Charlie Close Email & Phone Number

Goodrich, Mi, Us

Farmington Hills, Michigan, Us

Gale, a Cengage Group company, is a publisher of online and printed resources for students, researchers, educational institutions, and libraries.I work across multiple teams, using Gale data to solve problems and find opportunities. This requires a combination of analytical and technical ability, communication and salesmanship, and informal coordination and leadership.I got to:Work with the Sales team to identify potential customers for product offerings.Work the with Product and Software Engineering teams to discover and create product improvements.Work with the Editorial team to guide the creation of new content and update existing content.Create persistent, regularly-updated data services that are consumed across the organization.Build up awareness and demand for data services and data practitioners within Gale.Coordinate with other technical team members to create monthly Tech Tuesdays blog posts on the Gale blog. http://blog.gale.comProvide support and mentorship to Gale summer interns.Technical tools:Java, Python, RMySql, Neo4j, Oracle, Sybase, SQL ServerSQL, CypherTableau, AlteryxMachine LearningNatural Language Processing

Farmington Hills, Michigan, Us

I worked on the team responsible for the search engine that serves up content to Gale products. I specialized in helping students and scholars find the most relevant content for the tasks they were trying to accomplish.I got to:Conduct basic analytics and usage research, to discover pain points and opportunities, and advise product managers on how to improve our products. Think of it as computational UX.Be a key player in creating the InterLink feature, which puts links to reference articles within periodical articles. (Example: a link to Common Core on a journal article about Education Standards.) This feature makes Cengage content richer and easier to use.

Us

Blue Care Network is a health insurance company, the HMO subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.I led the software development and testing functions within the Interface/Batch group in BCN IT. In this role, I was responsible for resource management, career development, and for development and testing practices and processes, for a sixty-person team.I got to:Assess what was and was not working well across the organization and work out how to solve some of its most difficult problems.Introduce agile development techniques and processes into the organization for the first time, including creating and delivering a 12-hour course on Test Driven Development using JUnit to every technical lead and developer. Begin to introduce test driven design to the daily practice of each team on the production codebase.Support others in creating new knowledge-sharing practices, most notably helping the team members who started weekly brown bag sessions.Begin to restructure the group into cross-functional teams comprising developers, testers, analysts, and delivery leads. (Formerly these roles belonged to separate functional teams.)Plan and support the growth of the group from thirty to sixty developers and testers in order to implement the Affordable Care Act and other large initiatives.

Highland Park, Mi, Us

I converted from a Pillar employee to a direct Budco employee in February 2010 in the role of senior technical lead. In May 2010 I assumed the role of technical team lead.I led the technical arm of Budco’s Brand Management line of business. I had direct or dotted-line responsibility for twenty developers, systems analysts, production support analysts, and technical leads, with onshore and offshore members in three countries.I got to:Train nearly twenty new team members on a complex business system, including an offshore development team based in China and a four-person team of systems analysts. This allowed us to grow the team and greatly increase the amount of work we could handle.Mature the system so that it could be run by the analysts using configuration instead of developers writing code. This allowed our team to provide rapid, flexible, high-quality service.Technologies used: Java J2EE, Struts, Spring MVC, Spring, Hibernate, Oracle 10g, PL/SQL, JUnit, Hudson, and Linux.

Highland Park, Mi, Us

(Contract position through Pillar Technology Group.)Budco is a supplier of high-end marketing, print, data and call center services based in Highland Park, Michigan.I served as a technical lead for the Brand Management Platform (BMP), a multi-million dollar system built to execute direct marketing campaigns. I got to:Be one of the first members of the BMP team and serve as its first technical lead. Establish agile practices on the team, including daily standups, comprehensive automated testing with JUnit, continuous integration, short release cycles, and frequent pair programming.Deliver a highly-flexible marketing system to multiple customers.Technologies used: Java J2EE, Struts, Spring MVC, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Spring, Hibernate, Oracle 10g, PL/SQL, JUnit, Hudson, and Linux.

Columbus, Oh, Us

I led several teams in agile software development and system integration projects. Mecedes-Benz Financial – Systems AnalystMBF is the captive finance arm of Mercedes-Benz.I served as the systems analyst for an agile team.I got to:Contribute to the creation of MBF’s first iPhone application. Define the data integrations between the application and back end services.Delta Dental of Michigan – Project ManagerDelta Dental is an insurance company based in Okemos, Michigan. I served as the project manager for a ten-person agile development team.I got to:Contribute to the rewriting of the Subscriber module of Delta’s back-office systems, part of a larger multi-year initiative to migrate Delta off of the mainframe and onto current technologies and processes.Introduce agile development practices into Delta for the first time.Technologies used: Java J2EE, Oracle 9i, SOA, WebLogic, TopLink, JUnit, CruiseControl.Verizon Wireless – Technical LeadI served as the technical lead and chief developer of a business intelligence system for Verizon Wireless. I got to:Build a system to help rapid acquisition and display of marketing data, which allowed Verizon to make better and faster decisions and therefore win more market share.Technologies used: Java, Struts, Oracle 9i, and the JInsight JetChart graphics package. JUnit was used for automated unit testing.

Captura Software was a business software company that made Employee Payables, arguably the best expense management software in the world at that time, serving Global 200 companies in the US and Europe.I held several positions at Captura before and after Captura was acquired by Concur Technologies in July 2002.I was a development manager for the last version of Employee Payables (version 5.1), after which I was named as a development manager for Concur’s new Payment product. I got to:See agile development in practice for the first time, including automated unit testing with JUnit and Clover, as well as continuous integration and pair programming. Lead a teambuilding initiative to break down the hard walls that had formed between different workgroups. Included the creation of “pie time”, a regular knowledge-sharing practice that included pie.Build and maintain system libraries used by all other Captura teams and products.Work in a managerial role for the first time.In the spring of 2003 I left Concur to move back to my wife’s home state of Michigan.

I applied my professional services experience on the development team that created the administrative module for Employee Payables version 5.0. I designed and created many of its complex components and features. The module was noted for its high quality and speed of development. I got to:Apply the hard learning out in the field to building better products.Develop the administrative module for Employee Paybles 5.0.Set a high standard for quality and speed of development.Practice repeatable, software-driven testing (even before I heard of JUnit and continuous integration).Technologies used: Java J2EE, WebLogic, Oracle 9i, PL/SQL.

I served as a professional services consultant for the rollout of Captura implementations. I got to:Participate in the rollout of Employee Payables to Merrill Lynch in New York and London, including custom development and system configuration.

Excell Data Corporation was an IT consultancy based in Bellevue, WA.I designed, developed, supported, and rolled out systems for clients spanning five continents.I got to:Support Microsoft internal IT products for sales subsidiaries Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Participate in the rollout of CRM systems in subsidiaries in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Bogota, Colombia.

Metro is Seattle’s public transit agency. I worked in the Power & Facilities division.I got to:Design, document, and support timekeeping and work order systems for four sites spanning the Greater Seattle region.Practice software development and IT consulting for the first time.

Data Science

Bs, Music Technology

Bs, Mathematics