Ian Kallen [curriculum vitae] adaptive, autodidactic and entrepreneurial [T]
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Contact Info X
Ian Kallen
42 Knox Drive
Lafayette, CA 94549
h: 925.283.7788
m: 415.505.5208
spidaman _at_ arachna _dot_ com
Summary X
Over a dozen years of experience as a system, internet and software technologist. The last 3 years have been invested in growing and scaling a significant internet service to handle hundreds of millions updates per day, support millions of web traffic requests and millions more database and search system queries. The prior 5 years were invested developing management portals and web applications for online infrastructure and content for enterprise software and web publications. I am an agile and inventive technologist with a rich background in major application and system design, architecture and project leadership. Focused on the big picture while tending to the details in tenacious pursuit of success, I make great things happen.
Objective +
Skills X
Practices
        agile development and scrummy extreme programming (XP)
        OO design and programming
        bang-it-out-hacking
Programming Languages
        Java, J2EE, EJB, JDBC, Servlets, JSP, JSTL, Struts/Tiles, jsr-168, JAX-RPC
        Perl, mod_perl, HTML::Mason, DBI, LWP, CGI, CPAN
        Apache Axis, SOAP::Lite and WSDL
        Python, twisted
        PHP, shell, Tcl/TK, expect
Software Infrastructure
        Apache HTTPD 1.x and 2.0
        Tomcat 3.x through 5.0
        mod_perl 1.x through 2.0
        JBoss 3.x
        Weblogic 7.x through 8.x
Database Technologies
        Postgres
        MySQL
        Oracle
        Sleepycat (native and je)
        ObjectStore
Standards and Protocols
        HTTP, SOAP, XML-RPC, WebDAV/DeltaV
        HTML, XML, XSLT
        FTP, SMB, NFS configuration
        Various mail protocols
Tools
        Eclipse, NetBeans and vi
        SQL*Plus and other SQL shells
        Embarcadero ER/Studio and DBArtisan
        ant, xdoclet, make, shell scripting
        white boards, hand gestures, rhetorical questions
        CVS, Bugzilla, RCS and subversion
        Microsoft Office, Visio and OpenOffice
Network Infrastructure
        Cisco/Linksys, 3com, Lucent/Ascend routers and switches
        f5 loadbalancers
        Homebrewed firewalls with BSD/ipfw and Linux/iptables
Operating Systems
        Linux
        FreeBSD
        Solaris
        Windows DOS/3.x/95/98/NT/2K/XP
        IRIX
        MacOS
Other
        BIND, squid, cron
        sendmail, qmail, ezmlm
        regular expressions
        awk, sed, grep, etc
Hardware Platforms
        x86
        Sparc
History X
Technorati Apr, 2004 - Oct, 2024
San Francisco, CA
  Senior Architect and Director of Core Services Apr, 2004 - Oct, 2024
  Innovation and Leadership
  • Decoupled application and UI with service interfaces
  • Virtualized services behind load balancing infrastructure
  • Introduced event based data collection and publishing systems
  • Integrated distributed object in-RAM caching
  • Implemented HTTP connection management with reverse proxying
  • Decoupled static from dynamic content serving
  • Implemented web spam detection and thwarting infrastructure
  • Redesigned and reimplemened crawling systems
  • Developed metric collection and visualization systems
  • Forecasted technology changes required and scaling needs driven by growth
  • Evangelized and developed technology around key areas
  • End-user identity silo solutions such as OpenID
Intellectual Property Development
  • Developed and filed patent on web spam thwarting system (patent pending)
  • Designed systems for high performance, smooth runtime scaling and simple operations
Operational Support
  • Provided provisioning, deployment and troubleshooting documentation
  • Assisted diagnostics and troubleshooting during operational intervention
Technical Uses and Accomplishments
  • Java application development with JDBC, JMS, JUnit and other APIs
  • Java UI development with JSP/taglibs, Velocity, Servlets, Struts, Tiles and Java i18n/l10n
  • OO Perl development with mod_perl, DBI and myriad CPAN modules
  • PHP, Python and Ruby script development and maintenance
  • MySQL, PostgreSQL and BerkeleyDB db development, maintenance and administration
  • spread, memcached and daemontools integration
Covalent Technologies Mar, 2001 - Mar, 2004
San Francisco, CA
  Senior Software Engineer/Project Team Lead Feb, 2003 - Mar, 2004
  As CAM Team Lead
  • Implemented portions of the infrastructure inventory system web GUI.
  • Analyzed mockups for the monitoring web GUI for backend support requirements.
  • Led a small team to implement web GUI for 1.0 release.
  • Applied fixes to the 1.x product's web GUI and in the EJB backend.
  • Co-lead on the 2.0 metric system re-design team.
  • Wrote functional specifications, screen storyboards and other design materials for the 2.0 product metric system.
  • Analyzed system reporting requirements and implemented prototypes.
  • Designed and implemented metric grouping attribute system and problem identification system.
  • Specified application transaction availability tracking system.
Technologies used included
  • JSP, Servlets, Struts, Tiles, JDBC
  • Entity and session EJBs (session facade pattern)
  • Xdoclet, ant (including custom ant tasks)
  • Tomcat 4.1.x
  • JBoss 3.0.x and 3.2
  • Managed infrastructure: WebLogic, Oracle, Apache and others
  Senior Software Engineer/Product Lead Mar, 2001 - Feb, 2003
  As CMP Product Lead
  • Worked with product management to specify configurator, monitoring, alerting, process control and security requirements.
  • Analyzed and scoped marketing requirements, wrote functional specifications and specified architectural elements.
  • Recruited engineers, worked on estimates and project plans, facilitated workshops for QA, professional services, support personnel and technical documentors.
  • Planned bug-fix schedules and releases.
  • Worked with packaging and installer team on product bundles, installation utilities and product integration.
  • Re-architected and refactored system for performance gains.
  • Wrote version migration scripts and tests.
Technologies used included
  • JSP, Servlets, Struts, Apache SOAP and Axis, JDBC, SSL
  • Ant (including custom ant tasks)
  • Apache HTTPD 2.0, Tomcat 3.x and 4.x with mod_jk
  • SNMP (Netaphor and UCD snmpd libraries)
Salon.com Jun, 1999 - Jan, 2001
San Francisco, CA
  Creation Engines CTO Sep, 2000 - Jan, 2001
  Architected, designed and hired engineers for implementation of
  • workflow systems
  • user management and security model
  • article keyword suggestion engine
  • keyword <=> article relationship productivity enhancements
  • template management and page component generation system
  • page component staging, transformation, queuing and deployment system
  • content re-use and syndication system
Collaborated on
  • financial modeling
  • business plans
  • marketing/sales plans
Traveled on-site for
  • investment meetings
  • customer demos and technology discussions
  Software and Network Systems Manager Nov, 1999 - Sep, 2000
  Performed integration, maintenance and troubleshooting for a variety of products such as
  • WebCrossing
  • Accrue
  • RealMedia Open AdStream
  • Oracle 8.0/8i
Application development, designed, developed and implemented
  • polling system
  • content delivery for AvantGo and other wireless/PDA target devices
  • traffic tracking systems using mod_perl and PHP (MySQL back-ended)
  • server farm content population system
  • reporting systems
  • prototyped re-built mod_perl applications as Java servlets
  • load distribution system
Architected, designed, developed and implemented replacement CMS
  • integrated a widely used templating system, HTML::Mason (eliminated use of Apache::Registry)
  • Oracle 8i schema
  • managed team of engineers dedicated to the implementation
  • object oriented class hierarchy
  • business logic API provided
  Software Engineer Jun, 1999 - Nov, 1999
 
  • content syndication/subscription systems
  • cryptographically secure cookie based access controls
  • SSL authentication
  • Apache builds, Perl library maintenance
Gamespot.com/ZDNet Feb, 1996 - Jun, 1999
San Francisco, CA
  Director of Technology Feb, 1996 - Jun, 1999
  Set up systems for
  • Web servers that delivered upto 2M pageviews day (IRIX/SGI and FreeBSD/Intel)
  • farm of FTP servers that supported upto 800 simultaneous downloaders each (2400 in aggregate) (FreeBSD/Intel)
  • staging servers for content development and QA
  • Oracle, MySQL and other RDBMS installations
  • Squid caching web servers
  • mod_perl servers
  • PHP and server side include components
Performed setup and systems/network administration for
  • e-mail (sendmail, qmail and listserv)
  • DNS
  • NT LAN, samba servers, printers, file servers
  • network equipment: routers, switches and hubs
  • desktop hardware and software support
San Francisco State University Jun, 1997 - Dec, 2002
San Francisco, CA
  Instructor (part time) Jun, 1997 - Dec, 2002
  Courses offered
  • CGI Programming with Perl
  • Installation and Management of Apache Webservers
  • Advanced Perl
Setup and tracked
  • set up and maintained Unix system for class use
  • student accounts
  • online curriculum notes
  • student assignments
Taos Mountain Software Nov, 1995 - Feb, 1996
San Francisco, CA
  Contractor
Contracts:
Oracle Corporation (Server Technologies Group) Nov, 1995 - Feb, 1996
Redwood Shores, CA
Systems Administrator Nov, 1995 - Feb, 1996
Performed
  • maintenance of SparcStations, mostly 10s and 20s including CDDI cards, disk drives, CPUs and ethernet
  • SunOS 4.13 systems and installations
  • Solaris 2.4 systems and installations
  • back-ups and restorations, NCD, print and file server troubleshooting
  • migrations from SunOS to Solaris
  • developed a "upgrade automation" server
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The Well Oct, 1994 - Aug, 1995
Sausalito, CA
  System tools and user support Oct, 1994 - Aug, 1995
 
  • hosted Web pages
  • Macintosh and MS-Windows 3.x/95/NT connectivity (serial dial-up and PPP
  • conferencing system use
  • founder of the Java and VRML conferences (1996)
  • Performed QA for customer software bundle development

additional job history available upon request
Presentations X
Exchanging Objects and Messages With SOAP O'Reilly Open Source Conference (Jul 23, 2002)
  An in depth web services tutorial using example code in Java (Apache Axis) and Perl (SOAP::Lite)
Industrial Strength Web Publishing O'Reilly Open Source Conference (Jul 20, 2000)
  A discussion of open source tools to fulfill high volume content management and web publishing requirements.
Web Server Load Balancing O'Reilly Open Source Conference (Aug 23, 1999)
  A review of scalability challenges and solutions as well as a comparative overview of load balancing technologies.
Know You Audience: Logging and Tracking ThunderLizard Apache Summit (Jul 22, 1999)
  A technical overview of web traffic analytic challenges and solutions, general and specific to the Apache web server.
Extending Apache: Modules and More ThunderLizard Apache Summit (Jul 23, 1999)
  A demonstration of the Apache httpd server's extensibility and open architecture.
Publications +
Education X
San Francisco State University
    Dean's List BA 1991: Special Major - Arms Control and Cold War Studies
    Authored online guide, "Post-Soviet Study Resources on the Internet", 1991

references available upon request

spidaman _at_ arachna _dot_ com
[ technologist / the big picture matters most / the details matter too ]