Steven Williams is a CTO at TeamAssurance. He possess expertise in solution architecture, java enterprise edition, team leadership, agile methodologies, test driven development and 22 more skills. Colleagues describe him as "I've never quite found the words to describe Steve and hence the delayed recommendation, but I have a better idea now - 2-3 years later - of what Steve did different (or so I think). In short, Steve rocks (yes, I just added that word to my vocab). For a longer version of the last sentence, read on. During my first year or so at Object Consulting, I was fortunate enough to have Steve as the team lead+architect at our project. From a software skills viewpoint, Steve is one of those rare people who - to borrow terminology from 'Refactoring Your Wetware (PragProg LLC)' - easily combines his R-mode with his L-mode. In more layperson terms, his sense of aesthetics and symmetry blend so well with his technical depth to produce wow-designs. Truly someone to learn from. His willingness to try new things, and risk different approaches is something that I wish more people in power could handle. In spite of his abilities, he was more than willing to share, and to have his design questioned, and in my experience he was gracious to accept suggestions even from someone who was not as experienced. This genuine openness was something I found most striking. As far as team leading goes, Steve tried his best to keep his team happy, and challenged. Even during the most boring sustained phases of bug fixing and maintenance on a client project engagement, he would find ways to make things more fun - off-site retrospectives, new technology to play with while adding value to the project, and just generally listening to gripes of boredom and stagnation etc., he /understands/ developer mentality (since he too is a great developer). It is something I sorely miss." and "Steve was a great person to work with. He had excellent technical skills but more importantly was driven to improve his knowledge in emerging areas. His energy in this area was infectious and certainly inspired me to pursue new areas of interest. He would make a great technical architect as his open-mindedness would make him very enjoyable to work with. I was glad to have had him alongside me on one of the toughest projects I worked on at Object."