Thomas Speller Email & Phone Number

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

Following the success of XModule in my previous role, we spun out a new engineering team to focus on future development of XModule as well as our own web services-based integrations leveraging XModule. As the leader of this team, I have managed the development of a SaaS middleware framework utilizing AWS Lambda and several other serverless technologies to provide common methods and patterns for quickly integrating external products/services with Modo's applications. In addition, I act as the technical manager for an overseas engineering team of 10 FTEs that primarily develops integrations with XModule using our middleware framework.While in this role my team developed a Covid-19 Self Assessment module, which became a critical and heavily trafficked feature of Modo's apps during the 2019-20 pandemic. I also personally developed a SOAP-based integration between XModule and Corrigo (a facilities mgmt. platform), and an iOS SDK integration with "blue dot" provider Mist Systems.An important aspect of my position is setting/influencing the direction of other teams developing integrations with our product. I still regularly interface with the technical staff on our Services team to promote knowledge sharing and best practices (particularly for XModule), and I consulted with one of our partners (and investors), Schneider Electric, on developing iOS and Android plugins for use in Modo's apps. I also write our customer-facing developer docs for XModule and regularly collaborate on associated training materials.

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

In this role I managed 10 technical staff members on our Services team, which included a combination of software developers, technical support staff, and QA testers. My personal goal while in the position was to free up our developers for more forward-thinking projects, while enabling non-technical staff to take on more routine technical tasks.Upon being promoted to this position, I immediately initiated a project to prototype "XModule," a new technology which aimed at enabling our customers to develop custom, data-driven modules in our mobile applications (that my team may have otherwise been responsible for developing and maintaining) without having to learn our underlying framework or stack. XModule has since been patented and has become a cornerstone of Modo's product offering, which many customers use today to make their apps essential for their users. For our efforts, Modo awarded the two of us 2017's ***Team of the Year***, of which I was named team lead.Another successful project I co-developed during this period was integrating one of our apps with Uber's web APIs--the app enabled attendees at Modo's annual user conference to book comped Uber rides to/from the conference venue. Nearly everyone at the conference used the feature, which helped secure a lucrative partnership with the ride-sharing company at the time.Other unique duties as part of this position included:• implementing the first management-level reporting of support team activities• presenting quarterly updates on team trends and progress to Modo's Board of Directors• being responsible for hiring technical support staff

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

A leadership role in which I continued to flex both software development and project management skills, but also started and managed several initiatives with the goal of enabling non-technical staff members to play a larger role on Modo's Services team. These initiatives included:• leading the development of a PHP-based diagnostic tool, called the Feed Inspector, to enable non-technical staff (as well as customers and partners) to diagnose problems with our customers' external data sources• forming a technical sub-team to promote discussions around potential product and process improvements, promote knowledge transfer between team members, and identify and disseminate best practices• conducting a research project in which we scoured our GitHub repos analyzed all customizations the team had developed over the past two years on top of our core product, in order to identify product deficiencies to feed back into our product development process; in addition to leading to certain product improvements, the report received praise internally and was shared with upper managementAs part of this role, I developed both an iOS and Android plugin (at the time in Objective C and Java, respectively) that integrated our native applications with a third party SDK from Radius Technologies, ultimately to enable an interface with Bluetooth BLE beacons that could trigger certain actions within our application. The plugins became part of Modo's product offering and later formed the basis for Modo's own direct support for BLE beacons.During this period, I worked more frequently with Modo's Fortune 500 customers (e.g., Capital One), particularly as Modo began offering more Single Sign-on (SSO) integrations with the customer's Identity Provider (IdP). SAML-based authentication was especially popular, for which I established a set of best practices for the Services team to follow when implementing SAML with the customer's SSO.

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

A customer-facing role on Modo's Services team that mixed software development and project management skills. Often worked directly with customers (e.g., Georgetown University, Belmont University, several CSU campuses, and many others) to manage timelines around their mobile initiatives, which were typically in the form of onboarding new mobile applications, migrating legacy applications to Modo's new platform, and performing integrations with Student Information Systems (SIS/ERP).Wrote many PHP-based customizations to Modo's core platform to tailor the product to fit the customer's needs. Worked extensively with customers to test and consume third party web services, including from Oracle PeopleSoft's SOAP-based Enrollment Web Services, in order to integrate features such as student registration into our mobile applications. Also regularly debugged problems in our PHP application server and recommended fixes to product engineering.

Survey Data Analysis Project – Cue Ball Capital- Developed automated reports for an online survey taken by readers of a NY Times bestseller by integrating an existing MySQL database with MicroStrategy reporting capabilities- Cleansed survey data by developing PHP scripts to flag problematic entriesSupply Chain Analytics Project - DoD- Developed a custom software package for Mathematica to visualize supply chains and provide statistics- Researched and adapted algorithms to improve the software package’s compute time on large matrices- Developed automated scripts to cleanse survey dataBrain Activity Mapping Project - Johns Hopkins- Aggregated graph data from the Human Connectome Project (a mapping of millions of neurons in the human brain), by experimenting with different clustering algorithms (e.g., k-means) to create meaningful visualizations- Used a combination of Matlab and Mathematica for computation and visualization, and tested scalability of certain algorithms using Hadoop/Pig on Amazon Web ServicesSide Projects- Developed the iOS app "Trivia Every Day"- Developed the educational iPad game "PICK the PiC!"

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

Prototyped a Ruby on Rails app that integrated with Blender (Python-based 3D modeling software) to automatically generate 3D-rendered planograms; RBM subsequently turned the prototype into part of their product offering.

Cambridge, Ma, Us

Mentored project teams, reviewed homework and assigned grades, distributed teaching materials, and regularly responded to student questions/discussions.

Masters, Sdm - Sloan School Of Management And School Of Engineering

Engineering And Management, System Design And Management

Business Administration Courses

Bachelor Of Arts