Objective
I enjoy developing usable standards-compliant websites, and intend to pursue a career that allows me to make the web a better place.
Summary
- Over ten years of standards-based website design experience
- Over eight years of web application development experience
- Four years of Ruby on Rails development experience
- Over eight years of System Administration experience, with a focus on high availability load-balanced web clusters
- Extremely self-motivated
- Great independent learning skills
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Skills
Web Application Development
I have been commercially developing websites and web applications for over eight years. My specific skills follow:
- Excellent working knowledge of Ruby on Rails, including plugin development
- Excellent working knowledge of Ruby, including custom gem development
- Countless open source contributions
- Strong understanding of SEO concepts and techniques
- Comprehensive knowledge of XHTML, Javascript, and CSS for designing user interfaces
- Excellent working knowledge of AJAX, XML, RSS, REST architectures, and other various cross-site data exchange technologies
- Working knowledge of many of those "other" languages, including Perl and PHP
System Administration
I have eight years of experience managing a variety of computer systems, including systems with thousands of hosts. I have consulted and assisted with department-wide upgrades, deployed Ruby on Rails applications to Amazon EC2, and developed comprehensive offsite backup solutions. If you have a system administration problem, odds are I have dealt with it before.
- Comprehensive knowledge of the GNU/Linux operating system, with a focus on RedHat-based distributions.
- A thourough understanding of the processes and tools necessary to deploy Ruby on Rails applications, using Apache/nginx, Mongrel, Capistrano, and MySQL
- Extensive experience with virtualization technology, with a focus on XEN
- Extensive experience with Amazon EC2
- Excellent working knowledge of MySQL including advanced techniques such as database replication
- Experience protyping, implementing, and benchmarking high availability load-balanced web clusters
- Extensive experience with the LAMP framework
Work Experience
February 2008 - Present
Atlanta, Georgia
As a Senior Software Engineer for Rails Machine, I'm responsible for maintaining and improving the software and infrastructure that powers the thousands of Ruby on Rails applications we host.
Major Accomplishments
- Developed several Ruby on Rails applications for internal use
- Assisted countless customers with a wide variety of problems with their Ruby on Rails applications, ranging from trivial mongrel restarts to large scaling challenges
August 2005 - July 2008
Atlanta, Georgia
As the IT Director for LexBlog, I managed all of the Information Technology needs of the Lexblog Network (a group of hundreds of Movable Type blogs published by high-profile law firms). I also was responsible for deployment of sites for new clients, close monitoring and maintenance of our web cluster, and all local IT needs.
Major Accomplishments
August 2004 - December 2005
Athens, Georgia
Jason Lynes Interactive is a web development company run by Jason Lynes. Working with Jason and a small team, I developed custom web applications.
Major Accomplishments
Associate Web Software Developer
May 2005 - August 2005
Athens, Georgia
At Digital Insight I maintained web applications for financial institutions utilizing HTML and Javascript. I also created and edited forms for online applications such as personal loans, mortgages, Online Banking Applications, etc. As part of a team, I provided quality assurance for other team members' work.
Major Accomplishments
- Prototyped the use of a Ruby on Rails powered wiki (Instiki to be exact) as an internal whiteboard for others in my Department
- Shattered the DI land speed record for incident response time
May 2005 - August 2005
Athens, Georgia
Sprout is a small business dedicated to creating a suite of web-based apps (written in Ruby on Rails) exclusively for businesses with 10 employees or less. I worked as lead developer for Sprout to help them create a core application base that their product could be built upon.
Major Accomplishments
- Created a comprehensive SCM and automated deployment system to aid in collaboration using Subversion, Trac, and some home grown Ruby code
April 2004 - June 2005
Athens, Georgia
At the School of Social Work, I ensured all technical support needs of the School of Social Work were met. These included desktop computer troubleshooting and maintaining a lab of ~50 computers. Another team member and myself managed the content on our department's website (30,000 lines of a wonderful mix of Perl and HTML). I have taken upon myself the tasks of managing our web and database server and developing some much-needed web applications in in PHP and Ruby.
Major Accomplishments
- Prototyped a redesign of our web presence
- Migrating our web/database server from an antiquated RedHat 7.1 server to a new system running SuSE 9.2 Server
- Assisting in development of new admissions database system (generating XML reports and formatting these with XSLT)
Student Director of Online Operations
April 2002 - April 2004
Athens, Georgia
At the Red & Black, I administrated both local and remote web and mail servers, maintained our network's DHCP and DNS servers, developed custom web applications using PHP/MySQL/Apache, and maintained all 51 internal workstations.
Major Accomplishments
- Maintain the website of the independent student newspaper The Red and Black
- Maintain and develop applications for our local, private intranet
- Implement configurable spam filtering on our local mail server
- Implement backup solution for our two Mac OS X Servers