Senior Software Engineer @ Arboreal AI, Berkeley, CA. 12/2024 - present

• Developing a Python-based chatbot with a Streamlit front end and different AI models on the backend, exploring advanced functionalities such as integrating AI-driven function calls, implementing automated unit testing, and conducting AI evaluations using Parea.AI. Continuously experimented with cutting-edge techniques to enhance performance and capabilities. Contract work.

Director Of Engineering @ Engine Media Group, EMX, Chicago, IL. 11/2017 - 7/2022

Digital Advertising company, tech-enabled, data-driven, solving the business challenges of marketers, agencies, and publishers. EMX is the fully owned technology that powers Big Village's programmatic advertising business

• 2020-2022 Worked directly with SVP of Engineering on solving difficult challenges, such as improving architecture, troubleshooting complex system issues, improving agile processes, mentoring engineers, and collaborating with other directors. Our high performance ad system was based in AWS and handled over a million QPS spread across multiple data centers and continents.
• 2017-2020 Owned development and operations for Balihoo, a cloud-based local marketing platform that enables clients to manage ads using Google AdWords and local websites across thousands of locations. Used dozens of AWS cloud services, mostly Python and node.js Javascript, with over 100k/day API calls to Google Ads. Wrote Code and Managed team, including project resourcing, interviewing, hiring, firing, and career growth. Transitioned everything to offshore team in 2020.

Software Engineering Manager @ Opticsplanet, aka Ecentria, Chicago, IL. 5/2013 - 4/2017

E-commerce and technology company

• As manager responsible for 2 cross-functional teams, 11-14 people, including quality of features and code, scheduling and meeting deadlines, hiring and firing, annual reviews and budgeting.
• Interviewed hundreds of candidates, hired and onboarded 15 over 3+ years.
• Strong believer in empowering teams by promoting individual career growth, transparency of work, and team collaboration.
• Promoted agile lean and kanban methodologies, defined and evolved roles and guidelines, and acted as Scrum Master on both teams.
• Collaborated with business and management on direction, architecture, scheduling, delivery, and maintenance of project work.
• Continued reviewing all code by my teams as well as writing code for various side projects, such as prototyping technical solutions, customizing atlassian products, and enabling visualization of work.

Senior Developer @ Critical Mass, Chicago, IL. 3/2010 - 5/2012

Digital Advertising Agency providing Marketing, Strategy, Branding, Creative, Technical, Analytics.

• As senior developer worked with clients and internal teams to architect, build, deploy, and maintain code for websites. Supported desktop, mobile (iPhone, Android), and tablets (iPad).
• Led CM in implementing Test and Target framework from Adobe (Omniture). Improved use of Adobe Sitecatalyst in several areas.
• Clients included United Airlines, USAA, TE Connectivity, Nissan/Infinity, Auto Trader, Moen, and Budweiser.

Internet Engineer @ Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA. 8/2003 - 4/2006

At Yahoo search engineering, grew from 30 to 600+ during my tenure due to search backend switching from Google to Yahoo.

• My Web 2.0 - Was the lead front-end engineer on myweb2, an online social and tagging based bookmark system. Sold team and management on new features and improvements, managed other front-end engineers, coordinated with designers, product managers, and backend engineers. Worked in PHP/Apache/FreeBSD, cvs, and twiki
• Video Search - Designed and wrote the front-end code.
• YTester - Designed, wrote, and maintained an automated testing system for web search and related verticals, written in perl. Taught YTester in Bangalore, India.

Software Artist @ Cloudmark, San Francisco, CA. 4/2002 - 9/2002

Anti-spam email startup company. Designed, wrote, tested and maintained the client code for Vipul's Razor 2.0

Software Engineer @ Critical Path, San Francisco, CA. 7/1998 - 9/2001

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 - Collaborated on platform for hosted services, including 100,000+ virtual domains, 10 million users, email (pop/imap/smtp/webmail), calendar, addressbook, and directory services.
• Locator - Designed, wrote, and QA tested a 'Locator' server using LDAP/GDS.
• Brightmail - Integrated Brightmail's virus and spam checking libraries + tools into CP architecture.
• SSL/Security - Served as architect, programmer, tester, and liaison to Verisign in implementing an automatic SSL certificate issuing system.

Engineer @ Intel, Santa Clara, CA. 7/1995-6/1998

• Hired as a Graduate Rotation Engineer, a leadership program for recent university graduates. Worked in various groups, wrote Windows kernel driver for ATM network card, wrote perl/linux websites, IT for Demo Lab, etc.

Independent Consultant, 1999 - present

• Various Internet Related - Built, improved, and maintained client's online presence, from global interactive ad agencies to small local organizations. Adapted to needs - architecting technical and business process solutions, hiring and interviewing teams, documenting procedures, writing code, and fixing bugs.
• Raspberry Pi - usb temp controller, lighting, python, etc.
• Bureau of Trade (2012) - As software architect, Designed and built a JSON API server in node using mongo db backend, deployed on heroku, to house all product and curated data. Built admin website for API using Twitter bootstrap. Built a simple mobile web app, serving static html/css/js using backbone.js framework, where browser fetches data from JSON API server.
• MP3Find.pm (2002) - 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]
• Event Producer - Promoted, coordinated and administered 20+ non-profit events, the biggest of which generated $20,000 gross, with over 1,000 attendees. Volunteered at dozens of other events in various roles, coordinating and leading other volunteers, documenting processes, troubleshooting technical and audio issues, and doing it all with a joyous and positive attitude.

Languages: Javascript (browser and server-side), Typescript, Python, PHP, Perl, ruby, HTML/CSS/SASS, bash, C, C++, Java

AI: Applied GenAI, LLMOps, and LLM evaluations. OpenAI API, Together.ai

Architecture: Scaling and Integration, SOA and Microservices, Distributed System Patterns, REST vs EDA, SSO and Identity Management: OAuth 2 + OpenID Connect (OIDC), SAML

Cloud: Amazon Web Services/AWS: Lambda, SWF, EC2, S3, SNS/SQS, Elastic Beanstalk, Redshift, IAM, Cloudtrail, Cloudwatch, Cloudfront (CDN), Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Route 53 (DNS). Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Development: Express, React, AngularJS, Symfony, Twitter Bootstrap, RabbitMQ, Heroku

Community: gitlab, github, NPM author, CPAN author, Sourceforge project admin, Greasemonkey

Servers: Node.js, Django, Rails, ElasticSearch, Nginx, Apache, Bind, Dents, Sendmail, Exim, PerLDAP

Databases & Stores: PostgreSQL, GraphQL, MongoDB (nosql), MySQL, Oracle, Redis, Cassandra, OpenSearch

Tools: Atlassian suite (jira, bitbucket, confluence, bamboo), git, svn, cvs; Sublime, VS Code, Phpstorm, Eclipse; trac

OS: Mac OS X; Linux: Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat; Solaris; FreeBSD; Windows 10/8/XP/2000/98/95/NT