Projects @ Hovercraft Studios

  1. Feb. 2010 – present: Web Application Architecture Consultant, Synesi, LLC, Pittsburgh, PA

    • Implemented highly customized front-end Javascript components, including custom browser scroll bars.
    • Managed server architecture, data model, & server implementation.
    • Integrated 3rd party database migrations, authentication, and basic layout/view packages.
    • Implemented role–based authorization and url routing infrastructure built on Tank Auth.
    • Implemented modular layout, view, and css infrastructure, based on work by Jamie Rumbalow.
    • Implemented ajax/json routing and handling infrastructure based on Content-Type and Accept headers.

  2. Feb. 2010 – June 2010: UX Design and Engineering Consultant, SnapRetail, Pittsburgh, PA

    • Drove design and development process of highly interactive marketing message creation web app for TrafficBuilder offering.
    • Involved stakeholders, including users, project managers, and engineers in wireframing and design process, and worked with web designer to create final, branded design.
    • Implemented desktop-quality WYSIWYG message editor with inline rich text editing, media browsing, and drag and drop image editing with zooming and cropping.
    • Implemented custom Dojo widgets, including a multi-complete widget that works like your email client's To field.

  3. Feb. 2010 – May 2010: UX and Technology Consultant, 80 Degrees West Interior Design, Pittsburgh, PA

    • Guided UX design for Interior Design Project Notebook web application.
    • Provided guidance on technology and platform selection.
    • Oversaw and assisted in management of engineering phase of web application development.

Professional Experience

  1. Feb. 2010 – present: Founder, Hovercraft Studios, LLC, Pittsburgh, PA

    • Work with users, engineers, and designers, and other stakeholders to design user experience and interactions for desktop–quality apps on the web.
    • Architect and implement front–end and web tier components that are fast, flexible, scalable, localizable, and maintainable
    • Hovercraft Studios has extensive experience with HTML & CSS, including HTML 5 & CSS 3, Dojo, jQuery, and many MVC web frameworks.

  2. Nov. 2009 – Feb. 2010: Senior Engineer, G2 Systems, LLC, Pittsburgh, PA

    • Designed user experience and interaction for a new product.
    • Refactored data import and translation component for higher performance and dependency–ordered processing.
    • Skills and technologies: Java, Hibernate, HTML, CSS.

  3. Feb. 2007 – Nov. 2009: Senior Software Architect & Web Developer, mSpoke, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA

    • Implemented Web tier MVC components, Web APIs, and UIs in FeedHub, and for administering various aspects of mPower systems.
    • Designed and Implemented complex architectural components, such as a content scoring and ranking framework, and custom database partitioning and Map-Reduce style query engine.
    • Integrated mPower with customers’ existing infrastructure, including databases and third-party email marketing services.
    • Skills and technologies: Java J2SE, J2EE, Amazon AWS (EC2, RDS, EBS, ELB, S3), Spring, JPA, Hibernate, JMS/OpenMQ, Lucene, LAMP, Javascript, Dojo, jQuery, HTML, CSS.

  4. Nov. 2003 – Jan. 2007: Lead Software Architect, Adhoc Mobile, LLC, Los Angeles, CA

    • Led a team of 5 Software Engineers in architecting an advertising system for mobile devices and for a distributed, social, mobile gaming environment.
    • Ensured quality and consistency of architecture, design, implementation, testing and deployment.
    • Managed project milestones, and ensured they were met by engineering staff.
    • Designed and implemented server-side REST and XML web services, and J2ME mobile applications.
    • Designed and implemented an advanced user interface API and library for mobile devices.
    • Skills and technologies: Java J2SE, J2EE, Tapestry, J2ME, Ruby, Rails, JSP, (X)HTML, XML, REST, Web Services, Apache, Tomcat, Postgres.

  5. Jun. 2001 – Feb. 2004: Project Engineer, Institute for Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery, Pittsburgh, PA

    • Worked with three surgeons, surgical staff, two research scientists, and a team of six developers.
    • Developed computer assisted surgery software systems for Adult Joint Reconstruction surgery
    • Developed software to visualize clinical CT scans.
    • Skills and technologies: C, C++, 2D and 3D Graphics with OpenGL.

  6. Sep. 1999 – Apr. 2001: Product Development Lead, Inmedius, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA

    • Led a matrixed team of three engineers, two interaction designers, and a graphic designer
    • Architected, designed, and implemented the Mentor workflow and collaboration software product.
    • Worked with marketing and sales staff to bring the product to market.
    • Skills and technologies: Java, Apache, Tomcat, JBoss, Oracle, Sybase, MS SQL Server, XML.

Skills

  • I have 13+ years experience building and deploying large scale, distributed, web and mobile applications.
  • I live the web stack, and am fully buzzword compliant. HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, Dojo, jQuery, PHP, Ruby, Rails, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Spring, JPA & Hibernate, Java & Scala,
  • Strong Software Engineering background: software architecture, object oriented analysis and design techniques.
  • Software development processes: software lifecycle models, quality assurance, configuration management, metrics and measurement procedures.
  • Software project management theories and practices.

Education

  • 1996–1998 Masters of Software Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA
  • 1991–1995 Bachelor’s of Computer Science, West Virginia University Morgantown, WV

What Else?

  • I am an active member of St. George Orthodox Church in New Kensington, PA: Music & Choir Director and Head Chanter, member of Parish Council, and webmaster.
  • I am a trained operatic Baritone (Listen) From “Let My Prayer Arise”, G. Lvovsky, for trio (Soprano, Alto, Baritone) recorded live in 2004 at St. George Orthodox Cathedral, Pittsburgh, PA. (Listen), and a member of the Orthodox Sacred Music Chamber Choir.
  • I have composed and arranged several Orthodox hymns in the Byzantine and Russian styles.
  • I have a 1st degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and in Shotokan Karate, and a blue belt in Aikido.

References available upon request