As the technical lead for the development of Google Edu Analytics on GCP, I played a pivotal role in guiding its architecture and implementation, and in driving it to alpha within an aggressive timeline of less than one year. This involved strategizing, overseeing, documenting, and participating in its ongoing development, ensuring alignment with project goals and technical standards. My leadership contributed to the successful alpha launch of a cutting-edge product that hopes to dramatically improve education analytics.I also directed the ongoing development and maintenance of the BrightBytes platform, overseeing its evolution until the decision in February 2023 to sunset it. This involved advising a team of developers on various projects, personally building out capabilities related to privacy and security, and ensuring the platform's continued functioning and effectiveness. Additionally, I led the successful migration of the platform's dev ops infrastructure and release processes from Heroku to AWS, saving Google three quarters of a million dollars while ensuring minimal downtime and adherence to SLAs.

I played an instrumental role in facilitating the sale of BrightBytes to Google, showcasing my extensive product and domain knowledge, cogent presentation skills, and strategic business acumen. This involved navigating complex negotiations to drive a favorable outcome for the company and its stakeholders. Additionally, I strategically orchestrated the development roadmap for the BrightBytes platform, prioritizing initiatives that emphasized robust data integration pipelines and integration management tools to shorten integration time and reduce integration complexity.I also continued to collaborate closely with the development team to implement strategic plans that aligned with business objectives and upheld technical excellence. This involved fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation, and empowering team members to contribute their expertise towards achieving common goals.Overall, I demonstrated leadership by navigating a complex acquisition and driving forward-thinking technology initiatives, laying a solid foundation for organizational growth and innovation.

I single-handedly developed the entire platform from scratch for the first 10 months of BrightBytes, demonstrating exceptional technical prowess and resilience through early funding rounds. Thereafter, initially as the sole backend dev, I coded critical platform features and provided mentorship to junior developers, fostering a collaborative and growth-oriented environment. My unparalleled commitment and expertise were evident through my authorship of over 10,000 commits and more than 1 million lines of code over the following decade, making me the primary contributor to all key user-facing components.I also led the architecture and implementation of essential platform components, including the main user-facing website, the Early Warning Dropout service for integrated SIS data, the Survey Data apps for taking, building, and administering surveys, the DataHub app for managing SIS integrations, and (as sole author) a secure SIS PII service. All components utilized Ruby on Rails on Heroku and/or AWS to deliver robust and scalable solutions. Additionally, I architected and implemented a transition to using Sisense for data visualization, developing a CMS for experts in graphing education data (SIS, survey, predictive, and learning-app-usage data) to deliver charts and dashboards to users without needing any development involvement.Finally, as a skunk-work project, I created a Rails SQL CMS and ELT workflow runner app that I used to assemble a warehouse of all BB customer K-12 Student Information System data, and then transform it into a feature repository for predictive analytics. Using that feature repository as its data source, I created a Python framework to train, test, and validate TensorFlow models to predict the probability that a student would drop out of school, as each row was labeled with whether that student had graduated.

I led a team of Pivotal consultants in redesigning and reimplementing Climate’s user-facing flows for Midwestern farmers to build weather insurance policies, demonstrating effective leadership and collaboration skills, and showcasing an understanding of customer needs and industry requirements. Additionally, I solely rebuilt Climate’s internal Policy management CMS and its database schema, evincing technical expertise and autonomy in driving a critical infrastructure improvement. Demonstrated versatility and adaptability by seamlessly transitioning between leadership roles and hands-on development tasks, ensuring the successful delivery of complex projects. Leveraging my expertise in Ruby on Rails, I consistently designed and implemented robust solutions, enhancing the efficiency and usability of both internal and external systems. I am proud that my long hours of work contributed to Climate Corporation’s acquisition as a unicorn one year after I had left.

I was the primary developer on a two-person dev team of the original Mamasource website in the early days of Rails, as well as several critical services used for the mom-community site and, later, the Sweet Deals group-buying site. Notably, I authored a message queuing service for asynchronous method dispatch before any Ruby message queue gems existed, as well an outbound email system that used it to scale up to sending over 10 million emails per day. Additionally, I designed and implemented an email deliverability system that managed email addresses in response to bounces and abuse reports, ensuring optimal user communication and operational efficiency.I later played a pivotal role on a dev team of five as the primary backend architect and developer of the Mamapedia website. And, I was the sole backend developer of three Mamapedia apps, including the customer service app for remote CSRs to manage site content, the administrative management and reporting app, and the taxonomy system that organized Mamapedia content and mom-owned business ads. I also contributed to numerous features of the Mamapedia and group buying sites, demonstrating my ability to innovate and deliver impactful solutions that enhanced user experience.

I was the principal architect and developer of Kodak Gallery’s website for consumers to create personalized Photo Books and Photo Calendars, which was one of the first platforms in the industry for publishing physical books with high-resolution photos. As part of that project, I designed the data model and implemented the server processes for persisting user data from a Flash UI, generating JPEG pages for preview, and producing PDFs for dispatch to the photo lab for printing and binding. PDF and JPEG generation involved using XSLT, SVG, and Apache Batik/FOP, technologies with which I was not previously familiar, demonstrating my ability to learn quickly to create a novel product.Additionally, I architected and developed a complete rewrite of the data model and persistence objects for sharing, textually-searching, and managing photos, albums, and folders, for both web and mobile camera-phone users. Finally, early on I solely developed a CMS for inventory/pricing administration to streamline internal processes using JSPs, JavaBeans, and JDBC, demonstrating my ability to deliver a complete solution to a longstanding company problem.

I designed and developed critical CRM business-object and request workflow components using Java and EJB design patterns, writing most of the CRM’s data access logic and SQL. Additionally, I took the lead in architecting, developing, and performance-tuning all request workflow components, ensuring optimal system functionality and uptime. I also played a key role in isolating and debugging all system performance and uptime issues, conducting thorough analysis and resolution prior to release sign-off, thereby enhancing system reliability and user satisfaction.Furthermore, I solely designed and implemented various system components, including the JavaMail Message Reader and Knowledge Base rule actions for email auto-response, response-suggestion, and workflow routing, showcasing my versatility and expertise across different technology domains. Additionally, I solely developed a J2EE component for calculating and updating request queue statuses. I also implemented JMS publishers and listeners for server-component use, and also for integration with partner software. My contributions additionally included implementing email address resolution using JNDI and ensuring full support for reading, persisting, composing, and sending UTF- 8-encoded email, demonstrating my commitment to delivering accessible solutions. Minor contributions included implementing an email response personalization system, a Perl regex matcher for NLP, and porting the CRM’s installer from Windows to Solaris and Linux.

Soon after moving from professional services into development, I solely designed and implemented two CRM request workflow services from scratch using a dialect of LisP (ARTScript), demonstrating my initiative and ability to create significant system components with minimal oversight. One service prioritized and delivered unassigned requests to agents across agent-speciality queues based upon many configurable criteria concerning the requests, agents, and queues. The other service was a completely redesigned MAPI & SMTP mailer that improved upon its predecessor by drastically reducing memory footprint and improving scalability, using a single process rather than manyThereafter, as Brightware started gradually shifting its stack to Java and VB, I became the lead for development and maintenance of all legacy server applications using ARTScript, C++, and C; among the most important initiative I spearheaded was adding full support for legacy server multi-tenancy, allowing customers to dramatically scale up their implementations. Additionally, I developed the NLP server application’s support for knowledge bases and database access in Java, worked on the new VB knowledge management GUI for NLP and business rule definition, and reimplemented the VB database access DLL.

I reported directly to the Executive VP of Product Services and created custom implementations of our CRM product’s components tailored to meet the unique needs of our clients. One of my key accomplishments was developing an MS Access/VBA application to assess the performance of NLP Knowledge Bases on customer email corpora, providing valuable insights to improve implementation effectiveness. I was also responsible for resolving product issues on-site at our largest customer sites in the US and Europe, showcasing the trust Brightware placed in my competence and professionalism.Additionally, I demonstrated my technical proficiency by coding, documenting, and distributing a library of over 50 customizations, utilities, and patches for the CRM server components, enhancing functionality and usability for our customers. I also authored VB templates for integrating our product with partner software, and wrote our first integration, with Siebel, who later purchased Firepond for its Brightware product. I also created and taught a 40-hour training course about using this partner integration SDK, and taught it to engineers from partner companies. And, I wrote four lengthy Product Services operation manuals for our solution engineers in the field.Finally, prior to those efforts, I supported our solution engineers using Brightware’s expert system IDE and LisP-based programming language and rule engine to implement expert systems, e.g. for mortgage/credit approval and fraud detection at large financial institutions.

I provided high-volume support via phone, email, and fax for multiple versions of the Goldmine Software CRM, ensuring the timely resolution of customer inquiries and issues. I played a key role in documenting operational, troubleshooting, and configuration procedures for the CRM, as well as for synchronizing its data between laptops, facilitating efficient multi-channel delivery of support, and enhancing user experience. Additionally, I collaborated closely with cross-functional teams to escalate and resolve complex technical issues, contributing to overall customer satisfaction and retention.

I provided valuable assistance to patrons of the Circulation, Reference, and Special Collections departments of the Getty Center Library, ensuring their needs were met with professionalism and efficiency. I facilitated the smooth operation of library services by locating and delivering books and periodicals, assisting with research inquiries, and maintaining the integrity of the library's collections. I efficiently managed all Library courier services, ensuring timely, daily delivery of materials among all seven Getty Art History institutions, contributing to the overall effectiveness of Getty research operations.