Deep experience in the following areas:
* Project management. Led 20+ software development projects over 15 years to successful completion using agile, best practice development methods. Trained and mentored a dozen project managers to deliver high-quality results on schedule.
* Application architecture. Skilled at quickly distilling complex customer requirements into simple applications that are buildable, testable and highly usable, including conceptual application design and interaction design, visualization of complex data, and configurability design that results in extremely flexible and extensible applications. Successful solutions range from consumer desktop software to enterprise applications used by the worlds largest banks, and analytical applications for computational drug design.
* Core computational framework design. Specialist at architecting the analytical core of applications the framework that embodies the rocket science that makes products into market leaders. Solutions include design, construction, optimization and validation of supply-chain optimization and commercial lease/loan pricing engines.
Education
Ph.D., Computer Science, Stanford University
B.A., Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
Senior Vice President of Engineering, Jopari Solutions. Concord, California 2012-2014
Hands-on leader of the Engineering team at this startup that processes digital transactions for medical billing and payment clients. Instilled rigor and discipline into all aspects of the engineering process, including development, automated testing, delivery and hiring, as the company matured and scaled up. Replaced a chaotic SDLC with scrum/agile process now used throughout the company; scrum teams have delivered 100% on client expectations. Personally designed and built the automated test framework for domain-specific language used internally. Launched program to retrofit automated regression tests at all levels. Participated in code reviews. Recruited high caliber engineers, growing team from 15 to 30 plus 12 offshore. Acting as scrum master for a critical project team, delivered key initiative on schedule. Tech stack was Java7 + Oracle.
Trained and mentored managers operating at Director level, growing their teams and honing their management skills. Focus on increased engagement and expanded training led to high productivity and low turnover (<10%) in team.
Senior Engineering Manager, Salesforce. San Mateo, California 2012
Functional manager and Scrum Master for the Core Platform team of data.com, a Salesforce product that provides contact information powered by the social network. The Core team designs and builds components at the heart of the data.com product: cache for performance, search, matching algorithms, persistence. Delivered two releases on time.
Director of Engineering, Numerate, Inc. San Bruno, California 2009-2011
Hands-on technical director at this biotech startup that designs novel drug candidates for pharmaceutical companies using computer models of the primary determinants of drug activity and toxicity, reducing risk and accelerating time to market; spent half my time managing people and projects, remainder on development.
* Managed development of first phase of $6.75M, 3-year government-funded project for biodefense drug design, staffed by 12 developers; achieved all milestones on schedule.
* Introduced agile development process, leading to 50% reduction in process overhead and 3x increase in release frequency. Coached and mentored new managers and project managers; set up a successful mentoring program for new employees.
* Developed a large portion of Numerates drug design platform for internal users (using Java, Google GWT, MySQL, Hibernate). Focus on performance led to 100-fold speedup in several cases.
Application Architect (Consultant), Third Pillar Systems. San Mateo, California 2003-2008
Lead architect and business analyst at this startup that builds enterprise-scale loan and lease origination applications for large commercial banks: 4 of the top 5 US lenders are clients.
* Designed first two versions of large lease residual pricing application from scratch; interacted with clients to design prototypes and distill use cases. Managed delivery of project, including offshore team. Subsequently extended this application to handle complete lease/loan pricing for Third Pillars flagship product.
* Architected, developed and extensively validated the core lease/loan pricing engine for this application (using Java, Hibernate, Oracle), which is now the standard pricing module for Third Pillar products and has processed nearly $1T in credit applications.
Senior Analytics Engineer, Vivecon Corp. Mountain View, California 2000-2002
Co-founder of this startup that applied financial engineering techniques to supply chain problems, reducing sourcing cost and risk for the strategic sourcing of direct materials.
* Synthesized diverse requirements and ideas into initial specification for core product; defined software architecture and development methodology; led design and development of first software iteration that helped customers reduce direct spending by 10% on average.
* Designed and developed two versions of the core analytical engine for the Vivecon application, which used stochastic linear programming to optimize contract portfolios; code reviews revealed zero defects in over 10,000 lines of code.
* Developed thorough validation methodology for the analytical engine; led testing effort, including building extensive automatic testing infrastructure and over 600 test cases.
Manager of Development, BARRA, Inc. Berkeley, California 1997-1999
BARRA was a leading producer of analytical tools for investment professionals. Led development in a group that built databases of global equity data and delivered this data to clients, supporting $50M of corporate revenue; structured the development process, managed project portfolio, developed leadership.
* Grew staff from 10 to 25 engineers; managed $1.7M budget; reduced turnover from 70% to zero.
* Reduced average project delivery date versus baseline from habitually late to half a day early.
* Coached and mentored two first-time project managers to complete on time a 12-person mission-critical project, with 25% of company revenue at stake.
* Regarded as one of the companys best project managers; led a 3-month project to revise corporate project development methodology.
Manager, Scanner Application Software. Logitech, Inc. Fremont, California 1991-1997
Logitech is a leading manufacturer of consumer computer peripherals. The companys Scanner Division produced personal scanners for the consumer market (Windows platform), providing about 20% of corporate revenue. Led development of all software sold with Logitech scanners.
* Managed 7 engineers in two teams; developed team leaders into managers.
* Led three 1-year software projects (team size 3-5 engineers) from concept to on-time delivery, including simultaneous translation of software into 6 languages, a company-first achievement.
* Initiated and standardized the practice of refining user interface via user studies; designed user interface of two award-winning products. Conceived and led 5-person cross-functional team in 10-month market research project to enhance software usability; results set product directions for next 3 years, reducing product return rate by 40% and technical support calls by 45%.
Certifications, additional training
Sun Certified Java Programmer
Boot Camp for Startups (Garage.com)
Data Warehouse (DCI)
Team Building for Project Managers (AMA)
Effective Negotiating (Karrass)
Leadership 2000 (Zenger-Miller)
Intensive 3-month management training seminar (Temenos)
Other
Lived and worked in France 2½ years; read and speak French fluently.
Member of ACM, Phi Beta Kappa.
Have served on boards of several non-profit organizations. |
