Vanessa Sudano
Lead/Staff Software Engineer • Fraud / Payments / Checkout / eCommerce

Gibsonia, PA • Open to Remote

Architecting fraud, payments, checkout, and eCommerce solutions that drive multi-million dollar sales impact.

Lead/Staff Software Engineer with 15+ years of experience delivering high-availability, event-driven services for enterprise eCommerce and multi-billion-dollar transaction systems.

View case studies Get in touch
  • Specialties: Fraud platforms • Payments • Checkout architecture • eCommerce • Fulfillment
  • Tech: Kotlin/Java/Spring • .NET/C# • Azure • Cloud Foundry platforms • Kafka
  • Leadership: Technical roadmaps • System design • Cross-functional influence • Mentorship
Highlights
$24M
Sales lift in 1 month (fraud platform launch)
$2M/yr
Reduced fraud decisioning expenses
$40.5M
Confirmed fraud losses protected
1,800/min
Orders supported at scale
Fraud Payments Checkout Security Event-driven Streaming Microservices

Impact that moves metrics

Outcomes aligned to business goals: authorization lift, fraud loss prevention, cost reduction, and resiliency at peak traffic.

Edge-based fraud detection platform

Architected and led a distributed, serverless, edge-based fraud detection platform focused on low-latency decisions and high availability.

  • +$24M sales impact in the first month post-launch
  • Designed to support over $2.83B+ annual transaction volume
  • Improved authorization rates by up to 9% via fraud + payments + security alignment

In-house fraud platform (cost + control)

Green-fielded internal decisioning capabilities to reduce vendor dependency while improving experimentation and detection quality.

  • $2M/yr reduction in fraud decisioning expenses
  • 7x detection effectiveness improvement via A/B testing + cross-functional collaboration
  • Protected $40.5M in confirmed fraud losses

eCommerce + Checkout scalability

Built resilient, high-traffic checkout and product services supporting multiple storefronts and peak events.

  • Handled up to 1,800 orders/min
  • Supported 501K peak visitors/hour and 5.6M daily visitors
  • Helped decouple a billion-dollar monolith into cloud-native microservices

Case studies

What I built, why it mattered, how it worked.

Fraud • Edge • Serverless

Distributed fraud detection at the edge

A low-latency decisioning platform designed for resiliency, observability, limited resources, and zero domain interdependencies.

Architecture snapshot
  • Ingress: Edge/WAF signals + request telemetry for anomaly detection
  • Decisioning: Rules + data-driven signals; designed for deterministic outcomes
  • Data: Transaction + device + account + inventory context for high-confidence scoring
  • Ops: Dashboards + timeout guards, error and latency reports, and configuration tuning
Low latency High availability Cyber + fraud signals
Payments • Fraud • Data aggregation

High-signal enrichment APIs for fraud + payments

Backend services aggregating order, payment, device, loyalty, promo, and inventory context at high throughput.

What made it effective
  • Designed APIs for tens of thousands of transactions/hour
  • Normalized data across domains to improve explainability and reduce false positives
  • Enabled controlled experiments (A/B) to measure lift and cost-per-decision
APIs Data contracts Experimentation
Checkout • Scale • Microservices

Monolith decoupling for continuous delivery

Cloud-agnostic microservices modernization enabling teams to ship independently without sacrificing stability.

How I approached the migration
  • Defined domain boundaries and APIs to reduce cross-team coupling
  • Used event-driven patterns for async workflows and scalability
  • Prioritized operational readiness: monitoring, on-call runbooks, and SLOs
Microservices Event-driven Operational excellence

Technical strengths

Tools and systems I’ve used to ship reliable platforms at scale.

Languages

KotlinJavaC#

Backend & Architecture

Distributed systemsMicroservicesREST APIs Event-drivenStreamingHigh availability

Cloud & Infra

AzureCloud FoundryKubernetes DockerTerraformCDNWAF

Data & Messaging

Apache KafkaRedisMySQL PostgreSQLOracleSQL Server

DevOps & Observability

GitHubCI/CDElastic GrafanaPrometheus

Leadership

Technical roadmapsSystem designMentorship Cross-functional collaborationStrategic planning

Experience

15+ years building enterprise eCommerce systems with deep expertise in fraud, payments, and checkout.

DICK’S Sporting Goods — Lead Software Engineer, Digital Fraud

Jan 2024 – Aug 2025 • Coraopolis, PA
  • Led edge-based fraud platform development; +$24M sales lift in first month
  • Designed low-latency systems supporting $2.83B+ annual volume
  • Introduced WAF anomaly detection; saved $300K in failed auth costs
  • Improved authorization rates up to 9% across fraud/payments/security

DICK’S Sporting Goods — Senior Software Engineer, Digital Fraud & Payments

Jun 2020 – Jan 2024 • Coraopolis, PA
  • Protected $40.5M in confirmed fraud losses
  • Built enrichment services aggregating payment/order/device/account/inventory signals
  • Reduced decisioning expenses $2M/yr via in-house platform
  • Improved detection effectiveness 7x; reduced adjustment dollars per order 7.5%
  • Led BNPL implementation: $14.6M sales and 1.7% profit lift per visit

DICK’S Sporting Goods — Senior Software Engineer, Checkout/eCommerce/Products

Jun 2014 – May 2020 • Coraopolis, PA
  • Engineered eCommerce systems handling up to 1,800 orders/min
  • Supported 501K peak visitors/hour and 5.6M daily visitors
  • Helped decouple monolith into cloud-agnostic microservices for continuous delivery

DICK’S Sporting Goods — Application Developer, Master Data Management

Jun 2013 – Jun 2014 • Coraopolis, PA

Lucas Systems — Senior Software Engineer, Foundation & Framework

May 2012 – Jun 2013 • Wexford, PA
  • Integrated 35+ vendor solutions across 155 custom warehouse applications
  • Engineered voice-directed framework and proprietary speech API integrations

Lucas Systems — Software Engineer, Application Development

Feb 2010 – May 2012 • Wexford, PA

Education

Arizona State University

B.S. Computer Information Systems

  • Division I NCAA Athlete
  • Academic All-American
  • Dean’s List & Cum Laude Graduate
  • Scholar Athlete
  • PAC-10 HM All-American
  • Sun Devil Scholarship Recipient

Singapore Management University

International Business Certificate

  • Foreign Exchange Student - CMU partnership

Contact

If you’re hiring for Senior/Staff IC roles in fraud, payments, risk, or platform engineering — let’s talk.

Location
Gibsonia, PA (Remote preferred)
Focus
Fraud • Payments • Checkout • Distributed Systems