Mark Hogben Email & Phone Number

Montreal, Qc, Ca

Gameloft, a mobile gaming company, runs a world wide high availability infrastructure to support its millions of clients run by the online gaming infrastructure teams. The games connect to a software suite, developed by the online platform teams, that provide the applications with social services, tracking, e-commerce, statistics and all services needed to support them. Our teams are located in our offices around the world with major groups in Montreal, Beijing, Tokyo and Bucharest and we take pride in the smooth coordination, support and camaraderie that has developed.In order to coordinate these many teams it is necessary to provide clear goals and to have strong local leaders who have the authority to direct their members to reach those goals. In our industry development proceeds very quickly and often there is no information or time for research and with many talented individuals, there can also come strong personalities and opinions. By listening to their feedback and allowing constructive opinions to surface, yet maintaining clear and precise goals, we have created a synergy that has fostered a harmonious highly effective working environment. We look for personnel that demonstrated willingness to work as a team and learn from each other so that the group is brought up as a whole.Responsibilities include managing world wide teams, escalation, coordination of platform development, infrastructure expansion, software releases, evaluation of new candidates and promotion of existing employees, 24x7 service coverage, evaluation and decision making on platform direction and software solutions, documentation and knowledge transfer, following industry standards and interoperability.

Manager of global System Administration group of 30 personnel (Montreal, Beijing, Tokyo and Bucharest). Coordinated projects and responsibilities between members, evaluation and promotion, and 24x7 service coverage to provide a highly effective and high availability platform. Interviewed and tested candidates, in conjunction with Gameloft HR, to hire personnel that demonstrated willingness to work as a team and learn from each other. By recruiting specialists in tools or DBAs the team was brought up as a whole.Took responsibility to handle the exponential growth in the platform to meet the expectations of the end users and the needs of the developers. This was accomplished by moving from complex servers to easily scalable clusters and using a centralized configuration tool (Puppet) so that each node could be easily replaced. Expanded network notifications (Icinga) and monitoring (Cacti). Escalated problems as needed to maintain availability and response time.Oversaw the use of innovative software resources, such as NoSQL, in conjunction with the existing traditional resources (SQL) as required by the developers to provide the flexibility and agility as is needed by a cutting edge technology company.Documentation is often the first thing sacrificed for expediency and a very costly expense when it comes to coordination and employee turn over. Made sure that all team members understood and took responsibility for knowledge transfer between members and in to the centralized repository so that no “quick fix” became a bigger problem down the road.

Online Gaming Infrastructure team.Formulate new relationships and partnerships with other companies.Facilitated communication between Online Gaming Infrastructure team and the Online Software.Development team.Puppet optimization.Coordination of software releases.Worked with Python developers to deploy custom online gaming software.Managed gaming infrastructure of over 300 severs, include bare metal and cloud based servers (Amazon AWS, Xen, Rackspace Cloud)Worked with QA Department to trouble shoot server problems related to specific games.

Search engine optimization (SEO )Search engine marketing (SEM) Analysis and reporting of site performance and statistics

Selected a new management company for the building.Implemented procedures to help the building run more efficiently.

Overseeing development of new technologies and migration to the cloudFormulate new relationships and partnerships with other companies.Design of application and new features Wireframe and specification documents, Implementation of changes and new featuresAnalysis and reporting of site performance and statistics to CEO Site performance optimizationCoordination of software releases Website Monetization adwords/adsense,cj, amazonSearch engine optimization (SEO ) (1700% increase in traffic)Search engine marketing (SEM) User Interface/Experience DesignProject Management: management of several developers over many complex projectsManaged a team that Implemented a video widget with .NET architecture, Google Cloud App Engine (Python), Google Analytics Set up email and social networking for the Tracktor WidgetWorked with Python developers in Montreal and Toronto to implement widget.Shut down and migrated most of the software infrastructure to rackspacecloud

Ca

Install, troubleshoot, and support Primarily Dell Power-edge servers , with Microsoft Server 2007, Ubuntu, Debian and Red-hat. Main point-of-contact for 20 clients for networking and server troubleshooting. Setup of DNS / Web / Email / ftp / & backup serversPerformed on-site installation, optimization, troubleshooting, replacement, and upgrade of hardware, software, and networks. Performed server migrations involving 10 or more servers from numerous machine rooms Openface, Canix, Citenet, Iweb.Migrated emails systems from Exchange to cyrus/postfix. Windows to Linux Implemented various redundancies for both data, power, and Internet connections. Purchase, brokering of domains with SEDO, Afternic, Escrow.com. (brokered deals involving Disney and Ubisoft)