Wayne Stidolph

 (831) 423-5435 ·  wayne@stidolph.com

OBJECTIVE:          Helping small teams cheerfully make sustainably great products for real customers

 

SUMMARY

q       VP/Engineering and line manager for R&D software groups

q       Innovator/architect for commercial J2EE app server and flexible services framework, leading 40-developer team at 6 sites worldwide through full life-cycle

q       Process/systems-view champion, emphasis on targeted metrics and automation

q        “…technical breadth, self-confidence, and presentation skills” - CEO, Lutris; “excellent” evaluations from UCSC students;  see endorsements on LinkedIn profile http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/48/804

 

EXPERIENCE

 

CarbonEra Software

Architect/Consultant

Santa Cruz, CA

10/01-pres

CarbonEra (a.k.a. Stidolph Software Engineering) is me, consulting in engineering management and Java-centric middleware, while developing products and tools. Now looking into  Web 2 technologies

 

q    Platform design: platform def for middleware for digital video app

 

q    Risk/quality analysis: review and report on server-side development teams, process, and projects

 

q    Product definition assist: architecture, design stimulus, and review for middleware products

 

q    Teacher senior-level Software Methodology, UC Santa Cruz (Winter 2004)

 

Siderean Software

Vice President, Engineering

El Segundo, CA

10/04-2/06

Siderean builds a low-latency Faceted Navigation engine which is extraordinarily easy to use

 

q    Process: Initiated “Quality Engineering” efforts with reportable quality metrics; instituted Change Control Board, use of issue tracker and continuous integration tooling, SCRUM-like process for distributed team, deepened testing in all aspects, first adoption of MRD/PRD-driven release,. Directly handled critical customers and custom engineering support. Result – drove product revision delivery time 75% for a Tier 2 drop, while increasing measured quality.

 

q    Staff/Budget: Led Dev, QA, and Doc through initial growth (10) and first use of outsourced help (UI, specialized consultants, offshore dev). Found better roles for misplaced personnel; kept morale high through turbulent periods. Developed and slightly underspent Eng/IT budgets (cap & ops), including quarterly revise Result – stable and productive dev team; continued investment flow into company

 

q    Product Delivery: Multiple Tier 2 and 3 updates to market, and launched parallel effort to Tier 1 update (significant architectural repositioning laid basis for add-on products) Result – steady product stream; very short times from customer bug report to fielded fix; enabled two new add-on products

 

Lutris Technologies

Chief Architect, Advanced Products

Santa Cruz, CA

1/00 –10/01

Lutris (became Gridion) provides open-source and proprietary enterprise Java infrastructure

 

q    Engineering Leader: Championed tech values and maintained cohesion as team grew to 40 dev worldwide (US, UK, and France). Developed code/design standards; did manual code reviews then introduced automation. Resolved inter-team technical issues. Result – quickly shipped a commercial J2EE server (total 1.2M SLOC, averaged 11 SLOC/hr; “normal” would have been 3 to 5 SLOC/hr)

 

q    Technical Innovator: Defined industry-leading services-oriented architecture with per-customer selectable services, safe component/pool sharing, customizable security, and deep management. Designed adaptive interceptor architecture for flexible composition of behavior and easy debugging. 
Result – shipped innovative J2EE server supporting non-J2EE services and enhanced ASP revenue model (e.g., sell resources with variable QoS); as J2EE market shifted, same framework used to  produce a grid computing node product and a distributed development platform


q    Open Source Coordinator: “Open source” benefits come with risk of non-delivery or low quality, so I modularized design with fall-backs; also, I chaired and participated in multiple Working Groups to drive delivery. Result - product shipped on time with over 500KSLOC non-Lutris open source elements, and only one substantial feature slip from any open-source element

 

q    Vision Evangelist: Created/assisted white-papers, presentations, videos about services architecture. Communicated well in appropriate style at multiple levels. Presented at JavaOne (twice). Result –vision adopted across company and by our customers, and tech teams took ownership

 

Progress Software

Architect, "leapfrog" server group;
Senior Engineering Manager, server group

Newark, CA

7/98-1/00

Progress Software is a public company (PRGS) supplying 4GL database tools and servers to ISV channels worldwide; our Newark office performed Java R&D for the “next generation” app server

 

q    Technical Innovator: First member of “Leapfrog group” exploring new technology. Represented Progress to ODMG (industry standards group). Defined component-oriented framework, led effort to define server. Result - flexible components framework; delivered EJB1.0 server with small staff

 

q    Group Management (8-12 developers): Recruited; mentored and managed developers; coordinated with divisional execs on task definition and execution. Formed code-centric teams, using lightweight UML-centric process. Clarified coding values, then delegated and enforced technical ownership. Resultimproved execution (first on-time shipment from the office, leading to increased budget and responsibility for team) and improved morale (when company transferred work to East Coast, most of the team elected to stay together and transfer)

                 

Versant

Integration Engineer, Technical Marketing

Fremont, CA

12/97-5/98

Versant Corporation is the industry leader for Object Database Management Systems

 

q    Developer and Webmaster: Created demos to show ODBMS speed advantage over RDBMS. As corporate Webmaster, simplified authoring process, implemented lead-tracking for web contacts.

 

GTE
Gov’t Systems

Senior Member Technical Staff

Mountain View, CA

3/78-10/97

GTE Gov’t Systems (now General Dynamics Advanced Information Sys) produces advanced electronics communications systems for ground, air, sea and space applications. My career there was a steady progression in responsibility, sophistication, and creative scope, with a wide range of assignments but a long-term focus on complex, high-performance distributed systems. Sample accomplishments/roles:

 

q    Led or contributed to technical aspects of business development, proposal generation, R&D, requirements engineering and implementation efforts: technical director, sea surface radar proposal; technical lead, high-speed signal intercept/analysis system; technical lead, manuals validation for $15M tech manuals contract; contributor, several real-time software elements of signal processing systems; contributor, advanced concepts and commercialization studies, etc. Significant involvement in embedded systems test and integration; team sizes to 8 direct, 20 indirect

 

q    Saved money and space in test effort: Used PCs to replace complete (expensive) mockup subsystems; led development of new hardware base; wrote core interpreter for old language to reuse test code. Dramatically increased test system availability, saved money and space

 

q    Built space-saving, operator assistant for diagnostics: "Concept" tool to eliminate paper manuals and improve troubleshooting a non-stop distributed system on at-sea submarines, using interactive graphics (before the Web) and simplified AI techniques. Working prototype shown to GTE Chairman, then at AOC industry trade show in Washington DC; triggered proposal to customer

 

q    Internal Consultant: “breakthrough” ideas and quick-reaction help to many projects, using ability to learn and analyze quickly, then drawing on technical breadth to quickly spot and explain similarities to “lessons learned” in other projects, then sparking team to arrive at their own solutions

 

EDUCATION

Stanford University                                 1995 Master of Science, Computer Science (Systems)

Stanford University                                 1992 Advanced Software Certificate (Systems)

Northwestern Polytechnic University      1988 Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering (Valedictorian)