William Rivers Email & Phone Number

Covina, California, Us

Distinguished Data Architect responsible for providing scalable data models covering all aspect of the data requirements of millions of customers and our experts who provide services to them. My prior role at JustAnswer as Principal Software Engineer involved leading the development of RESTful APIs with a service based architecture and I have a particular focus on making sure the data models have the flexibility the business needs whilst working towards a minimal overhead for developers. JustAnswer is a high volume web marketplace that connects qualified experts to fee-paying customers. Scaling up with 24x7 availability is our key challenge, which we deliver in an incremental agile process.Data Platform * Leading a team of Data Architects, guiding them to best practice * Dramatic improvement in SLA attainment * Proposing a horizontal partition to reduce time to market of new features with 5x performance gain * Introduced unit testing for stored procedures * Led the introduction of ElasticSearch as a SEO content database * Adoption of CQRS where it has meaningful impact * Investigation of the feasibility of adopting an immutable model based on the Lambda architectureAPI / Platform Development * Developed a RESTful API that provides a rich set of services for the web clients * Engineered a Data Access Layer to encapsulate access to heterogeneous data stores * Designed a handler system to allow lean trials for MVP whilst protecting the main product codebase from entropyInfrastructure Development * Developed a database code generation and run-time optimizing system to provide fast, type safe, testable use of an extensive set of stored procedures * Proof of concept for supporting customer interaction via email, along with Data Science based analysis of natural language text for classification and noise reduction.Technologies used include:SQL Server, ElasticSearch, C#, Python, PowerShell, WCF, MVC, NHibernate, Redis, mySQL, RabbitMQ, DynaTrace.

Carrboro, Nc, Us

Board adviser on Product Development at Demographics Pro (previously Schmap), a leading provider of social data profiling (primarily Twitter based). I have advised on the design for their innovative range of geo-enabled integrated applications and their development of state of the art Twitter in-depth demographics, based upon Big Data analysis.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Cucku provided a highly secure peer-to-peer (P2P) backup service that enables multiple redundant backups to be made without requiring online server data hosting. * Responsible for architecture and development of .NET Web Services for this leading edge technology startup, to support the P2P communication in Skype and in XMPP (Jabber). * This involves a scalable SQL Server database design optimized for fast response times with no contention. * Implemented an ASP.NET web site with AJAX elements and custom security control. * The security architecture for the web server and database were designed around best practice and subjected to continuous automated testing. * Agile development process with daily unit and integration tests.

Skyline specializes in providing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) expertise to companies providing web delivery of geo-aware solutions. Developed a C# geo-location aware filtering and parsing system to deliver real-time aggregated information from multiple heterogeneous data feeds.

Exeter, Devon, Gb

Landmark is Britain’s leading supplier of land and property search information. Landmark's Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide mapping and environmental data to most of the UK’s legal and real estate professional firms. * Providing technical design and leadership on the fastest growing GIS products in the Landmark portfolio. This hands-on role involved significant staff mentoring and programming of mission critical components. * The web products have optimized delivery mechanisms and extensive security measures, which enabled Landmark to achieve 40% annual growth in web delivery and a dominant market position, plus a $20m pa revenue from GIS products. * The products are delivered to Windows browsers using a range of technologies, including ActiveX with C++ and Java, from a mix of Linux and Windows web servers. * Worked as the leading technologist in critical Intellectual Property disputes and assisted in contractual negotiation with strategic data suppliers. * Recruited and morphed the development team from a small number of generalist programmers into a team of 10 cross domain experts.

Prodat is the UK’s leading supplier of digital mapping, property and environmental risk information. Prodat pioneered the secure web delivery of this complex GIS information and has become Ordnance Survey’s (the UK mapping agency) largest Value Added Reseller (VAR). * Responsible for the Product Development strategy at this startup, including budgeting and responsibility for product delivery. The role also included extensive programming work under aggressive timescales. * The Windows product required a custom ultra-dense database to hold the GIS data and advanced security mechanisms to provide secure transactions and protect the data against theft, involving low level systems software and device drivers. * The first product release was achieved within 6 months and has grown strongly every year since then on a program of continuous improvement. It is highly profitable and has over 6000 customers. * Part of the executive team that steered Prodat’s sale to the Daily Mail Group in 1999.

Created a client for the WorkPro product, using AI language Prolog. This was an early CRM platform on multiple RDBMS, which enabled Quintus to expand into the Windows market.

Education record

Ma, Maths & Philosophy