Resume

Senior Enterprise Architect and Development Manager with over 25 years of hands on experience architecting, designing and implementing mission critical solutions.

Technical Summary

Technical Leader for large-scale enterprise and Internet applications on the Microsoft platform, managing teams of up to 29 developers
Enterprise Architect, setting technology directions to meet critical business needs
Microsoft Certified Architect for Solutions
Winner of the Computerworld-Smithsonian award for Excellence in Information Technology for EIS; finalist for the same award for NASDAQ SDR.
Industry leader in Microsoft development: publishing, mentoring, lecturing and training across the country

Experience

Thomson Reuters	Rockville, MD
Software Development Manager	2012-Present

ScienceWire is a product providing insight into the world of scientific research. A robust data warehouse combining Publication, Grant and Patent information provides clients with the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of research departments; locate experts in scientific fields; and judge the success of grant funding. Access is provided through custom analytics contracts as well as through an API allowing clients to write their own systems to mine the data.

Managed the development of the People Catalog initiative, a cutting edge disambiguation process for disambiguating over 180 million authors, investigators and inventors across the ScienceWire database. This effort relied heavily on the big data processing power of Hadoop..
Organized the approach to the ETL processes that feed the ScienceWire database, instituting common patterns for implementation; automated build and deployment of the ETL packages; and a common instrumentation framework for reporting errors and messages to a common repository
Initiated a complete overhaul of the API, designing and prototyping a new architecture that allows:
- More technology neutral access through REST and SOAP interfaces
- Simpler versioning of the interfaces, including the ability to easily retire deprecated versions
- A simpler vocabulary for the externally facing contract
Drove the effort to reorganize the development processes of the ScienceWire product, including documented processes for tracking analysis, development and signoff.

Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)	Rockville, MD
Senior Software Architect	2002-Present

FINRA is a self-regulatory organization responsible for regulating the securities industry. In addition to delivering business applications, Senior Architect responsibilities include acting as an internal consultant to business teams; presenting to upper management (CTO and President level); and promoting shared software services to reduce TCO of FINRA technology. Specific accomplishments include–

Led the rearchitecture of an existing .NET, browser-based case management system used by FINRA Regulation to track examinations and investigations. While continuing to provide new business features, exposed all system functionality as services integrated with other FINRA systems both synchronously through web services and asynchronously through the Enterprise System Bus.
Led the design and implementation of a case management system used by the FINRA Dispute Resolution department to manage thousands of cases each year. This browser-based internal system is written on the .NET platform and features AJAX functionality and a custom ORM.
Architected, designed and implemented a software service allowing the deployment of data collection forms over the Internet without code using metadata and configuration. This external web application is written in .NET, and makes extensive use of web services to allow interaction with internal FINRA systems.
Led the design and implementation of a web based software service allowing online payments through credit cards and ACH. This .NET system is architected such that it can be integrated with other FINRA web applications, including the data collection form platform.

VizzVox (SKH Group, Inc.)	Corte Madera, CA
Indpendent Consultant	2005-2006

VizzVox is a startup venture by SKH Group. Their initial product was a service that allowed users to publish slideshows with audio accompaniment to the web for download and presentation on Tivo DVR players.

Designed and implemented the prototype for the client side layer, utilizing the Tivo HME API to provide menu capabilities to navigate through slideshows and coordinate the download and playing of the slideshow on a Tivo DVR. All code was Java, communicating with the VizzVox site via web services.

Verizon.com	Dallas, TX
Technical Consultant (Biff Gaut Consulting)	2002

Verizon.com allows Verizon customers to order new phone equipment and services over the Web. This engagement was to review the architecture for opportunities to improve performance and reliability. The results of the two month engagement included -

500% increase in service capacity
37% decrease request processing time
Extensive recommendations for additional improvements in the near future

Divine, Inc.	Leesburg, VA
Senior Software Developer	2001-2002

Divine provides software and services for enterprise solutions, including XChange, a call center management system. As Senior Software Developer, implemented several functions including a load balancing thread engine in C++ for executing server side Visual Basic scripts; and a COM wrapper for the server call management software, allowing customers to easily write their own client applications in Visual Basic.

Open Solutions (formerly Remember Data Services, Inc.)	Indianapolis, IN
Chief Technical Architect (Biff Gaut Consulting)	2001

Remember Data Services, Inc. provides a turnkey software solution for Credit Unions running on the Alpha. As Chief Technical Architect-

Set the strategy for the rewrite of the company’s flagship product in .NET, proposing an architecture and leading the design and development of a proof of concept prototype based on composed transactions. The prototype, written in C#, made extensive use of COM+ Services, XML and ADO.NET.

Dell Professional Services (Formerly Plural/Micro Modeling Associates)	Bethesda, MD
Technical Director	1994 – 2001

Plural, the 1999 Microsoft Partner of the Year, is a Microsoft-focused computer consulting firm providing project-based application development for a wide range of Fortune 500 clients. In addition to nationwide internal training, mentoring and project troubleshooting, built and managed the DC Advanced Technology Group. This 10 person group specialized in COM-based enterprise and Internet applications. Through this group, was engaged as manager and developer to over 28 different projects. Highlights include:

Technical manager, architect and developer for NASDAQ Surveillance Delivery Realtime (SDR) – an application used by NASDAQ Market Watch to monitor market activity. This application, distributed between 9 different servers and dozens of client desktops, monitors and correlates several data feeds and processes up to 2000 messages a second. Construction involved 29 developers and utilized MTS, MSMQ, SQL Server, WBEM, MMC Snap-ins, SNMP and DCOM. Since this was one of the first projects that showed Windows NT to be capable of BackOffice calculations at this volume, Microsoft monitored the progress closely and published a whitepaper about the application on its web site. The application was a finalist for the Computerworld-Smithsonian Award for Excellence in Information Technology.
Technical manager, architect and developer for NASDAQ Mid-Tier – an application that monitored NASDAQ data feeds, consolidating transaction information and producing a data feed of periodic reports to NASDAQ clients on transactions and market state. This project utilized MSMQ, C++, ATL, SQL Server and DCOM extensively and processed over 2000 messages/second.
Architect and developer for NASDAQ-Online (design and prototype of the COM architecture) - a limited access Internet site. This limited access site provides market and corporate information to a user base of 5000 users. Implementation of the design tripled the speed of the site over the previous ASP/SQL Server only implementation. Led a team of 6 people through the design and implementation of the prototype.
Technical manager, architect and developer for Tasmanian Traders – an application written for and with Microsoft demonstrating the capabilities of the soon to be released Visual Studio 5.0. This application was written using pre-Beta software for Microsoft to use in the introduction of the Visual Studio 5.0 at Developer Days ’97 and beyond. Actively led a team of three people through conception, design and construction.
Authored and delivered internal classes and workshops on many technology topics at Plural offices across the country; authored the corporate C++ coding standards; contributed to the corporate software methodology.

MapQuest (formerly GeoSystems, Inc.)	Falls Church, VA
Senior Geographic Systems Analyst	1992–1994

GeoSystems provided custom built Geographic Information System applications for clients. Project highlights include-

Technical Manager for the New Jersey Transit Travel Information System – an application that allows users to calculate and plot routes using the bus and rail system between any two points in New Jersey. This product was written in C++ using Motif for the user interface. Accomplishments include supervision of the overall design; liaison with customer; supervision of data production; and C++ coding.
Delivered multiple coding features of varying scope to round out the mapping family of products as well as to support sales, including a multimedia prototype kiosk-based Travel Information System that included music and full motion video. Participated in several oral presentations of contract proposals to prospective clients.

ESS (Formerly Research Alternatives)	Rockville, MD
Vice President of Software Development	1983-1992

Research Alternatives provided map-based Emergency Management software and services to state and local jurisdictions as well as private industry. This software would facilitate communication and coordination between agencies during times of emergency. Project highlights include:

Technical Manager, architect and developer for the Emergency Information System (EIS) - a PC-based, map-oriented database system for emergency management in the public and private sectors. EIS is installed in more than 1300 locations world-wide and won the Computerworld-Smithsonian Award for Excellence in Information Technology in 1991. It was certified in 21 states as the official state-wide Emergency Management software system. EIS features include: full jurisdictional mapping; complete multi-user database capabilities; background communications and remote sensor monitoring. Its plume dispersion information file format has become an industry standard, supported by four of the top five plume dispersion modeling programs in the world. Responsibilities outside technology included marketing and system demonstrations; user training across the United States and the Caribbean; chairing sessions in national conferences; writing articles for quarterly newspaper; and managing Technical Support.

Publications

Enterprise Web Development with Microsoft Tools –Whitepaper, 1997, published on Plural and Microsoft Web Sites

Microsoft Commerce Solutions Web Technology – Microsoft Press, 1999, contributing author with chapters on COM and MTS.

Biff’s PDC Newsletter – A light-hearted technical newsletter written and published electronically every day from the Microsoft Professional Developers’ Conference (7 volumes available at http://www.BiffsPDCNewsletter.com).

Degrees and Certifications

B.S. cum laude in Mechanical Engineering with Computer Science Minor	1986
Virginia Tech	Blacksburg, VA

Microsoft Certified Solution Developer	1996

Microsoft Certified Architect	2006

Skills

Technologies & Languages – C#, .NET, ASP.NET, XML, XSLT, SOAP, REST, UML, Java, ADO.Net, COM/DCOM/COM+, Visual C++, ATL, MSMQ, SQL Server, Oracle, Windows (2003, XP, 2000, NT), ODBC, VBScript

Past Experience - ADO, Visual Basic, ASP, MTS, MFC, BizTalk Server 2004, OS/2, MS-DOS, Open VMS (Motif), CP/M, FORTRAN, 8086 Assembler, Access, Paradox, CTree, Tibco Rendezvous