Steven Atkinson Email & Phone Number

Los Gatos, Ca, Us

As a new member of the esteemed Platform Engineering group at Netflix, my role is to work with the Dynamic Configuration team.

Los Gatos, Ca, Us

Steve and the Netflix DVD team delivered more efficiencies and better experience to DVD customers. Initial projects included capacity planning and code modernization and simplification. Later projects have included technology migration, cost reduction and AppSec specialties.* Consolidated backend of website to 3 cloud servers (a 90% reduction) and authored new services for security and merchandising.* Saved $500k+ removing legacy systems and consolidating databases after inheriting costs of the data center.* Team efforts yielded record operating margin of 70%; the business became more efficient at making money despite declining customer base, content and increased postage costs.* Drove a security improvement program for the site reducing traffic by 90% to sensitive endpoints.* Re-architected large areas improving resilience and reducing response times by 50% for home page loading.* Introduced client-encryption of card details ensuring 100% of credit cards across Netflix never leak.* Decreased traffic volume to streaming services more than 60% for customer recognition and login.

Blacksburg, Va, Us

Steven established a model project for CS5244 - Internet Software in the Computer Science Department's Master's program, as well as running weekly online course Q&A sessions.He is developing a novel Masters course "AI Tools in Software Development".* Raised enrollment by 100% over 5 years to more than 100 students per class.* Directed curriculum and model projects for 14 week Web and Android courses.* Defined 5 real-world patterns that layer on each other using project-based-learning.* Published two papers and received consistent evaluations 5%+ above department.* Answered hundreds of student questions using an online forum as moderator.

Seattle, Wa, Us

Architected and built a scalable backend service for storing personal memories- the main product premise is richer mixed multimedia posts for deeper connection with posts. Worked with the founder on MVP, roadmap and hiring. Managed React Native client teams who delivered a series of impressive upgrades to the product.* Managed 9 people across React-native mobile, Java server and AWS teams.* Rebuilt first MVP to scale to thousands of customers, added features simultaneously. * Authored the engineering section and liaised with the founder on 10+ investor updates. * Stored thousands of multimedia memories for customers using AWS technology.

San Jose, California, Us

Steve developed a server-side gateway and HTML5 web sockets technology stack. Steve implemented a pluggable single-sign-on solution for native web sockets, techniques for reverse connections through closed firewalls with WebSockets and has implemented multiple performance benchmark suites. In addition, he helped refactor the core of the gateway product.Technical Achievements – Tenefit * Facilitated the sales team to retain the largest customers, generating $100k revenue.Authored the Enterprise Shield™ method for two major banks allowing connections through closed firewalls to shield the internal network from outside access.* Awarded 2 patents used for leveraging proprietary WebSocket extensions, including an in-band protocol for WebSocket re-authorisation and security via closed firewalls.- Designed and implemented x-kaazing-http-revalidate extension for periodically reauthorizing a long-lived WebSocket connection- Designed and implemented x-kaazing-extended-handshake protocol for allowing richer extension negotiation during WebSocket handshake* Enhanced the server hi-speed gateway product, and coded clients in 5 languages.* Defined a plugin single-sign-on solution for native web sockets to retain 2 major customers with variations in identity management schemes.

Los Gatos, Ca, Us

As a member of the e-commerce group, Steve collaborated on various projects, leading the development of e-commerce applications for PS3 and CE devices, and heading the development of the Canadian Netflix website. He implemented a geo-ip library, and made numerous improvements to the sign-up site through testing. Steve also introduced the concept of a guest session to conserve site resources and coordinated closely with other teams to deliver large-scale infrastructure projects. In addition, he crafted product specs, project plans, and task definitions, contributed estimates, and implemented marketing efforts.Technical Achievements - Netflix* Established and managed a 3-person "tending the garden" team, paying off technical debt by removing and simplifying over 5 major subsystems and untangling monolithic components.* Pioneered the launch of acquisition team's initial TV and device products for Sony PS3 and CE devices, resulting in a 50% higher engagement than expected. - Addressed unique concerns for long-life TV pages through round-tripping and session cookies.* Delivered e-commerce team's Canada launch 4 weeks ahead of schedule. - Introduced capability abstraction to eliminate country-specific code. - Globalized the marketing content and promotions system.* Developed and promoted the adoption of an acquisition experiment system, increasing the accuracy of guest-driven tests by more than 1% (confidence interval size).* Persuaded 50 engineers to reduce site push downtime from 4 hours to 20 minutes.* Advocated for the e-commerce team's adoption of Spring transactions, saving 2-3 weeks of development time and debt across acquisition and account teams. This enabled modular code development in payment and email spaces for both front-end and back-end applications.* Implemented a shared geo-ip library for e-commerce and streaming divisions, which the platform team subsequently adopted.

As a software developer and architect at this angel-funded early-stage enterprise software startup specializing in online knowledge management, Steve designed and implemented a range of software solutions. He built an Ajax-enabled GUI framework, a JavaScript framework, a build system, and performed feature development.Technical Achievements – Entrege* Served as the lead engineer in a team of two for a pre-Google-Docs hyper-secure Digital Content Vault, focusing on compliance and auditing use cases.* Hired 3 contractors specializing in Windows, backend design, and user experience improvements. Streamlined builds, databases, and operations/deployment scripts, eliminating the need for one FTE and enhancing deployment frequency.* Designed a Digital Content Vault featuring Audit Trail management and security through public-key encryption. - Encrypted user content with the user's own public key, storing their private key in a separate keystore using the SHA of their current password as the keystore key password. When users changed their passwords, only the keystore password would be updated, ensuring encrypted content remained stable across password changes.* Developed the concept of workspaces, including content sharing and categorization, serving as the main architect. This core functionality resembled Google Wave.* Created a JavaScript Framework based on Prototype and Behavior.js. - Incorporated a template-based UI with a "deck of cards" abstraction for main panel variations, conserving resources through load-once semantics and behavior painting.

At LinkedIn, Steve developed enterprise-grade web service features and tests using Agile development methods in short release cycles. He introduced daily testing and mentored other developers, ensuring feature-completeness by collaborating with product and operations managers. Steve co-developed groups, invitations, and address book features, along with numerous usability and growth-focused enhancements. He participated in significant performance-oriented backend upgrades and database optimization.Technical Achievements – LinkedIn* Became the first non-founding engineer hired externally, joining the core founders.* Established daily testing for business logic and acceptance test suites, minimizing time to resolution with early results each morning.* Implemented critical growth and usage features that contributed to an 18,000% increase in the customer base over two years. These features included groups, ignore-invitations, address book, customer service tools, jobs, InMails, and reference search.* Expanded the HTMUnit/Jaxen/Xpath acceptance testing framework.* Enhanced test fixtures to enable personality-based testing.* Implemented a variety of features in early-stage weekly release cycles, such as groups, ignore-invitations, address book, jobs, subscriptions, and customer service tools.

Us

As the technical lead, Steve oversaw the development of a comprehensive suite of healthcare back-office web applications. Utilizing a proprietary suite of C++ mini-application servers, he ensured the efficient deployment of the system to five medium to large-sized hospitals.The system was an EMR scanning solution allowing physicians and other healthcare roles to view and annotate medical records.

Steve implemented a secure XML-message-based client-server protocol, along with application servers in Java and C++. The framework supported the creation of products such as content sharing, CRM, and secure healthcare applications.Technical Achievements – Momsdesk Commerce- Developed a high-scale, high-volume Java framework within a month of starting, complementing the existing C++ framework for efficient data movement.- Deployed content management and healthcare applications to two major hospitals, utilizing this technology.- Took responsibility for Java performance, Java protocol compatibility with C++, and testing, identifying critical bugs through a meticulous approach to testing and performance improvement.- Created a role-based CRM product tailored for IT startups.- Developed a content management system for generic document deployment.

Morgantown, West Virginia, Us

Steve took charge of designing and delivering a software research project focused on creating an IDE based on formal, scalable component-based engineering principles. He contributed to the publication of international conference, journal, and workshop papers in the field of software engineering.The project engaged students in building a compiler for the RESOLVE language, providing them with hands-on experience programming in a language that granted complete access to mathematical specifications of software components.In addition to his project work, Steve mentored and guided two Master's students, helping them achieve their thesis goals.