Cory Barnes — Contact Center Solutions Architect

PROFILE

15+ years architecting NICE CXone, Amazon Connect, and Genesys contact center platforms across federal, healthcare, and financial services. Owning CXone Studio scripting, ServiceNow REST integration, and omnichannel voice / chat / SMS within HIPAA / PCI / FedRAMP-aligned environments. AI-assisted development practitioner.

SELECTED PROJECTS

Built, shipped, and running in production

SERVICENOW · REST

VA ServiceNow Interaction Pipeline

Three-phase REST integration (Create → Update → Assign Interaction) with environment-isolated credentials, pre-flight user ID validation, defensive null handling, and per-environment auth-status patching. Reusable subscript architecture deployed across six VA environments.

CXONE · TEST ENGINEERING

Multi-Environment Stress Harness

Numeric menu-driven test harness exercising ServiceNow endpoints across six VA sub-environments without live agent calls. Surfaced an intermittent empty-work_item_id production defect that ad-hoc testing had not caught, enabling targeted remediation.

OMNICHANNEL · DFO

DFO Chat Integration

Migrated VA digital channels (Microsoft Teams chat, ServiceNow chat) onto CXone DFO with custom externalAttributes mapping, datefmt()-correct event timestamping, and unified handling across chat and voice in a single CXone Agent workflow.

CALL LOG

Professional experience

SEP 2023
— PRESENT

Lead IVR Solutions Architect

PingWind · Remote — U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Enterprise IT Service Desk
Prime: Accenture Federal Services · Operations partner: GDIT

Led CXone Studio architecture for the VA's national internal IT service desk — 800+ agents across voice, chat, and SMS, with end-to-end ownership of 40+ Studio scripts.
Eliminated manual ITSM ticket creation by auto-generating ServiceNow interaction records on every inbound contact, standardizing audit trails enterprise-wide and removing a recurring source of agent-side ticketing error.
Operated a controlled DEV → TEST → UAT → Training → Pre-Prod → Production promotion pipeline across six non-production environments, holding production rollbacks near zero.
Engineered a modular Studio framework with reusable subscripts, defensive WFD schema validation, and standardized error-email patterns, cutting new-flow development time ~35%.
Led the program's migration from CXone MAX to CXone Agent, retiring legacy desktops and consolidating voice, chat, and case management into a single workflow.
Strengthened caller identity verification with HIPAA/PCI-aligned MFA and a custom GRXML email-authentication grammar, cutting authentication-step handle time ~60% and contributing to first-call resolution and CSAT gains across identity-gated workflows.
Applied AI-assisted development tooling for CXone Studio snippet authoring and influenced roadmap design for VA AI initiatives (NICE Autopilot, Enlighten Copilot, voice biometrics); authored the program's IVR standards and handover playbooks adopted by operations and GDIT delivery partners.

SEP 2022
— SEP 2023

Senior Solutions Architect

Securian Financial · Remote

Directed a $5M+ enterprise CCaaS migration to Genesys Cloud and NICE CXone across two business units (U.S. and Canada), delivered 7 months ahead of schedule.
Architected a high-availability integration layer processing 500K+ transactions per day at 99.99% uptime — the system of record for cross-platform CX data in both regions.
Stood up an enterprise-wide REST API framework adopted across both business units, compressing integration cycles 40%.

SEP 2020
— SEP 2022

Senior Unified Communications Architect

Unified Women's Healthcare · Remote

Founded and scaled the centralized telecom function supporting 200+ healthcare locations and 65+ acquired practices — $2M in annual savings, 50% reduction in unit telecom cost.
Implemented 5 enterprise contact centers, reducing operating expense 30% while standardizing HIPAA-compliant call flows and recording controls.
Owned post-M&A telecom integration for every new practice acquisition, eliminating multi-vendor sprawl.

OCT 2019
— JUL 2020

Senior VoIP Solutions Engineer

Versant Health · Remote

Delivered cloud voice migration strategy for 700+ locations across RingCentral, NICE CXone, and 8x8 — completed 4 months ahead of schedule.
Stood up emergency remote-work voice infrastructure for 2,000+ employees during COVID-19 with zero downtime.

SEP 2011
— OCT 2019

Lead Telecom Engineer

U.S. Air Force · San Antonio, TX

Operated and modernized a $50M+ global Cisco Unified Communications environment — 4,000+ users at 99.999% uptime across multi-region joint and coalition operations.
Awarded the Joint Service Achievement Medal for cross-departmental technical leadership.
Engineered redundant multi-site telecom infrastructure for mission-critical communications, increasing call-handling capacity 30%.
Held an active DoD security clearance supporting joint-service and coalition voice operations across multiple theaters under strict change-control and availability requirements.
Led and mentored junior airmen and contractor technicians on Cisco UC operations and high-availability design — operational discipline carried directly into enterprise CCaaS architecture work.

STACK

Core technical skills

CCAAS PLATFORMS

NICE CXone (Studio, MAX, Agent, DFO, Reporting, WFM/WFD) · Amazon Connect · Genesys Cloud · Five9 · 8x8 · RingCentral · Cisco UC · Microsoft Teams Voice

IVR & VOICE

CXone Studio scripting & snippets · GRXML · SSML · ASR/TTS · callback orchestration (SCB/QCB) · SPAWN actions · SIP · SBC · MFA / caller authentication · voice biometrics

INTEGRATIONS & APIS

REST/JSON · ServiceNow (Create / Update / Assign Interaction) · Salesforce · custom subscripts · multi-environment pipelines (DEV / TEST / UAT / TRAINING / PRE-PROD)

DIGITAL & OMNICHANNEL

Digital First Omnichannel (DFO) chat · Textel SMS · Microsoft Teams chat · agent desktop consolidation

AI & CONVERSATIONAL

Conversational AI · NLU intent design · Generative AI & prompt engineering · AI-assisted development · NICE Autopilot · Enlighten Copilot · Amazon Lex · Google Dialogflow · AWS Lambda

DEVOPS, CLOUD & COMPLIANCE

AWS (Cloud Practitioner) · Terraform · Git · CI/CD · JIRA · Agile/Scrum (PSM I) · ITIL v4 · HIPAA · PCI-DSS · FedRAMP-aligned · privacy-by-design call flows

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS

B.S., Network Operations and Security — Western Governors University (2022)

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Professional Scrum Master I
ITIL v4 Foundation
CompTIA Project+
LPI Linux Essentials

END OF MENU

Route a call my way

Open to senior contact center architecture roles — remote preferred.

[*] jobs@coryabarnes.com [#] (210) 294-9514 [9] linkedin.com/in/barnes-cory [4] Résumé (PDF)