I am an experienced senior software engineering leader with a demonstrated history of helping software teams shorten feedback loops, ship software, and stay happy. I can manage developers, designers, product managers, and people managers. I can build and re-staff teams. I can own critical business systems and start open source projects. I can present to meetups, conferences, customers, and executives about Ruby, JavaScript, YAML, Web Applications, early history of PC game development, low-level processor optimization, Pair Programming, and Test-driven Development.
I drove efforts to improve Continuous Delivery chops, rebuild the engineer hiring process, optimize cloud services spending, rethink our approach to data engineering, and mature engineering practices.
Learned how, and how not, to grow the engineering discipline of a team to match the Series C funding; Learned how to manage teams through two layoff cycles.
I recharged while writing about my career experience, getting involved with the Pivotal Alumni network, optimizing our home meal planning, and improving our household operations to accommodate working and schooling from home. I helped a few companies in my network. I have aided architecture, design, and development for Curious Duck and advised about web content application development for Bigger Bolder Baking.
PKS (now known as TKGI) was a jointly-developed Kubernetes distribution from Pivotal & VMware that was a service for Pivotal Cloud Foundry (now known as Tanzu Application Service). Pivotal was acquired by VMware in late 2019.
I was the Engineering Lead on the PKS Release Engineering team. I defined, prioritized, and accepted the work for this team of 10 developers from Pivotal and VMware. We optimized CI/CD, doubling the number of concurrent releases from 2 to 4 while reducing the cycle-time-per-change by 75% - from 4 days to 1.
As a member of the leadership team reporting to our VP of Engineering, we restaffed a team from Ireland to the US, dealt with regular joint-venture management issues, and managed our team through an acquisition. I continued to run the summer intern roundtable, incorporating the Palo Alto interns from the PKS and Greenplum teams.
Learned how to navigate conflicting management styles to a common goal, how to manage an entire team transition across 8 time zones, how to DRY up hundreds of YAML files with shared components.
Pivotal was the primary sponsor of the Cloud Foundry project, a multi-cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for deployment of web apps and services. Pivotal sold its own version of CF, now known as Tanzu Application Service.
I was an engineer on the Open Source CF Cloud API team and managed 4 engineers on other teams. I facilitated working sessions to improve managers’ skills across the San Francisco office. I rebuilt the summer intern experience, starting a weekly “intern roundtable,” where Pivotal leaders from around the company came for an AMA-style chat with our developer, product manager, and designer interns.
Learned how to mentor a staff of new engineering managers, how to build a better intern experience, and how to refresh my Ruby on Rails skills.
I created this team out of a need to improve the development & maintenance of our business-critical, internal software projects. I grew this team from zero to 15 developers, product managers, and designers across two sites - San Francisco and Toronto. I drove budgeting and prioritization exercises with executive staff for our work. I also coached other IT teams regarding Pivotal’s agile practices.
Learned how to make a business case for a team, staff that team, how to manage across multiple sites, how internal back office customers are not quite like end consumers, and how to present to exec staff.
I managed a staff of 40 developers and 5 managers, about one-third of the San Francisco consulting practice. I scoped projects, wrote proposals, and managed the business relationship for clients. I scheduled “beach” time for 8 Pivotal Labs open source projects across multiple offices. I continued to present at conferences, meetups, and clients about Pivotal, Extreme Programming, and testing JavaScript. Pivotal Labs is now known as VMware Tanzu Labs.
I was a member of the first manager cohort when Pivotal grew to need managers. I managed ten individual developers. I continued to lead consulting projects for clients. I also presented at conferences, meetups, and clients about Pivotal, Extreme Programming, and testing JavaScript.
I was a engineer on dozens of consulting projects, all Ruby on Rails or JavaScript web-mobile applications. I co-created Jasmine, a BDD framework for JavaScript testing, to enable our teams to work more efficiently with front-end development.
Learned how to be a software consultant, how to practice agile software development every day, how to start an open source project, and how to build feedback-oriented management skills across an organization.
I led the development team for Divine Caroline, a web-only women’s interest magazine. This was custom CMS built in Rails. As a startup, they intended to sell the platform for online magazines. The writing and editing staff was our real-world, yet internal customers.
Learned that every startup is different, that sometimes indirect management of people is more impactful than direct, and that surrounding yourself with people in diverse roles makes for a much more fulfilling day.
Taught myself Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and SQL in order to keep sharp. Also learned that I liked both object oriented programming and web development.
I designed and managed implementation of software that updated the OS and applied carrier customization for every Treo phone at the end of the manufacturing line. This reduced the elapsed time to manufacture a phone from hours to minutes. Also managed the team that built the in-box CD for every Palm product.
I led prioritization and implementation for the Messaging and Photos applications for Treo 600 and Treo 650. I managed remote partners for app libraries.
I managed the team of 5 developers that produced daily builds of the internal SDKs for application developers. I inherited, re-prioritized work for, and shipped a new internal bug database, based on Bugzilla.
Learned how to start managing software engineers, how to inherit a team and improve its throughput, how to think about user outcomes first before jumping to solutions, and how to manage through layoffs and acquisitions. Also had my first exposure to web development and Extreme Programming, separately.
I was the architect for high performance image processing, signal processing, and JPEG compression libraries. I managed the remote development team in Sarov, Russia, who were were employed as part of the Clinton/Yeltsin Nuclear Cities Initiative).
Learned how to release software via the web, how to manage a remote team in another timezone, and how to appreciate Russian caviar.
I was one of the first engineers hired, developing an object oriented web graphics editor for Microsoft Windows. I developed image filters and style-related application code.
Learned about startup craziness, the benefits of a good software development process, and how to present at a sales conference.
I maintained an animation codec, including combining two separate codebases in order to halve the time it took to fix a bug. I added this codec to games like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. I wrote MMX assembly routines for games, including Riven: The Sequel to Myst.
Learned how to code for a real-world consumer application deadline, how to simplify legacy code, how to work with Customer Support regarding high-cost bugs, and how to use personal contacts to establish a new business relationship. I never learned where in the world Carmen Sandiego was.
I was a developer on the DCI project, which proved that direct-to-frame-buffer and accelerated graphics were viable on Windows. This tech shipped with Windows 95. It led to three patents and became the inspiration for DirectX 1.0 and the XBox.
Learned how to write production code in the real world, how to build an SDK to teach developers to use your API, and how to travel internationally on 4 hours notice.
B.S., Computer Science, July 1992
General Management class and electives, since fall 2017