Chad Norwood

Current
Address
2733 N Troy St
Chicago IL 60647
415-706-0710
chad AT chadnorwood.com
http://chadnorwood.com/resume/
Last Updated: 2010-2-12
Objective Solve business and technical challenges using my software engineering skills and over 10 years of internet experience
Experience Freelance Front End Developer, Chicago, IL. 7/2009 - Present
  • Worked with various clients on their web presence, from global interactive ad agencies to small local organizations. Adapted to needs - architecting solutions, hiring and interviewing teams, documenting procedures, writing code, and fixing bugs.
  • Wore many hats - Wrote technical specs, created wireframes in Omnigraffle/Visio, converted PSD's to working html/css/javascript, configured apache/php/wordpress/drupal systems for optimal performance, sifted through hundreds of files to fix bugs, created php/perl/shell scripts and processes to improve efficiency in deploying, updating, and debugging websites.
MidVentures, Chicago, IL. 2/2009 - Present
Web 2.0 company providing leading-edge software, design, marketing, and venture funding solutions
  • Remix Galaxy - Designed and implemented an API between PHP/MySQL and Flash using JSON. Brought incomplete music remixing website to demo ready state - initially built by India team, improved data model and fixed PHP classes, UI bugs, and broken user flows (like checkout process and music storage/retrieval using Amazon's S3).
  • Assorted - Brainstorming and flushing out of ideas to realistic business ventures. Promoted greater use of tools and structure like wiki for meeting notes and action items, trac for svn and eclipse development, campfire to go with basecamp, and more.
Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA. 8/2003 - 4/2006 (3 years)
Joined Yahoo search engineering team when it had 30 people, which grew to 600+ during my tenure due to yahoo switching from using google search results to using yahoo search results.
  • My Web 2.0 - Was the lead front-end engineer on myweb2, an online social and tagging based bookmark system. Won the Search & Marketplace award in Q3 2005 for myweb2 launch. Adapted to emergent requirements from upper management, sold team and management on new features and improvements, managed other front-end engineers, coordinated with designers, product managers, and backend engineers to meet an agressive launch plan. Worked in PHP/Apache/FreeBSD, cvs, and twiki, 10,000 lines of PHP code.
  • Video Search - Designed and implemented all the front-end engineering work before, during and after video search launch, working closely with the product manager and backend multimedia engineers. Worked in PHP/Apache/FreeBSD/cvs, writing over 5,000 lines of PHP code.
  • Search Front-End - Search FE (Front-End) team is responsible for all user facing components. Worked with team members in growing and improving code base as well as designing more robust and scalable infrastructure.
  • YTester - Designed, wrote, and maintained an automated testing system for web search and related verticals. Written mostly in perl, ytester ran hourly against production or test servers, generating html based reports that contained summaries as well as details of failures including a cached copy of the failed page. Traveled to Bangalore, India to teach ytester.
Cloudmark, San Francisco, CA. 4/2002 - 9/2002 (5 months)
Anti-spam startup company. 6th employee hired, left the company when the business shifted focus to enterprise solutions.
  • Razor Agents - Designed, wrote, tested and maintained the client code for Vipul's Razor 2.0, a unix spam-filtering tool written in perl.  Design included creating 16 packages totaling >5,000 lines of code, developed on linux, tested on various linux versions, freebsd, and solaris, distributed and maintained on sourceforge.  Maintenance included bug fixes, hand-holding important clients/users while troubleshooting issues, and monitoring and responding to mailing list (10 msgs/day).
  • Assorted - Performed many jobs required in a startup environment, including, but not limited to: architecture discussions, mbox/mail parsing/analaysis scripts, log analysis scripts, maintaining hashcache (caching server written in c using a sleepycat db that cached known spam signatures from master razor servers) and QA/debugging of spamnet outlook plugin.
Critical Path, San Francisco, CA. 7/1998 - 9/2001 (3+ years)
Email hosting startup company. Was 56th employee hired, raised $42 million in 1998 before IPO. Company peaked at over 1,000 people during my tenure.
  • Platform Architect - Designed and built with a team the next platform for hosted services, including 100,000+ virtual domains, 10 million users, email (pop/imap/smtp/webmail), calendar, addressbook, and directory services. The 3 tier network design included front-end proxy servers based on apache, middle-tier application servers, and oracle backend.
  • Locator - Designed, wrote, and QA tested a 'Locator' server by myself. Core to the new architecture, it located user info for all backend applications, allowing everything but the locator to be infinitely scalable with ease. Designed and wrote benchmarking client tools and server customizations to thoroughly compare LDAP/GDS to DNS/Dents. Implemented DNS solution (faster, used less resources) by writing a c module that talked to a sleepycat backend resulting in up to 5,000 queries/sec with a 10 million user db (kept entire db in RAM).
  • Dotfiles Server - Researched alternatives of storing and retrieving user metadata for 10 million users previously stored on NFS in user's home directories. Prototyped a Dotfiles Server using Apache and mod_perl, improving performance, reliability, and scalability. Rewrote prototype as an apache c module resulting in a server handling 800 queries/sec.
  • Brightmail - Integrated Brightmail's virus and spam checking libraries + tools into CP architecture. Consulted with Brightmail engineers over phone, email, and in meetings. Tested new releases before passing them to the operations group.
  • SSL/Security - Served as architect, programmer, tester, and liaison to Verisign in implementing an automatic SSL certificate issuing system. Designed to support 100,000s of domains, integrated verisign libraries into a web-based automatic billing and provisioning system with thousands of lines of perl code, consulted with their developer weekly and assisted in testing their beta code. CP customers could easily add SSL to their domains in 1-3 days without any work required by a CP employee.
  • LDAP Engineer - Created directory solution for critical path using Netscape Directory Server, including writing 4 server plug-ins (>3,000 lines of c code) and maintaining servers in production with custom perl scripts. Worked closely with QA in building test plans throughout the 2 year project.
Independent Work, San Francisco, CA. 1999 - Current (10 years)
Following my entrepreneurial spirit, encouraged groups in the community to create or improve their internet presence, often designing, building and maintaining the solutions myself.
  • Event Producer - Promoted, coordinated and administered non-profit events 10-15 times/year, the biggest of which generated $20,000 gross, with over 1,000 attendees.
  • Web Designer and Admin - Sole administrator for 7+ domains, Designed sites using a HTML, CSS, PHP, perl, javascript, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. Now hosted at hostmonster, domains originally ran on my own server - linux x86 PC using Apache virtualhosts, mod_ssl, mod_perl, and php 4. Apache served 4,000 requests/day, about 500MB. [1999-current]
  • MP3Find.pm - Designed and wrote Apache+Mod_Perl utility for creating MP3 playlists over the Internet which can be used for Audio CD burning software and other various MP3 players [more] [2001-2004]
  • AudioBriefcase MP3 Player Application - Similar to iTunes/Podcasts, designed Windows 98/NT/2000 app in Perl/TK that would contact website on a daily basis and automatically download mp3 content to players like Creative Nomad, Rio Diamond, and RaveMP using their respective SDKs. [7/2000-11/2000]
  • Various - contract perl work, email and system admin work, and multimedia work using video editing software.
Intel, Santa Clara, CA. 7/1995-6/1998 (3 years)
Began as a Graduate Rotation Engineer, an exclusive leadership program for recent university graduates exposing GRE's to 3 different business groups. Spent the last two years on the ATM team, as detailed in the first two bullets below.
  • Ported, integrated, and tested ATM Signaling and ILMI code - Ported 88,000 lines of C code from Harris & Jeffries (H&J) to work in a proprietary Windows 95/98/NT4 NDIS kernel mode driver for ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) network card. Consulted with H&J during development and testing. Provided product support after release.
  • Maintained a Demo Room and lab - Responsible for selecting, ordering, and configuring network components (switches, routers, analyzers), PC hardware (ATM and Ethernet NICs, Video Conferencing, DVD-ROM), Operating Systems (Win95,98,NT4) and applications of beta software and off-the-shelf products (Microsoft NetShow, ProShare) as well as presenting demonstrations to internal and external audiences.
  • Web site Administrator - Created two websites: First was resume search and management tool for managers, written in perl on linux. Second was marketing group information repository created using Frontpage, Word, Powerpoint on NT.
  • Researched the use of a Mobile Computer Benchmark - Wrote a documents, one on the benchmark and programs/methods used, and another analyzing the results of the benchmark.
  • Created GUIs for UNIX scripts - Wrote TCL/TK GUIs for HP-UX scripts in processor validation environment.
IBM, 1992 - 1993 (1.5 years)
  • Raleigh NC, 1993 - As a LAN architect, prototyped IEEE standard 802.5 Source Routing with NC State.
  • Manassas, VA, 1992 - Simulated a Token-Ring network on I-Logix's Statemate.
Technical
Summary
Languages: PHP, Perl, HTML, CSS, Javascript (ajax/jquery/yui/prototype), python, C, C++, Java, JSON, XML
Community: CPAN author, Sourceforge project admin, Greasemonkey
Servers: Apache, Bind, Dents, Sendmail, Exim, PerLDAP, Netscape Directory Server (now FDS)
Databases: MySQL, Sleepycat db, Oracle
Tools: svn, cvs, eclipse, trac, gcc, cvsweb, autoconf, RPM
OS: Mac OS X, Unix/Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD, Windows XP/ME/2000/98/95/NT
Applications: Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Pinnacle Studio
Education B.S. Computer Engineering, minor Computer Science, Graduated 1995 from Virginia Tech
750 GMAT Score, November 2008
Personal US Citizen.  Enjoy biking, running, snowboarding, ultimate frisbee, camping, hiking, backpacking, traveling, Burningman, continuing education, exploring leading edge technology and social tools, founding member of the Homebrew Club of Virginia Tech, IEEE member, and Eagle Scout.

After over 10 years of demanding work at both start-ups and established companies in Silicon Valley, in 2006 decided to take time off from a formal work environment to pursue neglected interests. These include spending time with family, traveling around the world, running a marathon, scavenger hunts, photography, cooking, green business involvement, exploring my passion for music, promoting urban events, and writing my blog.