Following the acquisition of my former company and the end of the transition period, I took a career break to focus on my family in Europe, and traveled in the US. During that period, I did some consulting jobs in France; I kept myself informed of technology news and changes, and took a class online on Machine Learning.

• Utilized the ability to see IT at macro and micro levels simultaneously within the company to develop the company's technology strategy and implementation, while contributing to the development of the primary business plan.• Designed and maintained a roadmap of projects to meet demanding business objectives, taking advantage of trends and new technology where appropriate, as well as produced cost-benefit and risk justifications for new IT initiatives to win budgetary support.• Managed procurement, email, backup, internal groupware, IT project management, source-code management, bug tracking, deployment, release management, quality assurance, application profiling, analytics, security, configuration, architecture, infrastructure, and hosting.• Merged 3 different company acquisitions into the technical environment and supervised the conception, operation, and maintenance of 3 datacenter colocations, including over 70 Windows/Linux hardware servers.• Managed the recruitment, development, retention, and organization of a team of 8 Engineers who oversaw both Development and Operation, while keeping staff focused, motivated, and growing into future technical leaders.• Developed architecture that was focused on high availability, security, and resilience for the datacenters and implemented network hardware including routers, switches, and firewalls, while ensuring the payment system was PCI DSS (SAQ D) compliant.• Drew-up and controlled the complete IT budgets, reducing operational and capital spending where possible through the use of Open Source technology, cost-effective procurement, efficiency gains, and effective coordination of resources.• Managed IT for the San Francisco and Paris offices, including all technical matters relating to the websites Horoscope.com, Astrology.com, Psychicenter.com, and Astrocenter.com, which garnered over 300MM page views per month, as well as 6 iOS and Android apps.

• Shaped the future of the company's systems by developing and directing software system validation and testing methods as well as software programming initiatives, and oversaw the development of documentation.• Managed the full software development lifecycle, executing project plans, and worked closely with clients and cross-functional departments to communicate project statuses, key project data, and proposals, building cohesion among teams.• Monitored system performance and analyzed data to effectively coordinate the installation of new systems or the modification of existing systems, as well as tested new software and fixed bugs.• Created innovative solutions to best meet the company's technical needs, including developing phone service software including Interactive Voice Response service, call management, credit card payment, and customer service systems.• Conducted C scripting on top of off-the-shelf Linux-based IVR frameworks, as well as performed C# web front-/back-end and services on Windows servers.• Provided daily, weekly, and monthly Newsletter subscription management, along with email building and delivery, including creating templates and allowing for customization of first name, date of birth, gender, and other option.• Created emails as files, managing the formatting, DKIM signing, packaging, and compression, while using the C# dedicated standalone process.• Managed email sending from files through Linus house-grown MTA, Perl, and shell and Python scripts, as well as sent result analysis for unsubscribing or delays and tracked metrics for email opening.