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CPXi
- Sr. Director of Technology
2013 - maintenant
php, memsql, amazonwebservices, scribe, mysql, javascript, node.js, ansible
Technical leader of the new newlycreated Consumer Applications Division for this $111M/year revenue NYC
advertising company (http://www.cpxi.com/). CPXi is Forbes' 2014 #42 most promising company in the USA
(http://www.forbes.com/companies/cpxi/). I inherited the company's first direct to consumer product and owned the
entire technical development side of a new consumer product, SideMOJO, from inception and initial architecture
design all the way to delivery. Some highlights:
Optimized ad placement, distribution, and redesigned infrastructure quality of service on the legacy product to get the
product to:
$1M+ revenue per month, $330K profit per month
15M+ unique users per month
35B+ ad impressions per month
sideMOJO-This new product represents CPXi's venture away from ad middleman into the direct to consumer space.
I owned and led the software development team (seven other engineers, plus three quality assurance people) that
brought this product from conception to 1.0 release on a very compressed deadline. Architected and implemented
infrastructure make up of:
PHP as the server side language, with Laravel as the server side framework
Ansible for server configuration management
Amazon AWS for server hosting
Scalable architecture with clearlydefined server roles and ability to ramp up volume very quickly. We used
Facebook's Scribe as the scalable messaging transport.
Separate API logical layer and codebase for future expansion (mobile clients, API access for third parties, etc)
I did all of this while working remotely from my home in Arizona.
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CTO-The Parent Tree, LLC
- CoFounder
2012 - 2013
php, mysql, sphinx, apache, codeigniter, git, github
The Parent Tree aimed to be the onestop resource for parents seeking comprehensive, reliable, easily searchable
and trustworthy reviews on local parent/baby/kidfriendly businesses, services and activities. Architected the system
for inception. Built a tech team for implementation. We could not make the company financially viable, but our system
was completely built and launched to production.
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Zynga
- Senior Software Engineer
2011 - 2013
php, vertica, membase, memcached, mysql, scribe, javascript
Worked in the Zynga Poker product in the BlackOps team, responsible for operations and security. This means I do a
lot of backend largescale stuff. I have never written userfacing features while at Zynga, only employeefacing
features. Although my team is responsible for operations, I have always been a part of the securityside of things,
programming systems to ensure fair play and catch cheaters/hackers.
The security systems I wrote focus on behavior detection and analysis.
WhathaveIdone? A ton! Here are some major projects I've participated in:
Player Hand Tracking This is a monster of a system. We record all player actions of every single hand played
(that's 50M to 60M hands per day!) in a big database. We calculate over 400 poker stats (VPIP, PFR, AGFeq, a
ton of equity values, etc) per hand played as well. We record all of this in two databases:
Sharded MySQL databases: 60 shards, all replicated master/slave, that means we have 120 MySQL hosts for
this system. We're pushing the limits for MySQL with this. We use MySQL for userfacing features that need
access to summarized stats. We have only 1 month of detail on these hosts, which satisfies our needs so far.
40 node Vertica cluster: Big data baby! This is our huge data repository for stats detail. We have a full year's worth
of detail data on this cluster (21 billion played hands, our largest table has 142 billion records). We use this cluster
for all sorts of data mining and modeling of player behavior.
This system is the foundation of other security systems that consume this data for behavioral analysis.
I was a key part of the development team for this system (I wrote several major specs and parts of the system) and after
launch I stayed on as the sole maintainer of the system.
I'm really proud of this system. It is a kickass data analysis system that most definitely has no equal in the world. No one
else in the poker world has anywhere near the volume this system handles. It has analyzed many billions of poker
hands.
The Beast This project with a funny name is a near realtime data analysis system that catches game play
behavioral patterns and takes automated enforcement action against violators.
This system has a configurable (by nonprogrammers) pattern detection and enforcement configuration mechanism
that allows nonprogrammers to experiment, measure, and enable enforcement for suspect behavior.
I'm also really proud of this system. The fact that it analyzes so many hands with tight timing tolerances is a really great
achievement.
I also like this system because I designed it from the ground up, and it uses the data stored in Player Hand Tracking for
its mission.
Viper This is the latest project I have worked on. This is a realtime anomaly detection system that even
bypasses PHT because of tight timing constraints. Viper's mission is to catch anomalous behavior beforeahand
ends, and therefore prevent fraudulent chip transfers from taking place.
I am currently architecting this system. It will have a lot of awesome technology applications in it to fulfill its mission.
DEVOPS!!!! Aspartoftheteamcalled BlackOps,.Iwrite
systems that configure other systems. I help a relatively small team at Zynga Poker manage a great many servers
through scripts, systems such as Puppet, and many command line utilities. This type of work is pretty awesome
.Sobeingproactiveisahugepartofnotgetting
that 3am call.
Other Stuff Pokerisalargegame,.
There is Javascript in the SmartFox servers, Java in the new generation of SmartFox code, PHP for all sorts of
backend systems, experimental PHP compilation with HipHop, and many more things.
.Iamaverygoodcoderandsystems
designer,. IleftZyngaon
very amicable terms and my time there will forever be a highlight of my career.
For Zynga, I worked onlocation for about 1.5 years, the rest of the time I worked remotely from my home in Arizona.
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MarketZero, Inc.
- Senior Systems Engineer
2009 - 2011
c#, design, projectmanagement, community, architecture, parallelprocessing, textparsing, staticanalysis
Hired to develop poker statistical analysis software from the ground up. I am responsible for everything from systems
architecture resign, database implementation (Postgres and SQLite), all coding, and community building in
preparation for rollout.
This was a key strategic project for MarketZero, it allowed the company to expand into a new market.
This project is very interesting to me because I have learned all about poker and professional poker players. I have had
to learn about all the meaningful pokerrelated statistics, I have the chance to implement parallel programming
functionality, I also deal with noncomputer issues such as becoming part of the online poker community (which I was
notapartofbefore). Needless to say, I have also mastered every aspect of the poker play mechanics as part of this
project. I have dealt with primarily the Texas Hold'em, Omaha and Omaha Hi/Lo variations of the game (the most
popular). I have also implemented extensive data parsing as part of the data extraction part of this project.
I left MarketZero because we were acquired by Zynga.
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Hip Venture Company
- CTO
2007 - 2010
smartfox, php, javascript, flash
Coordinated systems development and operations efforts for the development of several projects, most notably the
Hip Chicas virtual world aimed at tween girls. Worked with the CEO to coordinate and provide clear direction in
development efforts for art and engineering. The project contributors are geographically distributed all over the world in
Argentina, Mexico, and in the United States.
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Gobae Consulting
- President
2005 - 2011
c#, projectmanagement, databasedesign, sql, server, oracle, mysql, wpf, wcf
Founded consulting company catering to USA clients, managing all aspects of software development lifecycle, from
requirements gathering to postproduction support.
Worked in projects ranging from telecommunications to financial databases to firmware.
Used technologies: C#, .NET, ASP.NET, Java, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Oracle 10 R2, Microsoft SQL Server,
Borland Delphi, MySQL, PHP, and C/C++.
Major projects completed from beginning to postdelivery maintenance:
System to accept residential mortgage application data (Form 1003), store it in a database, and process it,
including matching applicants to available loan programs.
Check cashing chain (80 locations) distributed point of sale system. System had ability to function
connected under normal circumstances, but had fault tolerance and could function disconnected and would
resynchronize after connection was reestablished. This system was very high volume and very versatile,
satisfying the needs of this check cashign store chain.
Card room management system. This system we built for a California card room. The system controlled all
the tournaments and had other cardroomspecific functionality built in.
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Harvard Business School Summer Venture
- Director, Co & Founder
1998 - 2013
Harvard Business School Summer Venture in Management
Program (SVMP) Alumni Association
socialnetworking, wordpress
CoFounded SMVP AA, actively involved in management and strategic planning of the association for many years
afterward.
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Currency Services, Inc.
- Director of Software Development-Continental
1995 - 2005
c#, projectmanagement, databasedesign, sql, server, oracle
Designed and managed software development projects. CCS is a financial services company for the unbanked, so
CCS offers check cashing, auto registration, international remittance services, etc.
I was responsible for leading software development efforts at this company of about 1000 employees.
Projects undertaken include:
Money order dispenser firmware Wrote all software components running on this customdesigned device.
Device had nontrivial functionality such as daily sales reports transmission and autoupdates of firmware
versions.
Check cashing point of sale system
International remittance software This is a highly complex system for money transfers abroad. Software
responsible for local financial law compliance, suspicious activity detection, agent accounting and statements,
and distributed redundancy in the system to allow for major nodes to be down and have the system still function
everywhere else.
Many other smaller projects relevant to the industry, as well as network design, interfacing with third parties, etc.
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Fiesta Exchange, Inc.
- MIS Director
1991 - 1995
clipper, dbase, novell, networking
Served as MIS Director for this startup financial company. Developed all systems and interfaces necessary for
company function. · Designed and developed system to streamline financial reporting between headquarters, local
and foreign offices, and local and foreign banks. Technologies: Clipper 5.2, Novell Netware 3.1. · Installed and
maintained all hardware and software, including local and wide area networking hardware and software.
