Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

SUMMARY

Senior software developer with proven record of getting projects done. Passionate about customer experience. Expertise with high performance, real-time personalization at massive scale. Consistently managed people and projects to on-schedule delivery.

SKILLS

• C/C++/Objective-C and Java development
• Large-scale systems design and scaling
• Handling massive data sets with Oracle (including data modeling) and Perl
• Project management
• People management
• Public speaking and presenting

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Apple Computer, Inc.
Senior Software Engineer

Designed and implemented systems and services for the Apple Web Store. Developed new features including international address formats, gift messaging, and AJAX improvements. Developed schema and interface for new catalog system along with a prototype service. Deployed store to new countries (TBA). Worked remotely from Seattle.

Microsoft Corporation
Software Development Lead

Member of two-person team developing an alternative web portal targeted at technical users. Became live.com. Developed using cross-platform javascript and XHTML on the front end with C#/.NET services behind the scenes.

Memeo, Inc.
Principal Software Engineer

Founding member of high-tech startup. Part of 3-person development team designing, implementing, and marketing the flagship product, Back Me Up!. Developed using C#/.NET, ASP.NET, and SQL Server. Responsible for web service and user interface design and implementation. Participated in product pitches, helped develop product positioning and multi-product strategy, and shared operational responsibility for our demonstration web server.

Amazon.com, Inc.
Software Development Manager

Responsible for software and systems making recommendations on Amazon.com, generating $190M/year of incremental revenue and maintaining system uptime in excess of 99.9%. Recruited, mentored and managed a team of 5 software engineers; managed all aspects of projects from business case through deployment; responsible for software and systems doing real-time product recommendations at massive scale (http://www.amazon.com/recommendations). Created and executed phase one of globalization plan for our various services, and negotiated with other groups to manage dependencies.

Software Development Lead

30th software engineer hired at the company; worked on most major parts of the website and over time became an “old-timer” mentor to many of the hundreds of developers who came on as the company grew. Succeeded in a dynamic environment where business needs required us to scale existing systems, implement new features, and innovate daily without taking significant downtime.

Highlights:

• led teams to design and implement numerous personalization features; managed major projects, including migration of all personalization features to target.com; managed operational systems, achieving uptime in excess of 99.9%
• led small team to design and implement major community features: customer review voting, purchase circles, shared purchases, wish lists
• co-invented and implemented a proprietary template system and web authoring language before any standards existed in support of selling multiple product types (music, video, etc.)
• led design and implementation of feedback system for amazon.com auctions

Used C/C++, Linux/Unix, CVS, Perforce, Perl, HTML, Oracle, and a host of proprietary tools.

Microsoft Corporation
Software Development Lead

Development Lead for Encarta Encyclopedia for Macintosh and Microsoft Bookshelf for Macintosh. Led team of 3, developing cross-platform C++/MFC applications. Worked with Windows development team to ensure cross-platform functionality for the shared code base. Consistently shipped products on time.

Apple Computer, Inc.
Software Development Engineer

First member of Netware for PowerPC team. Performed technology evaluation and due diligence. Developed key components of the hardware abstraction layer, including drivers for video, serial, and application loader for two new PowerPC platforms. Used C++ and PowerPC assembly language.

U.S. PATENTS

Processor independent network operating system loadable modules

Method and system for providing video graphics adapter functionality on a simple frame buffer

System and method for providing secure URL-based access to private resources

Method and system for publicizing commercial transactions on a computer network

Services for increasing the utility of electronic wish lists

Methods, systems and products for data preservation

Methods and systems for processing distributed feedback

Identifying and providing targeted content to users having common interests

EDUCATION

Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
Bachelor of Arts, June 1992
Double major in Computer Science and Physics
Winner of the John G. Kemeny Computing Prize for 1992