Objective

To work with interesting people on creative projects. To solve challenging problems with sustainable solutions. To do some good in the world. To live artfully. To communicate clearly and openly. To be consistent. To never cease learning. To seek adventure. And above all else, to help others.

Experience

Sincerely — Engineer, 12/12–5/14; Dir. of Engineering, 6/14–6/16; Sr. Dir. of Engineering, 6/16–12/18

• Improved and extended Sincerely's API and backend infrastructure to support new mobile app features
• Introduced tools to streamline development, including Vagrant, PHPUnit, Ansible, CircleCI
• As director, managed a team of 7 engineers (iOS, Android, and backend/web)
• As senior director, managed the entire Sincerely business unit, with 16 direct and indirect reports
• Represented Sincerely during its acquisition by PlanetArt; remained onboard through 2018 to ensure a seamless transition

Simpleform — Engineer, 1/12–12/12

• Met with client (a multinational news and information firm) in NYC monthly to develop RESTful API spec for next generation news website, CMS, and mobile apps
• Built system in Python to poll a legacy API, transform XML content into JSON, and store it in MongoDB
• Wrote unit tests and API features using Python, Tornado, and MongoEngine

Federated Media — Engineer, 6/06–12/08; Director of Engineering, 1/09–8/10

• Rewrote internal ad trafficking platform around a home-grown, object-oriented MVC framework in PHP
• Abstracted adserver operations with an API layer, processed using a parallelized job queue
• Wrote Java adapter to interface with DoubleClick using the PHP/Java Bridge
• Developed several special-purpose, distributed adservers (remnant and third party serving)
• As director, managed a team of 5 engineers developing the internal platform tools

O'Reilly Media — Senior Web Producer, 5/05–6/06

• Managed blog transition project (200+ bloggers, 10+ blogs, 5+ months) from a legacy in-house CMS to Movable Type with dynamic PHP templates
• Developed article formatting web application using HTML Tidy and Perl, shortening the average article production time from ~40 min to <15 min
• Produced over 260 technical articles for publication on the O'Reilly Network family of sites

University of North Carolina — Research Assistant, 4/00–5/04; IT Applications Analyst, 6/04–5/05

• Developed database application to track a $47M grant from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) using Microsoft Access, VBA, and Excel
• Developed web application to track a $70M grant from the USAID using PHP, Perl, JavaScript, and MySQL
• Developed monitoring and evaluation tool for tracking health indicators using Microsoft Access; traveled to USAID Missions in Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Tanzania, and Ghana to train USAID staff in its use; presented the application to USAID in Washington, DC (7/03)

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — M.S., Information Science, 8/02–5/04

• Master's Paper: Design and Implementation of a Web-based Financial Information System
• Paper Advisor: Professor Gary Marchionini

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — B.A., Linguistics, 8/98–5/02

• Minor: Information Systems
• Phi Beta Kappa and Golden Key
• Marc Adam Eisdorfer Chancellor's Award in Linguistics
• IBM Thomas J. Watson Memorial Scholarship

Personal Projects

• Maintain a personal blog using WordPress at justinsomnia.org since June 2002
• Featured in the New York Times, Both Sides in Parody Dispute Agree on a Term: Unhappy, and USA Today, Christian group backs off case against blog parody, in March 2006 after challenging a cease-and-desist letter (with the help of the ACLU) regarding a parody image on my blog
• Traveled around the world from August 2010 through September 2011
• Thru-hiked the 800-mile Arizona National Scenic Trail from March through April 2019