Objective: I am an experienced engineer, problem solver, and idea generator seeking a position in a company with the means and drive to lead the world in the development and application of life-improving technologies.
Experience
Site Reliability Engineer
Google
Seattle, Washington
November 2006–Present
Job Responsibilies:
- Design, implement, and manage vast distributed systems to ensure the highest levels of performance and availability of Google's products.
Senior Software Engineer
Amazon.com (Online retailer)
Seattle, Washington
April 2000–October 2006
Outstanding achievements:
- Saved the company approximately 40 million dollars of bandwidth costs through implementation of "smart" compression module for Apache; Recognized with "Door Desk" award by Jeff Bezos.
- Minimized loss to retail revenues by leading or contributing significantly to high-pressure website outage calls.
- Rescued multi-million dollar CRM project in final-hour debugging of critical software bug; Recognized with "Just Do It" award by Jeff Bezos.
- Contributed to many fundamental and broadly-applied software technologies in Amazon's distributed-systems platform.
Designed and implemented:
- Enterprise-wide large-volume continuous metrics collection and reporting system.
- Distributed host monitoring software.
- Hybrid C++/Perl profiler, providing key insights into website performance problems.
- Patch for Linux 2.2 kernel to ease remote management as part of Amazon's initial Linux roll-out.
- A suite of tools used by Network Engineers for modifying and replaying captured TCP packet sequences.
Additional responsibilities:
- Drove (as senior engineer) a team effort to improve performance of the Amazon.com website platform.
- Senior member of team which developed a decentralized middleware load-balancer.
- Assisted in network troubleshooting and served as an authority on load-balancing technologies, and assisted in the evaluation of third-party networking products.
- Worked with DBAs to implement tools for benchmarking Oracle databases for cross-platform performance evaluation.
- Provided detailed analysis of competitors' use of Amazon's catalog (analysis of competitive pricing practices)
- Fixed countless software bugs, including subtle errors in concurrency and network communication.
- Assisted in legal cases, serving as a general expert in systems architecture and software development.
Systems Administrator
E-Access (Web hosting service)
Huntington, West Virginia
February 1999–April 2000
- Automated Windows NT webserver configuration management for thousands of websites.
- Established multi-homed BGP4 network with multiple peers.
- Expanded product offerings to include UNIX shell accounts, domain registration, and email services.
Senior Systems Administrator
EZnet (Internet service provider)
Huntington, West Virginia
April 1998–January 1999
- Managed Unix and Windows servers.
- Designed network architecture.
- Installed, configured, and maintained routers, switches, and access points for dial-up, ISDN, T1, and ATM links.
- Automated distributed account management.
Technician
Microsystems of Buckhannon (General engineering shop and ISP)
Buckhannon, West Virginia
July 1992–February 1997
- Assembled and repaired computers and peripherals.
- Wrote custom reporting software for coal and gas companies.
- Established a small dial-up ISP using a pair of Linux servers, a Cisco 2501 router, and US Robotics NetServers.
- Provided training and technical support to customers regarding the Internet, LAN applications, Microsoft Windows, and Microsoft Office.
- Installed local area networks for multiple clients.
- Participated in the development of robotics motion-control software (as an intern).
- Participated in the design and construction of a telephone time and temperature reporting system.
- Managed the company's computer Bulletin Board System.
Skills
Extensive professional experience with C, C++, Java, Perl; also experienced with: x86 assembly, Haskell, Python, Ruby, Objective-C, Mathematica, Common LISP, PHP, and JavaScript.
Primarily experienced with GNU/Linux systems, though have also professionally managed and developed for Windows XP (Win32).
Comprehensive understanding of common network protocols and programming interfaces: TCP/IP, UDP, BSD Sockets, HTTP, DNS.
Strong technical leadership: balancing optimism and pragmatism, driving consensus, and keeping projects on track in spite of obstacles.
Education
Marshall University
Major: Computer Science
March 1997–May 1998
West Virginia University
Major: Electrical Engineering/Computer Engineering
May 1996–December 1996
West Virginia Wesleyan College
Jan 1996–May 1996
Computer Science Focus Areas
- Algorithm analysis
- Solvability
- Discrete mathematics
- Logic
- Formal methods
- Process algebras
- Distributed algorithms
- Machine intelligence
- Computer languages and paradigms (OO, functional, logical, etc.)
Other Interests
- Neuroscience and neurophysiology
- Cognitive science, sociology, and psychology
- Robotics and hobby electronics
- Stock markets, finance, and business