I am a developer and an entrepreneur. With a passion for business and technology, I enjoy building applications people actually want to use. My professional experience consists primarily of roles related to the development of web-based applications. With that experience I've learned a thing or two about best practices on small, agile development projects. I enjoy converting ideas for new applications and services into profitable or open-source offerings.

21st Century Music, Kirkland, WA
2005 - 2007
Web Developer

• Designed, built, and deployed an e-commerce application built on Ruby on Rails tailored to the music industry with features such as multiple front-ends, inventory management, and digital media sales.
• Deployed, monitored, and maintained internal and production systems, databases, and application servers.

UpSellUSA, Seattle, WA
2003 - 2005
Engineering Manager

• Managed a team of 8 developers and designers delivering the company's web-based products.
• Responsible for technology and platform decision making at the company level.
• Developed and implemented development, operations, documentation, and testing processes and procedures.
• Reported to CEO, COO, or VP of Operations.

From leading the development and internal helpdesk teams to making infrastructure and system design decisions, my responsibilities include everything related to technology at UpSellUSA. I am the interface between project management/business stakeholders and the developers: making estimates, scheduling projects for development, and acting as a resource for developers. My managerial duties include mentoring, performing reviews, hiring and firing, coordinating the activities of the team and contractors, and planning team building activities. Other duties include authoring technical documentation, negotiating vendor contracts, implementing reporting systems, QA, and development.

2002 - 2003
Technical Architect

• Responsible for design, implementation, and maintenance of web-based administration tools and reporting systems that supported the incentive management system.
• Planned, installed, and maintained internal and external networks and systems, including web, database, file, and backup servers.
• Authored technical and user documentation using DocBook.
• Reported to Engineering Manager.

My job description at UpSellUSA could be defined simply as "everything". I was responsible for the care and feeding of all the IT systems, from web-based tools written in PHP and Perl, to a variety of hardware and software platforms, to the phone system.

Real Networks (RBN), Seattle, WA
2002
Web Developer (Contractor)

• Helped gather and define requirements for, design, implement, and author documentation for web applications. These applications were sold as additional services on top of the Real Broadcast Network.
• Delivered development time estimates and contributed to the formulation of project plans.
• Evaluated and made recommendations on third-party technologies and services for deployment.
• Designed and implemented web applications using PHP and Oracle.
• Deployed PHP code to Solaris and Linux machines.
• Worked extensively with QA team for testing and debugging.
• Authored technical design documentation using DocBook.

Real Networks originally brought me on to integrate software from a third-party vendor which was to be used in offering a pay-per-view content management service to multimedia content producers. My task was to write a PHP front-end, hosted by RBN, to be used by RBN's customers as an interface to the vendor's software. This project was later cancelled, and I was assigned to another project in progress. The second project involved developing a self-service streaming media delivery platform. I helped code the PHP interface that allowed customers to schedule and execute streaming audio and video events with synchronized PowerPoint presentations.

HouseValues, Kirkland, WA
2000 - 2002
Web Developer

• Developed 99% of the code behind HouseValues.com, including the real estate agent tools, content management system, online store, bulk mailer, and other projects. The code developed was mainly PHP with some Perl.
• Installed, configured and maintained production and in-house Linux systems. This included configuration and maintenance of PHP, Apache, MySQL, Sendmail, Procmail, etc.
• Initiated the use of DocBook and Wiki for authoring documentation of systems and processes.
• Set up a documentation repository.
• Authored technical design documentation.
• Performed analysis and reporting on web usage logs.

One example of the types of projects I worked on at HouseValues is the web tools used to administer the thousands of real estate agent subscribers. The most important part of these tools was the ability to assign leads to agents when the leads were submitted to a zip code to which no agents had subscribed. When I first arrived at HouseValues, this process was done manually by one individual who spent most of her time writing down lead zip codes, going to a map to find nearby zips, then searching through the subscriber list to find an agent subscribed to a nearby zip. Before long this consumed all of that individual's time, and the CEO was considering hiring another person to assist in that task. The Director of Web Development and I were asked to think of possible technical solutions to the problem. I looked for and found information on calculating the distances between zip codes, and wrote a quick prototype in Perl showing zips codes close to any specified zip. We then purchased zip code data and I added a feature to the administration tools that would show the ten closest agents when showing a lead that was unassigned. This allowed the individual who was doing the process manually to resume spending her time with the other customer service personnel and avoided the cost of another full-time salaried employee. Later as the volume of leads increased, I led the project that automated this process. This automated script handles about 1,000 leads on a nightly basis, regularly finding qualified subscribers (based on business rules) for approximately 80% of the unassigned leads.

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
Graduated May 2000, magna cum laude: B.S. - Information Systems and Decision Sciences