David Anderson

Whatever's needed, technically. Ruby on Rails, Javascript, HTML, CSS, etc.

Product Owner, Rails Architecture Team. I led a team that overhauled the rails portion of xing.com. We split a large, monolithic application into a set of much more maintainable engines, improved deployment processes, increased throughput by 50%, and did a lot of cleanup and refactoring.

Led a re-implementation of http://hotelsearch.com and provided training and mentoring in Ruby and Rails.

At AutoScout24 FolkLogic was part of a large project to migrate and re-implement a custom CRM system in Ruby on Rails. I implemented the reporting system (using Ruby, SQL, Perl, gnuplot and LaTeX), and made major contributions to the commissioning system and the migration of legacy data. The data migration required lots of creative database spelunking, as we didn't have source code to key parts of the legacy system.

A startup building virtual wireless IP networks for market leading communications companies. I defined the technical strategy and led the engineering team. Successfully introduced agile development practices; coordinated the planning of the development roadmap, and drove the implementation efforts.

Launched a research program in wireless sensor networks. Recruited an international team which developed architectures and strategies for Sun. Organized a company-wide summit on sensor networking, and influenced several disparate groups to start working together. The outcome of this work can be seen at sunspotworld.com.

Performed and led application-oriented basic research in the areas of social/networked virtual reality and off-the-desktop user interfaces, including tangible interfaces, computer vision, and speech. The highlight of my time at MERL was having Dave Barry devote a chapter of "Dave Barry in Cyberspace" to making fun of our work on Diamond Park.

I worked on the IBM-funded Andrew project, developing an advanced campus computing platform. Initially I was an architect and developer, and later manager. I supervised 5 full-time staff members and was responsible for the development and releases of the campus-wide Andrew system (for which I received an ITC award). I worked with executive management to spin off an independent consortium to continue Andrew development, and consulted with IBM to transfer the technology to a product group.

Distributed Systems, User Interfaces