Jeff's Resume

CAREER STAGE:

Started development career in 1999, began leading teams in 2008, transitioned over time to senior leadership positions to lead large teams at scale in a management capacity. Technology stacks vary, but mostly leveraging cloud resources (AWS and Azure).

PRODUCT:

POP Forums: Cloud-hosted SaaS application: https://popforums.com/

PUBLICATION:

Maximizing ASP.NET: Real World, Object-Oriented Development, Addison-Wesley, March, 2005
Targeted to intermediate programmers transitioning from a script background to the object-oriented .NET world. Covers ASP.NET v2.0.

SPEAKER:

Orlando Code Camp, February 2024: "How the programming for a light show works"
Orlando Code Camp, March 2023: "Build a word game with Blazor"
CodeMash, January 2020: "Understanding the business of identity, and how to get out of it"
Orlando Code Camp, March 2019: "Create a build and release pipeline for your open source project in Azure DevOps"
Orlando Code Camp, March 2018: "Break the monolith! An intro to distributing your workload in the cloud"
CodeMash, January 2018, "App architecture without RDBS vs NoSQL drama"
Orlando Code Camp, April 2017: "App architecture without RDBS vs NoSQL drama" and "Hiring is hard, getting hired is easy, so get it right"
Orlando .NET User Group, September 2016: "If ASP.NET Old, then Core"
Orlando Code Camp, April 2016: "Query for speed and performance: It's architectural" and "Mentoring and career development has to be a priority"
Orlando .NET User Group, February 2016: “Finding your cheese: The big changes in ASP.NET5/MVC6”
Orlando Code Camp, March 2015: "Think Like A Cloud Developer" and "10 Things Someone Will Pay For Later"
Orlando Code Camp, March 2014: "Azure Live Blog" and "Unit Testing 101"
Orlando .NET User Group, February 2014: “A Scalable Live Blog App in Windows Azure for $20”
IAAPA Attractions Expo 2008: Internet marketing panel discussion with Peter Shankman
IAAPA Attractions Expo 2007: “Your Attraction in a Web 2.0 World”

OPEN SOURCE:

Project architect, designer and coder, POP Forums for ASP.NET Core: https://github.com/POPWorldMedia/POPForums
Sole contributor for POP Identity, a micro framework for interrogating identity providers: https://github.com/POPWorldMedia/POPIdentity
Creator of MLocker, a personal cloud music locker service and player: https://github.com/POPWorldMedia/MLocker

EXPERIENCE:

Olo, remote to New York City (April 2020-October 2021)

ENGINEERING MANAGER, RAILS. Lead through the IPO period the engineering team responsible for the Rails business, which connects third party marketplaces (DoorDash, UberEats, etc.) with Olo's national restaurant brands.

Brought a lightweight project management/prioritization framework to Rails to keep work focus and increase predictable outcomes. Shared that framework broadly with the company, which was adopted by a number of teams.
Championed projects that leveraged business event streams, empowering real-time analytics, reporting and alerting.
Hired engineers, balancing the team's capabilities. Worked in the rotation to triage and move candidates through the hiring process. Participated in interviews and personally reviewed resumes and screening tests.
Commented on and helped revise dozens of opportunity assessments and reviewed requirements for all green-lit projects, collaborating with stakeholders and engineers to form well understood outcomes.
Advocated for the professional development of engineers, as well as their promotions.
Increased depth of technical planning for projects, leading to better timing expectations.
Provided oversight of projects that accounted for significant gains in annual recurring revenue.
Found opportunities for emerging leaders on the team to lead smaller projects, with guardrails.
Mentored and counseled interns.
Built a solid relationship with product managers, and mentored them in working through right-sized requirements.
Fostered relationships with emerging teams as the company grew exponentially.
Wrote the first two entries for the company's engineering blog.

PowerDMS, Orlando, Florida (June 2018-January 2020)

VICE PRESIDENT OF ENGINEERING. Conduct the daily and strategic operation of the technical development of the company’s document management SaaS product, during its private equity growth phase.

Led a team of 40+ through a transition to scalable processes and maintainable development practices.
Key hires included new QA lead, principal architect, ops director and senior developers to balance depth of experience with breadth.
Reduced time to first contact for job candidates to about 24 hours on average.
Performed annual reviews and managed over $4 million in salary.
Moved the team from product silos to teams responding to a business-aligned prioritized work stream.
Introduced common work item and build tooling, reduced overall cost by 75%.
Mentored senior technical leadership on challenges around people management, software architecture and process refinement.
Created a new title/level matrix for engineering, along with a deliberate professional development plan.
Reduced bug support case count by 90%, increased release success from 28% to 83%, improved development velocity by 50%, all in first 18 months.
Achieved 100% application uptime in 2019.
Compiled data and KPI information for the board.
Assessed engineering risks and opportunities around growth and scaling and introduced these into the product pipeline. These included projects to leverage newer cloud infrastructure and reduce annual spend by more than $100k.
Negotiated contracts for third-party products, services and engagements.
Orchestrated an incentive plan for engineers to obtain certifications to maintain partner agreements.
Set annual goals around code quality, delivery velocity and architectural improvement, as aligned with wider company goals.
Technology stack: AWS (EC2, Docker, Lambda), SQL, Redis, ElasticSearch, Node.js, React, .Net Core, Azure DevOps.

Lakeview Pointe HOA, Orange County, Florida (November 2018-March 2024)

BOARD OF DIRECTORS. Volunteer managing the operation and finances of a 315-unit association.

novi AMS, Orlando, Florida (November 2016-April 2018)

VICE PRESIDENT OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING & PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT. Conduct the daily and strategic operation and development of the company's SaaS association management product.

Hired and guided the software development team, remotely distributed around the Eastern US.
Brought agile/scrum process to the business, adapted it as necessary, coached the team on its implementation. Ramped up a sustainable, two-week sprint velocity.
Facilitated discovery and refinement of stakeholder feature requests into actionable stories.
Led the process to convert the minimum viable product (MVP) to a robust, maintainable and scalable system.
Managed and designed integration with third-party systems that included credit card payments, email list management and accounting systems.
Successfully brought the product to multi-tenancy running in cloud infrastructure.
Provided compliance and security oversight in certification process for Intuit's app store program.
Established the career development practice for the company, paying careful attention to environment and culture as the company grew.
Winner: 2017 Intuit Small Biz Hackathon (Mountain View), Google prize.
Technology stack: Azure (App Service, Functions), SQL, Redis, .Net, Azure DevOps, integrations with QuickBooks Online, MailChimp, Constant Contact.

AgileThought, Orlando/Tampa, Florida (June 2014-November 2016)

TECHNICAL ARCHITECT. Act as technical lead in the vision, design and delivery of custom software projects for clients.

Directed development teams through vision and discovery, regular sprints, conducted code reviews, mediated feature discussions with stakeholders, ran scrum meetings.
Actively participated in internal efforts to maintain culture and work quality as company scaled. Mentored new senior hires and interviewed candidates.
Worked with business development to create accurate project cost estimation statements.
Created high level design for new systems and built strategies to improve existing systems. One project involved aggregating data from a number of disparate systems around the world, emphasizing instrumentation and reducing long-term maintenance and administration costs.
Analyzed performance challenges, designed solutions to scale applications. A document management app for an international accounting firm needed to scale for a growing user base and a volume of data that had many times exceeded original expectations. The resulting solution more than doubled capacity and reduced page load times by 95%.
Delivered a mixed-stack application design and solution to client that managed investor documentation delivery.
Coached a client development team to develop and execute on long-term goals for stability and scalability.
Integrated development teams across company boundaries, local and remote.
Presented solutions, POC's and analysis to client senior managers and executives.
Assisted client support teams to diagnose and correct issues in production applications.
Consulted with clients to improve their system design and development process.
Advised internal teams on architectural issues around Azure use and consumption.
Evaluated open source, third-party products and internal enterprise options for use in solutions.
Technology stack (hand on/off mix, varied by client): Microsoft stack, Java, Angular, Azure.

POP World Media, LLC (est. September, 2000)

PRESIDENT. My "hobby" company specializes in media production for Web-based communities and content management tools, as well as consulting for clients using the Microsoft development stack.

Architect, design, build and maintain POP Forums. Open source, written on ASP.NET Core and Vue.js, and hosted on GitHub. Also uses SignalR, Bootstrap, xUnit, Moq, Dapper. Has scale out infrastructure for Redis, ElasticSearch, Azure and AWS. Localized in six languages. Now a hosted product! https://popforums.com/
PointBuzz.com (since 1998): Most visited unofficial Cedar Point Web site, ad supported, 1 million+ annual visitors, 7 million+ annual page views.
CoasterBuzz.com (since 2000): A roller coaster enthusiast site, content generated by visitors. Ad and subscription supported, 1.6 million+ annual visitors, 6 million+ annual page views. (Built on EF, SignalR, POP Forums.)
Consult in developer and process management roles for clients. Work ranges from architectural direction to “in the weeds” coding.
Built a live blog app on Windows Azure to handle high traffic event coverage. Runs across load balanced instances with distributed cache, message bus for SignalR, blob storage and CDN.

SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, Orlando, Florida (contract, July 2013-June 2014)

SOFTWARE ARCHITECT. Oversee the technical design and implementation of internal and public facing applications, with emphasis on strategic development, compliance and quality.

Successfully introduced the enterprise to contextual and behavioral consumer data collection for the purpose of real-time interaction and robust reporting. Included event bus used to decouple systems.
Designed integration of internal systems to external facing mobile platform, consisting of Web, Android and iOS clients (using Xamarin) via 3rd-party middleware. Bootstrapped the development of REST API for tunneling of data to external partners, and continued to marshal its design.
Led the technical design efforts for mobile integration, third-party vacation packaging, ecommerce system overhauls, etc.
Designed the user profile system for more robust security and single sign-on capability across all guest facing applications.
Conducted workshops and discussions with stakeholders of all lines of business to define “customer” in abstract terms and for data objects. Included strategy for better reconciliation of customer data with varying levels of confidence.
Developed a long-term strategy (and bootstrapped the development of systems) to capture contextual consumer behavior events across all lines of business for the purpose of real-time interaction, including marketing messaging, dashboards, attraction metrics, etc.
Conducted biweekly code reviews for all applications that fell within PCI scope to look for compliance issues with the PCI DSS.
Researched and specified solutions to potential security vulnerabilities found by third-party scanning service.
Mentored development leads and junior developers, offered advice on the latest tooling and frameworks in the Microsoft stack.

Humana, remote to Louisville, Kentucky (January 2012-December 2012)

APPLICATIONS CONSULTANT. Provided architectural guidance on process and quality issues for development teams and maintenance and support groups.

Provided application developers with application health monitoring architecture.
Built strategy for effective application instrumentation in service oriented architecture.
Strategy included better enterprise-wide tracking of business events on policies.
Provided development managers and leads with strategies to embrace agile development practices, specifically around unit testing, continuous integration and quality issues.
Created solutions for operations staff that included automated build processes and continuous integration for test environments, including automated unit testing.
Prototyped improvements for new and existing systems, code reviewed other solutions, using Microsoft technology stack.
Generated design documents for overall system architecture, component architecture and API’s across the enterprise.
Acted as “Zen master” among different business units to negotiate compromises and agreements so each unit could fulfill its charter. Made progress toward reducing silos in the enterprise.

Microsoft, Redmond, Washington (November, 2009-September, 2011)

PROGRAM MANAGER II. Feature/process PM for project codename “Data Explorer,” a product intended to semantically classify data and suggest data services that would compliment that data.

Gathered requirements and developed architectural and functional specifications for the product.
Generated documentation around interfaces between our system and those of other product groups around the enterprise.
Prototyped backend services and user interface components using Microsoft development stack and Windows Azure.
Maintained and prioritized work item backlog in TFS. Scheduled work items for each iteration.
Acted as liaison to partners within and outside of Server & Tools Business division.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER II. Server & Tools Online.

Built and contributed to architectural design of recognition platform, calculating and tracking points and achievements generated by users across MSDN and TechNet. Designed system to be highly available on the front end (load-balanced API and public sites), and fault tolerant across different processing components using queues. System processes 100 million+ transactions monthly. Project was a charter product for Azure.
Built and contributed to architecture of profile application, shared across the organization. Work included the integration of centralized “skinning” service to match UI to different brands and properties.
Supported forum application for MSDN and TechNet and worked to improve its performance while reducing its server utilization by a third. The app serves more than 50 million page views monthly. Work also required new feature implementation and integration to Bing and Microsoft ID services.
Agile development team with weekly iterations, shipping every four weeks, and deploying to test environments in near real time via Team City.
Other tools/frameworks used: NHibernate, StructureMap, Sync Framework, xUnit, Moq.

Digital Day, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio (December, 2008-April 2009)

ARCHITECT/DEVELOPMENT MANAGER. Company manages online marketing for major brands like Smuckers, Reynolds Packaging, Mars and Lasik Plus.

Architected distributed cross-client recipe management application.
Architected and developed Mars executive travel and meeting management application for billionaire Mars family.
Managed and mentored developers.
Established long-term vision for product development.
Refined development process and procedure, including environments, source code management and deployment. Implement Scrum and Agile methodology.
Maintained code standards, conducted code reviews.
Advised sales and project managers for best technical solutions for client needs.
Tech used: C#, .NET v3.5, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, SQL 2005, IIS6/7, CruiseControl.Net, jQuery, ASP.NET AJAX.

Insurance.com, Solon, Ohio (January 2006-July 2008)

PROGRAMMER IV. Coded, designed and maintained applications for marketing and auto insurance policy sales using .NET (C#, ASP.NET, AJAX, SQL Server).

Co-developed rewrite of data-driven interview app that obtains and binds quotes from 15+ insurance carriers. This was Insurance.com’s primary touch point to revenue generating customers.
Developed several components to integrate interview app with third-party and internal services.
Designed architecture for new marketing sites that allow for more abstract visitor attribution and agile SEO changes.
Authored coding standards for CSS and app-level context objects.
Advised marketing business unit on best practices for integration of campaigns and Insurance.com marketing properties.

Mirifex, Cleveland, Ohio (Contract/Consultant: February 2005-September 2005)

DEVELOPER/ARCHITECT. Lead on document entry/financial aid award calculation system rebuild.

Facilitated requirements process with client to establish set of use cases.
Interviewed, hired and directed developers for iterative delivery of the system.
Designed application architecture.

Progressive Insurance, Mayfield Heights, Ohio (Contract/Consultant: January 2004-May 2004)

PROGRAMMER. Member of .Net policy processing pilot team.

Worked with architects and consultants to develop first components in .Net-based policy processing system.
Explored best practices for agile process and unit testing.

Ahola Corporation, Brecksville, Ohio (March 2002-November 2003)

WEB APPLICATION DEVELOPER. Created, supported and maintained Web applications for HR and payroll systems using .NET (C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server) to interface legacy applications.

Created intranet application to track support requests, bugs and software enhancement requests.
Engineered data architecture between equipment sites via heavy use of Web services via VPN.
Designed documentation standards and testing procedures.
Developed intranet application for project management and centralized documentation.

Pfingsten Publishing, Cleveland, Ohio (May 2001-October 2001)

INTERNET PROGRAMMER/ANALYST. Created, supported and maintained Web applications for company intranet, public Web sites. Projects include CRM and e-commerce systems.

Used .NET (C#) during Microsoft’s beta period to begin building applications.
Created a customer service application for IT that included time tracking, document management and case history for internal use. ASP and SQL Server back-end.
Created privacy policy and opt-out database application for subscribers. Internal marketing customers could clean their own lists based on opt-out requests.
Designed front-end interface to credit card processing gateway, used internally to authorize cards and generate reports.

Penton Media, Cleveland, Ohio (July 1999-April 2001)

GROUP WEB MANAGER. Managed development and maintenance of Internet product for vertical markets. Was responsible for the specification and architecture of portal sites from conception to deployment.

Worked with internal interactive division and third-party developer to create sites that served markets similar to those served by group’s magazines.
Supported sales efforts to realize value proposition of online marketing opportunities for clients.
Administered network-wide ad campaigns through Open AdStream.
Established content creation and style standards for editorial staff.
Directed content managers to coordinate cross-over news and content between markets and sites.

Medina Cable Access, Medina, Ohio (July 1996-June 1999)

CABLE TV COORDINATOR. Charged with designing, programming and managing a cable access facility for the city and school district.

Managed $110,000 annual budget to purchase and maintain equipment, hire staff and outline future capital expenditures.
Coordinated with city and school district officials to establish roadmap for facility and program growth.
Directed staff and volunteers to produce programming.
Assisted school district in establishing Web presence.
Created streaming video of important programs so they could be viewed by non-cable subscribers.

EDUCATION:

Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio.
Bachelor of Arts
Majors (double): Journalism/English
Radio/Television - Programming, Production and Performance

OTHER EXPERIENCE:

Radio Air Personality (1994-1996), WYHT/Mansfield, OH, WZJM/Cleveland.
Hardware Sales Lead (1995-1996), CompUSA, N. Olmsted, OH.
Lighting Designer (1996-1998), Brunswick, OH Alumni Community Theatre.
Volleyball Coach (1997-1998), Ninth grade girls, Medina H.S., Medina, Ohio.
Volleyball Head Coach (2005), Our Lady of The Elms High School, Akron, Ohio.
Volleyball Coach (2000-2006), Quicksilver Volleyball Club (17 Open), Greater Cleveland, Ohio.