Photo of Casey West
Casey West

218 Dell Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15216 USA
Mobile Phone: +1.724.681.2000

Professional Summary

I’m an expert end-to-end web application developer with over a decade of hands-on, customer-facing experience. My specialty is high-availability, LAMP-style software with a focus on usability for real people.

Employment History

Independent Software Consultant

March 2009-Present

Projects:

  • Realtime Geospatial Media Service for Technology Company Joined a small team to architect and build a realtime software product for live streaming video, video on demand, and photo sharing on a closed network for use inside organizations. Application includes geo-locating all media (live streams, video on demand, and photos) as well as assets responsible for generating that media. Operators of the system can view the status of all objects in the system in realtime including locations, streaming, and new generated media. Built application using Ruby on Rails 3, jQuery, CSS 3.0, advanced KML, Google Maps API v3, HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), VLC for transcoding, and MySQL Geospatial Extensions. Web user interface optimized for desktop and mobile clients.
  • Social Network Optimization and Visualization for Startup Company Completely overhauled the user experience, rebuilding the workflow, visual design, and focus of the application. Rebuilt all data visualizations using HTML 5, CSS 3.0, and jQuery for iPad compatible charts and graphs, and interactive visualizations. Rebuilt the in-app twitter client. Engineered visualizations and workflows to have real-time update capabilities in most areas of the application, with user control. Consulted the team on direction and focus of features and design, and contributed to project management and goal making.
  • Jobs Graph Social Network for Startup Company Early-project conceptualization and brainstorming, and later working with a development team building functionality by glueing backend work to design concepts. Built with Ruby on Rails 3 with jQuery. Developed integrations with third-party from LinkedIn, Plancast, and SlideShare.
  • Data Cloud Dashboard for Technology Infrastructure Company Developed a theme-able, dashboard interface on top of a RESTful data cloud product developed internally. Used jQuery and modern web techniques.
  • Grants Management Software for a Non-profit Foundation Built hGrant feed for display, filtering, and syndication in PHP using Symfony. Co-architected and developed new Grants Management software to facilitate the grant making workflow in the organization. Developed in Ruby and JavaScript with Ruby on Rails and jQuery. Built interactive, immersive dashboard interface from client mockups making heavy use of CSS 3.0, jQuery, HTML 5, and modern web design techniques.
  • Data Visualization and Aggregation for a Non-profit Assumed maintenance and continued development of Grantsfire. Developed in Perl and JavaScript using Catalyst, jQuery, XSLT, Microformats, OpenID, and MySQL. Improved performance; added data and administrative tools, feed validation services, OpenID integration; and performed sysadmin duties. Wrote the hGrant Microformat Specification based on existing work, implementations, and documentation.
  • Social Network, Scoring System, and iPhone Development for Design and Game Company Assumed maintenance and continued development of XEOPlay, the online social network for the Tilt, an iPad and iPhone game. Worked on performance benchmarks for the game on iOS devices and improved in-game score keeping and leaderboards.
  • Social Network and Online Game for a Civic Organization Developed and deployed the Drive Less Challenge social network and gaming tool for the 2010 challenge. Built with Ruby on Rails, Open ID, Facebook Connect, and modern web design techniques.
  • Volunteer Management System for Wikimedia Foundation Built volunteer submission system to give thousands the opportunity to participate in Wikimedia's strategic planning. Developed in Python and JavaScript using Django and jQuery. The application is internationalized (I18N) and localized (L10N) using Django, with additional custom languages added according to client needs. Performed system administration, including detailed Nagios service monitors. Application integrates with MediaWiki using its web service API.

Lead Software Engineer, Infrastructure & Architecture

CombineNetFebruary 2008-March 2009

Projects:

  • Infrastructure Upgrade (Code Name "Loveboat") Served as developer and project manager for sweeping upgrades to the flagship product and dependent products. Coordinated the migration of the product across three technical teams and several hundred thousand lines of code. Communicated constantly with IS, QA, Product Management, and two Engineering teams to ensure timely delivery and lightning fast response times during testing and deployment.
  • Unit Testing Framework Using autoconf, automake, and Perl testing libraries, a unit testing framework was grafted onto an eight-year-old, actively developed, organically grown application. Unit test coverage was expanded from 0% to 10% in just a few months.

Achievements

  • Advanced unit testing among product engineers.
  • Improved UX through RTE integration and Spreadsheet data validation.
  • Managed engineering effort through a comprehensive, 10-month infrastructure upgrade.

Lead Developer & VP Engineering

SocialtextAugust 2005-February 2008

Projects:

  • R&D, New Products Initiated early prototypes and concepts for people oriented collaboration tools. Worked closely with CEO and CTO on design and requirements.
  • Lead Developer, UI Team Planned and executed architecture changes to decouple the UI from the application for more agile development and easier customization; led a team of four. Led effort to clean up UI including HTML, CSS, and assets. Contributed to first in-product release of Wikiwyg, the first wysiwyg editor that converts rich text into wikitext for storage.
  • Interim VP Engineering Selected by developers to join executive team as VP Engineering. Split time between active development, team management, and defining company strategy. Worked closely with every department to ensure engineering was positioned for success.

Achievements

  • Wikiwyg released on time, by Web 2.0 Conference, 2005.
  • Collaborated on OSI Compliant Software Licence for SaaS, CPAL.
  • Completed redesign of software which aided in funding.
  • Hired five senior software developers; managed twelve.

Software Developer

pair NetworksJuly 2003-July 2005

Senior Systems Developer

DynDNS.orgAugust 2002-July 2003

Senior Software Engineer

Aaronsen GroupAugust 2001-August 2002

Software Engineer

Agnew Moyer Smith IncFebruary 2000-August 2001

Community Involvement

Community Achievements

Speaking Engagements & Publications

Software Development Experience Word Soup

Languages

  • JavaScript
  • Ruby
  • Perl
  • Python
  • Haskell
  • C
  • PHP
  • Shell

Operating Systems

  • Mac OS X
  • Linux (Fedora, Ubuntu)
  • FreeBSD
  • Windows

Software & Libraries

  • jQuery
  • Ruby on Rails 3
  • Catalyst
  • nginx/Apache 2
  • MySQL/PostgreSQL
  • memcached
  • Django
  • Wordpress

Standards

  • Email Protocols
  • I18N
  • L10N
  • HTTP (REST)
  • LDAP

Process

  • Architecture and Design
  • Team Leadership
  • Agile Development
  • Build Systems
  • Scalability
  • Plugins and Extensibility

Web Tools

  • HTML 5
  • CSS 3.0
  • XML
  • XPath
  • XSL
  • KML