoomed when I should, and remembered to toggle the VS Editor full-screen mode, and used PhraseExpress to accomplish some auto-completes instead of typing in the full code blocks. I appreciate those tips, Keith! - Tonya Cooper

This Thursday, October 17, 2019, I presented my talk titled ‘From Zero to Machine Learning in 45 Minutes’ at Tech Con ‘19. With Zero experience of presenting at such a large stage. All I had was an idea and a big picture of what I wanted to present. The talk ended up generating 11 - 5 Star reviews from the audience. These guys trained me, worked selflessly and tirelessly around the clock to improve me, give me honest feedback, watch me present, fumble, get nervous over and over again. They helped me polish my ideas, my presentation, my slides, my speech, my tone, my presence until I got it just right. My journey may as well as be called ‘From Zero to Presenter in 45 days’. Thank you guys for all the hard work, patience, persistence and for working with me and your trust in me. I owe it to you guys. Thanks you so much! I really appreciate you guys and all the help to make my presentation a huge success! - Harnoor

We are down here at Gartner’s EA and innovation conference this week and Mike presented a case study on QL’s journey through Agile. I just wanted to let this team know that he knocked it out the the park! From the layout, information and loads of engaging questions it was one of the better sessions. I’m not being biased. We need to leverage this talk again! It’s not just talk either it’s Mike’s influence and direction on how we are transforming as an IT team. Thank you Sarah and Keith for working with Mike on putting this together! Nice job Mike! - Pat Hartford

I really like your presentation. It was touching about your family story. - Arunee Niamlarb

Keith is a team member with high standards. He does everything in a first class manner. He has been driving force behind core framework and has introduced lots of programming framework and technologies to QL. - Anonymous, Gilbert Award Nomination

I loved your talk and got a lot from it. In my opinion it’s been the best keynote I’ve attended. Also loved your track on Erlang and surviving the Super Bowl. Very enjoyable and very informative. You’ve renewed a spark in me to discover new technologies and want to better myself as a developer. - Christopher McWilliams

I wanted to reach out and let you know that your keynote at DogFoodCon was very inspiring and was one of the best I've seen at this convention. You mentioned, that you might be willing to share the ISMs book. If so, I would very much appreciate it. Thanks - Keith Estes

Your keynote really spoke to me yesterday. What Rocket Mortgage has done sounds amazing. - Nathan Walford

Great meeting you and thank you for sharing. Everyone I spoke to said we need many more talks like yours. I will be sharing the recording with many customers who need the ammunition. - Fransesco Cesrini, Founder, Erlang Solutions

Hi Keith, Thank you the great talk on Thursday. It was very inspiring and encouraging that other companies that truly care about the people exist! Per your offer, I would love to have a copy of the ISMs Book. - Sara Bowsher

I was very moved by your keynote speech at Dog Food Conference this year. - Jeffrey Miller

Got it!!! WHOOOHHOOOO!!! Keith!! You rock!!!!!! - Dave Morrison