Interests
- Social media / democratizing technologies
- Distributed systems / cloud computing / ubiquitous computing
- Artificial intelligence / intelligent agents
- Semantic web / ontology / sociology / psychology / philosophy
Experience building and leading front-end, back-end, and operations teams in developing large-scale multi-platform (including Web, Android, iOS) applications responsible for millions of dollars in daily revenue and a strong focus on user-first development and API-first design, leveraging 15+ years of professional experience as an individual contributor, with previous experience in research, machine learning, personalization, large-scale distributed systems, localization and new market development.
Professional Experience
- TripAdvisor, Needham Heights, Massachusetts USA
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Associate Director
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- Experiences Platform
- Managed multiple teams responsible for designing, extending, and running the services powering the Experiences (attractions, tours, tickets, etc.) data shown on the Tripadvisor site, in native iOS/Android applications, as well as internal and third-party integrations.
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- B2C Supply
- Developed back-end roadmap for the services driving POI and commerce content and features to end-user surfaces (notably Web and Native apps).
- Coördinated with product and other engineering teams to align quarterly roadmaps and support company objectives.
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- B2C Platform
- Coördinated development between back-end and front-end teams as part of a shift of our core pages to a new server-driven presentation model, providing for improved encapsulation and front-end code reuse.
- Investigated and designed a replacement experimentation infrastructure to allow for improved testing flow and improved isolation of a/b testing logic.
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- Experiences Demand
- Led performance-improvement project for Experiences business unit, culminating in cross-team development and roll-out of a new GraphQL+React.js platform improving Google Lighthouse score from 20-30s to upper-90s, and which is being adopted throughout the site.
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- Hotel Demand
- Managed the successful launch of a sponsored ads product comprising a team of 8-10 engineers and cross-business to-market coördination
- Directed development and design of a general-purpose, real-time, ad-delivery and management system. Gathered cross-business requirements and managed communication with internal launch partners.
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- Consumer Targeting
- Developed and implemented real-time system for determining content apropos of a visitor or app user
- Provided off-line analytical tools for evaluating historical visitors
- Market Development/Localization Engineering
- Led cross-platform, cross-organization effort to standardize available I18N functionality
- Managed coördination between US-based engineering team with EU and Asia-based product management teams
- Extended and constructed core functionality to support localization needs and under-served market segments
- Numerous localizations, including Eastern, Slavic, and Semitic languages
- Community
- Managed Engineering/Product relationship for local (e.g. eatery and attraction) related projects
- Developed and implemented a process for merging and verifying licensed POI data from multiple sources
- Worked on Social initiatives, integrating with leading social network sites
- Mobile
- Developed mobile-focussed Web site across all western points of sale
- Maintained native mobile applications for Android and iOS based devices
- Core Engineering
- Maintained, improved, and developed new core-product functionality
- Worked with both US and foreign third-parties to launch, develop, and improve integrated products
- Gave regular engineering-wide presentations on infrastructure/best-practices
- Primary tools: Java, Dust, React.js, AJAX, Velocity, CSS, Hadoop, PostgreSQL, Linux
- Company grew from ~60 employees (2006) to 3000+ (2016)
- Reverse engineered 3D scene-based file formats, created import filters for in-house cross-platform 3D modeling software
- Evaluated/advised on hardware purchases, worked with vendors to address problems
- Received "L" ("Secret") level clearance from U.S. D.O.E.
- Primary tools: C++, Cygwin, MSVC++, Irix, WindowsNT, OpenGL
- Worked on health-care management system for Siemens' Medical
- Wrote bridging software for Simatic Step 7 PLC controlling software and Microsoft Project
- Primary tools: J2EE, JSP/EJB, Swing, Apache Tomcat, WebSphere, Visual Basic, VBA/Microsoft Project
Education
- Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island USA
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Research Assistant
- Research focused on peer-to-peer networks and distributed protocols
- Graduate level courses in distributed systems and large scale network systems
- Graduate level courses in natural language processing, computational vision, and machine learning
- Primary tools: Python, C, Java, Perl, Matlab/Octave
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York USA
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M.S., Computer Science (GPA 4.0/4.0), May, 2004
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B.S., Computer Science / Philosophy (Dual, GPA 3.86/4.0), May, 2003
- Active member of the Minds & Machines lab.
- Graduate level courses in complexity, computer graphics and visualization, and artificial intelligence
- M.B.A. courses in managing technical projects, ethics and law
- Graduated Magna Cum Laude, worked to reactivate local chapter of honor society Upsilon Pi Epsilon
- Active member of Association for Computing Machinery chapter; served as chairman