Résumé | Darren Boyd

Blujack Technical Co-Founder

San Francisco, CA July 2013 – present

Co-founded Blujack; responsible for the technical obligations of the blujack group travel management product.
Built out Blujack's product with Ruby on Rails.
Managed a small team of developers and helped develop mobile applications using Cordova, shipping on Android and iOS.
Integrated with third-party APIs to add realtime flight status, flight search and flight confirmation-email parsing to the Blujack system.
Integrated collection of event and analytical data.
Managed deployment and operations of the Blujack system.
Worked on procurement of out-sourced design work.
Helped with product marketing and pitching; participated in Launch Festival in Feb, 2014.
Learned a great deal about the very-early stages of the startup lifecycle.

Realgravity Senior Developer

San Francisco, CA March 2011 – July 2013

Developed a zero-downtime development and deployment process for Realgravity's video embed service, ensuring maximum availability with near-continuous deployment.
Built out ElasticSearch service for video meta-data, supporting user-defined access control.
Built out distributed workflow based video uploading, transcoding and distribution system.
Maintained and extended Rails based video management and distribution system. Work included everything from provisioning of machines to building out new application features (full-stack development).
Moved original monolithic Rails application to a service-oriented architecture.
Managed and developed AWS infrastructure for Realgravity services.
Involved in hiring both local and remote staff, ranging from junior developers to a Vice President of Engineering.
Worked with sales, support and product teams to develop and prioritize product roadmap.
Mentored junior developers.

Zendesk Senior Developer

San Francisco, CA August 2010 – March 2011

Enhancing and maintaining Zendesk’s Ruby/Rails based help desk management system.
Integrated live chat into Zendesk’s application using XMPP, javascript and ejabberd.
Built a system for merging user data when a single user comes into the application through multiple identities.
Designed and implemented an open API to share tickets between different help-desk type systems (http://networkedhelpdesk.org/).

RepairPal Senior Developer

Emeryville, CA April 2010 – August 2010

Enhancing and maintaining RepairPal's Ruby/Rails based auto-repair information system.
Building interactive web interfaces with HTML, CSS and Javascript.
Extending schema and optimizing MySQL database.
Used Sphinx to manage text based searching of information.
Used Geocoding technologies to build location based functionality for the RepairPal website.
Installed Hudson continuous integration system, to help sell Agile development methodologies.
Building out a test suite for current functionality using RSpec.

Tapioca Mobile Director of Engineering

San Diego, CA January 2008 – February 2010

Led Agile Engineering team building a Ruby/Rails based messaging and video-distribution system for mobile devices.
Implemented multi-threaded Ruby system to manage high volume outgoing delivery of SMS and MMS messages. Created Ruby gems to support SMS/MMS delivery over several delivery mechanisms.
Implemented multi-platform distributed transcoding system to transcode customer videos for delivery using Ruby, Java and Amazon's Simple Queue Service.
Created advanced state management system to 'converse' with users over SMS messaging with Rails and PostgreSQL.
Developed Rails based product web site for customers and administrators including realtime monitoring of SMS activity with AJAX.
Engineered system to resolve MMS delivery requirements based on outgoing delivery mechanism, device and customer service level.
Implemented functionality in Rails based site to deliver platform-targeted content for mobile focussed marketing campaigns.
Managed Ruby, Rails, PostgreSQL and Memcache production deployments in both the U.S. and India using Capistrano.
Extended Rails framework to solve mobile-device specific issues. Implemented solutions with Rails plugins as well as modifying the framework default behavior.
Delivered 12 million messages, processed 600,000 SMS message and transcoded 200,000 videos.

The Revere Group Development Team Lead

Los Angeles, CA April 2007 – January 2008

Development lead on project extending existing Ruby on Rails system for JibJab Media. Worked with and managed Ruby and Flash developers.
Used Amazon’s Simple Storage Service for user uploads.
Created and documented Rails backed web service APIs for JibJab’s Starring You product.
Integrated PayPal support into J2EE fantasy sports site for Sport Composite.
Extended asset rights search capabilities for Sony Entertainment in Java and Javascript (AJAX).

NT Services Senior Java Developer

Calgary, AB August 2005 – January 2007

Worked on a large online Java based payment processing system.
Implemented new functionality with technologies that include JSF, Spring, Hibernate, HTML, CSS, JBoss.
Implemented web applications using Ruby on Rails and MySQL.
Developed automated testing framework with Ruby and Watir.
Team Lead on several projects; mentored junior staff.

Chartwell Technologies Senior Java Developer

Calgary, AB January 2005 – June 2005

Analyzed and implemented new build and deployment process for Chartwell’s online gaming software using Java, Ant, Red Hat Enterprise Server.

Telus Communications Lead Developer

Calgary, AB March 2004 – September 2004

Designed and implemented a web based insurance sales system with Java, Struts, Hibernate, JSP and WebLogic.

Chartwell Technologies Developer

Calgary, AB January 2003 – May 2003

Implemented a distributed server infrastructure for Chartwell’s online gaming products with Linux and Linux Virtual Server.
Managed and configured automated build and deploy system for Chartwell’s poker software.
Built distributed performance monitoring and metric gathering tool for distributed architecture using Perl and MySQL.

Montage.DMC Senior Consultant

Calgary, AB September 1998 – December 2002

Performed a broad range of project using PHP, Perl, Java, HTML, Javascript and CSS.
Project size varied between tens of thousands up to $25 million.
Involved in management of consultants as well as technical leadership on several projects.

Valmet Automation Developer

Calgary, AB August 1997 – September 1998

Worked on Valmet’s real-time SCADA system using C, C++, Perl, Oracle and Sybase.

University of Saskatchewan Assistant Computer Coordinator

Saskatoon, SK May 1995 – July 1997

Developed operational software for the College of Commerce using Delphi and MS SQL Server.
Developed system tools to maintain the college’s student labs.
Developed online testing tools for use in computer lab courses.

Western Computer Link Developer

Saskatoon, SK September 1993 – April 1995

Installed and maintained server software for ISP operations. Technologies included Linux, INN NNTP Server, Bind, Sendmail, Perl, NCSA HTTPD and Apache HTTPD.
Implemented online application to analyze user logs for ISP billing using Perl and SMTP.

Résumé of Darren Boyd