Resume

Career Goals

I bring excitement, enthusiasm and fresh ideas to the projects that I work on. I've always had a passion for technology. So I continually self-train on new technologies that I then bring into the workplace.

Through my books, articles and my presentations I've become skilled not only in learning new technologies myself, but in conveying this knowledge effectively to developers. This another key element that I bring to development teams.

Having great technology is important, but it means nothing unless it solves customer problems. Another skill that I bring is a commitment to a practical customer-centric development approach.

Primary Experience

2004-current - Senior Software Engineer
Leverage Software, San Francisco, CA

Key projects: Data visualizations, widgets, rich internet applications

I build cutting edge user experiences for the social networking platform using Flex, Silverlight and Ajax. I developed a widget toolkit that uses innovative transport techniques to get Leverage's social networking data on any site. I develop all of my features completely from the database back-end to the rich internet application front-end.

2001-2004 -Senior Software Engineer
Macromedia, Inc. Redwood Shores, California

Key projects: Document import, image editing, code analysis and generation

I implemented a mechanism to import Microsoft Word and Excel documents into Contribute. I added image editing features to Dreamweaver. I lead the migration of Flex Builder from the C++/MFC platform to the Eclipse platform. On Flex Builder I was the team lead on developing the code analysis engine.

1999-2001 - Engineering Manager/Team Lead
Certive, Inc. Redwood City, California

Key projects: Framework maintenance, User interface toolkit, Team leadership

I was the first engineering hire and I built a team which I then lead to build three releases of their innovative online service. We used Agile development practices on the LAMP platform to build a reliable, fast and well tested application.

1993-1999 - Engineering Manager/Team Lead
Axon Instruments, Foster City, California and Axon Research Pty. Ltd., Melbourne, Australia

Key projects: Real time data acquisition, Device control, User interface toolkit, Team leadership

I was the engineering manager for two years at Axon. I successfully managed four different releases of three different software packages. As a developer I built and maintained the user interface framework for the entire company. As well as writing key components of real-time data acquisition and device control system.

Books and Articles

To date I have written four books. "Code Generation In Action" discusses the use of Ruby to build code generators that to add both quality and speed to the development cycle. "Podcasting Hacks" teaches readers how to subscribe to podcasts as well as produce their own podcast. "PHP Hacks" is a set of useful PHP scripts to solve our everyday problems. "Getting Started With Flex 3: will be released by O'Reilly in 2008. "Advanced Flex 3" will be released by APress in late 2008. I've also written many articles.