Resume

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Professional Experience

Software Engineer RealSelf – Seattle, WA ( remote from WV )

08/2012 – Present

Forever changing the internet…

Software Engineer Federated Media Publishing – San Francisco, CA ( remote from WV )

03/2012 – 08/2012

Forever changing the internet…

Engineering Lead AdKeeper – Greater Pittsburgh, PA	04/2011 – 03/2012
Sr. Web Developer AdKeeper – Greater Pittsburgh, PA	09/2010 – 04/2011

• Ground floor member of well-funded (43 mil) and innovative startup founded by Scott Kurnit, founder/CEO-About.com
• Promoted from Sr Web Developer to Engineering Lead in April 2011
• Managed other Sr Engineers while reporting primarily to VP of Engineering, and at times our CTO for certain projects.
• Developed AdKeeper.com and related components using a broad range of skillsets and knowledge: PHP 5.3, Yii, Zend, CodeIgniter, Memcached, Redis, Apache, Javascript, AJAX, Mercurial, SVN, Ubuntu, OS X
• Lead on architecture on numerous projects, developed diagrams, defined web services APIs, infrastructure, and laid out technology requirements and choices.
• Implemented 3rd party services, including: SendGrid, GA, Tealium, Gigya, OpenX, Facebook Connect, Twitter, and others.
• Worked closely with product team to take ideas from whiteboard brainstorms to technical implementations.
• Worked almost entirely remote with a 40+ strong engineering team. Utilized video and voice conferencing solutions to create efficiency and cohesion. Occasional travel required for new product development and team gatherings.
• While primarily a frontend engineer, being at a startup, it was the norm to jump wherever help was needed. General hats I wore at times included assisting in operations tasks, project management, hands on coding, quality assurance testing, and product development.

Lead Frontend Software Engineer Lockerz – Pittsburgh, PA

07/2009 – 09/2010

• First in-house software engineer hire on ground floor, charged with heading up in-house frontend engineering agility for a new well funded social-commerce website thought by industry leader, Kathy Savitt ( recently new CMO of Yahoo! – Aug 2012 ).
• Provided direct support for software technology development to include frontend architecture, services APIs, deployment strategy, distributed systems, database design, caching strategy, source control management, internal tools, development, testing, production systems and operations.
• Scaled software platform to support member growth from 0 to 16 million users between 2009-2010.
• Provided hiring suggestions and recruited key individuals to build out in-house engineering teams.
• Played key rolls in a successful infrastructure and frontend technology rewrite to scale growth in less than 45 days.
• Authored middleware service-client that paved way for separable frontend teams to mix and match technology stacks to get projects to market faster.
• Lead on frontend technology, video platform, and social platform.
• Provided technical research, strategy, and 3rd party integrations.

Company has grown to an international level and continues to reach new heights every day.

Core Skills – PHP 5 OOP/MVC, CodeIgniter, Zend, Smarty, Apache 2, Nginx, Memcached, ICE, Java Knowledge, JSON, jQuery, AJAX, Ubuntu, Multi-tier Linux Server Expertise and Administration, Database Architecture and Administration, MySQL 5, XHTML, CSS, Drupal, SOAP, Project Management Skills, Open Source Software, Entrepreneurial Knowledge.

Lead Software Engineer FirstString – Los Angeles, CA

04/2008 – 05/2009

• As the first engineer hire on ground floor, I was responsible for creating core technical infrastructures, and oversaw all web product development.
• Organized specifications, planning, scrums, meetings, code reviews, and reported directly to the company President.
• Provided hiring suggestions to fill needed expertise.
• Deployed project management, version control, and communication tools to manage construction of a social network, engaged by a mix of roughly 10 software developers and designers.
• Turned business specifications into technical specifications in chart and written form. Continually documented code; and worked as a project manager, database architect, network administrator, and lead programmer.
• In 3 months, FirstString.com released as a web 2.0 beta. Within a year, the company established partnerships with “MySpace”, “Hilton Hotel”, “East Bay”.

The company continues to live on today.

Core Skills – Ruby on Rails/REST, PHP 5 OOP/MVC, jQuery, AJAX, Multi-tier Linux Server Expertise and Administration, Database Architecture and Administration, MySQL 5, CSS, XHTML, XML, Project Management Skills, Web 2.0 Technology, Open Source Software, Entrepreneurial Knowledge.

Software Developer Social Platform – Los Angeles, CA

05/2005 – 01/2008

• First engineer hired to create a white label social networking solution, laid technical ground work for many projects supporting company’s quick-to-market style growth.
• Worked as a software development lead and supervised several developers providing guidance and support on various projects.
• Assisted in the design and implementation of high traffic web systems meeting critical requirements and deadlines in support of high profile music industry clients and their fan networks (e.g.: Madonna, Los Lonely Boys, Ray J, & many others…).
• Provided technical support to clients.

Company was ultimately acquired by OneSite.com, after nearly 3 years of development.

Core Skills – PHP4 and PHP5 OOP/MVC, Subversion, Linux, shell scripting, Perl, Database Architecture and Administration, MySQL 3/4/5, XML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, PEAR, XHTML, Smarty.

Computer Science Tutor West Virginia University – Morgantown, WV

01/2005 – 05/2005

• Tutored a class of 40 students of variable skill levels a few days a week.
• Worked one-on-one, as well as in groups, with students to help them understand concepts from their courses.
• Responsible for monitoring and recording attendance as well as coordinating student reschedules with other tutors.
• Worked flexibly with other session tutors to ensure all sessions had available staff each week.

Core Skills: Programming languages, Computer Applications, and Engineering Science.

Application Developer Red Beam Software – Colorado Springs, CO

09/2003 – 11/2004

• Worked on small scale projects while I was a full time student in college.
• Developed web site layouts, conducted HTML adjustments, PHP code re-factoring, and research.
• Used Perl programming coupled with Wave 59 Technology to assist in stock market analysis.

Research AssistantWest Virginia University – Morgantown, WV

01/2004 – 07/2004

• After receiving Dr. Donald Adjeroh’s highest grade in a CS course, he hired me to work under his direction applying computer science theory to cancer research being done at the University.

Application Developer (Intern) UUNET / MCI WorldCom – Ashburn, VA

06/1999 – 01/2001

• MCI became my entry into computer science. I spent time job shadowing and assisting professional developers through which I learned fundamentals of programming.

Core Skills: Unix knowledge, SSH, Red Hat Linux, and Perl.

Education

Computer Science West Virginia University – Morgantown, WV

08/2003 – 08/2005

Emphases – Object Oriented Programming (OOP), Design Patterns, Database Modeling, Database Design, Software Engineering, C++, Calculus

Technical Proficiencies

Languages

Ruby 1.8, PHP 3/4/5, Python 2.5, Perl 5, C++, C, SQL, JavaScript, HTML, XHTML Transitional / Strict 1.1, DHTML, CSS 1/2/3, XML, XPath, XSLT, XML-RPC, SOAP

Platforms

Ruby on Rails, Unix, Bash Scripting, (K)Ubuntu Linux Desktop, Debian, Django, Typhoon PHP MVC, CakePHP, KohanaPHP, CodeIgniter, jQuery1.3, AJAX, JSON, RSS, Windmill TDD, Firefox 1/2/3, Internet Explorer 6/7, Safari, Red Hat 9, Fedora Desktop, Mac OSX, Windows 97/98/XP/Vista

Tools

Subversion (SVN), GIT, CVS, Trac – ISCM & PM, RedMine ISCM & PM, dotProject – PM, PHP Bug Tracker, phpMyAdmin, jEdit IDE, Eclipse IDE, DBWrench, Open Office, MS Office Suite ( Word, Excel, PowerPoint ), Photoshop 7 & CS 3

Servers & Networks

Ubuntu Server 6/7/8/9, SSHD (OpenSSH), Apache 1/2 HTTPD Server, WEBrick, Mongrel, Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack), MySQL 3/4/5, TCP/IP Application Layer, Oracle, FreeBSD

Theory, Paradigms & Best Practices

Object Oriented Programming (OOP), REST & RESTful Design, Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Software as a Service (SaaS), Model View Client (MVC), Extreme Programming (XP), Test-Driven Development (TDD), Database Modeling, MySQL Administration, Subversion (SVN) Best Practices, PEAR CS Standards, PHP Doc, CSS Based Design, Document Object Model (DOM), Web 2.0, Web Standards, Unified Modeling Language (UML), Understanding of the Software Lifecycle, Understanding of Design Patterns