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Resume

Versatile technical leader with experience in all phases of the software lifecycle. Strong understanding of the current state of the art in software development technologies, practices and methodologies. Noted for ability to learn new technologies and techniques rapidly, see situations where they may be applied advantageously and to coach others in their use. Evangelist for continuous process improvements in both the software development process and business processes to which the software is related.

Accomplishments

  • Achieved an order of magnitude improvement in scalability of a Software as a Service offering by re-architecting with service oriented principles. The new architecture also allowed the system to be significantly more reliable, maintainable and manageable.

  • Instituted systemic use of automated unit and functional testing in development departments that had previously had very weak, or absent, quality processes.

  • Created mechanisms to allow web applications to be readily localized into multiple languages (ie, internationalization).

  • Effectively integrated off-site contractors and geographically distributed team members into overall application development efforts.

  • Successfully mentored others in many areas such as effective use of dynamic languages, including Ruby, RESTful web service design, unit testing, agile methodologies, etc.

  • Reengineered business processes to achieve notable reduction in complexity and redundancy. This effort was based on a thorough analysis of information discovered during requirements gathering and elicitation phase.

  • Drove changes in development processes to allow them to be more transparent to business stakeholders.

  • Active open source collaborator: Resouceful, rpec-mode

Skills

  • In depth knowledge of web service oriented architectures and related technologies included RESTful service design, JSON, XML, SOAP and HTTP

  • Deep comprehension of scalable system architectures, design patterns, object-oriented analysis and design and message/document format design.

  • Experienced with a wide range of web application technologies including HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Ruby on Rails and JSON.

  • Proficient in Ruby, Python, Java, C/C++, Javascript, Lisp and shell scripting.

  • Conversant in a variety of software development methodologies including XP, RUP and agile.

  • Familiar with PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, MS SQL Server and Oracle. Solid understanding of logical data modeling as well as some experience in physical data modeling in the open-source RDBMSs

Work History

Gnip, Inc

Systems Architect
June 2008 - July 2008

  • Designed and documented REST/HTTP web service APIs for data aggregation/filtering and identity management.

  • Implemented availability monitoring system (Nagios plus custom plugins) for multi-component production system.

  • Managed a pure cloud (Amazon EC2 and S3 production deployment of a multi component high availability system.

  • Java, Ruby, and Python components deployed on Linux

Absolute Performance, Inc.

Senior Software Engineer
November 2006 - May 2008

  • Lead service oriented re-architecture effort which resulted in a radically more maintainable and scalable system.

  • Designed and documented REST/HTTP web service APIs. This included design of JSON based data formats and API versioning strategy.

  • Evangelized improved quality processes included systemic unit testing, automated acceptance testing, etc

  • Instrumental in switch to Git source control system.

  • Designed system to support software as a service (SaaS) model with multiple customers sharing deployments.

  • Ruby, C++ and Java components deployed on Linux

WebRoot Software, Inc.

Senior Web Developer
May 2006 - November 2006

  • Implemented internationalization extensions to template library that allowed website to be much more easily localization.

  • Evangelized improved quality processes included systemic unit testing, automated acceptance testing, etc

  • Liaison to external contractors, including code/design reviews, integration of code into internal source control repositories, performing deployments and debugging hard to reproduce issues.

  • PHP and Ruby deployed on Linux

Certified Financial Planners Board of Standards, Inc.

Technical Lead
November 2005 - May 2006

  • Lead team of three developers.

  • Evangelized improved quality processes included systemic unit testing, automated acceptance testing, etc

  • Mentored team in the use of Ruby, and dynamic languages in general.

  • Engaged in business process re-engineering efforts resulting in a significant streamlining of the processes involved.

  • Ruby deployed on Linux

DigitalGlobe, Inc.

Senior Software Engineer
September 2004 - October 2005

  • Designed and implemented highly configurable work flow engine that handled fulfillment of all orders.

  • Designed and implemented dashboard for the complete order fulfillment system to allow operations to track the progress of an order.

  • Java, PHP and Ruby deployed on Linux

GE Energy

Software Architect
October 1998 - August 2004

  • Lead team of five developers and two QA

  • Designed and implemented web application server.

  • Evangelized the use of web services as a way to implement application integrations.

  • Implemented and evangelized use of xUnit testing framework for proprietary language used by my division.

  • Magik, C++, Python on various flavors of Unix and Windows

Integware, Inc

Software Engineer
August 1997 - October 1998

  • Designed and implemented data analysis tool.

  • Designed and implemented extensible CAD to engineering document management integration mechanism.

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