Thomas Davis

Hands-on development and design in Ruby on Rails, Java, and the iPhone SDK for projects ranging from start-up web sites to enterprise-level e-commerce systems to open-source projects, specializing in quality of process and product, stability, and scalability. Building and leading all-star development teams, inclusive of quality assurance and database administration skill sets. Inspiring fierce loyalty, pride and ownership of employees in their respective projects and products. Programming with Ruby, Rails (ActiveMerchant, Ferret, Sphinx, Cucumber, Mocha, FactoryGirl, HAML, SASS), Java (JBoss, ATG), SQL, HTML, CSS (Blueprint), Javascript (jQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous), iPhone/Objective-C, and Erlang. Administrative experience with Linux, Windows, and OS X, including cloud technologies Amazon EC2 and Google App Engine, along with deployment tools like Capistrano. Proficient with source code version control systems Git and Subversion, and ticket systems Trac, Lighthouse, Basecamp, Redmine, and Pivotal Tracker.

As employee number seven of this ambitious start-up, my responsibilities focused on Ruby on Rails and iPhone development with considerable database design and MySQL administration. For my initial project I wrote a suite of tools for scraping information off the Google Android and Apple iTunes application stores, harvesting it into a relational database with daily deltas for data mining and trend analysis. The iTunes suite can scrape all sixty-two countries, nearly four million pages, in under six hours.

Assisted several diverse clients in implementing new Ruby on Rails web sites or enhancing their existing sites, including e-commerce (ActiveMerchant, Authorize.Net) and content management systems, search engines (Ferret, Sphinx), MP3 audio file analysis (mp3info) and manipulation (ffmpeg), database optimization (mysql), AJAX (Prototype, jQuery), Twitter and YouTube APIs, and iPhone client integration. Contributed to various Open Source projects and launched several of my own. Released an iPhone app in the iTunes stores.

Introduced a formalized development life-cycle process, two-phase staging for controlled release cycles, source code version control technology and best practices, formalized unit testing with mocking tools, peer code reviews, and weekly knowledge-sharing meetings to keep developers abreast of technology advancements and enhancements both internal to the organization and within the industry. Adopted and resuscitated a troubled migration from ColdFusion to the ATG platform.

Architected and implemented a B2B on-line meal planning and fitness tracking system in Java which was hosted, licensed, and branded for major clients including Kraft Foods, Slim-Fast, Glucerna, Anthem Blue Cross, and Bally. Hired and managed a team of developers and designers to handle the growth and success of the product.

Designed and developed a hosted intranet service offering integrated on-line group services including e-mail, calendar, document sharing with versioning, message boards, and live chat, first in Perl then migrated to a Java and EJB back-end with an ASP and COM front-end.

Dr. Dobb's Journal, JavaWorld, and IBM developerWorks.

Sun Certified Java Programmer and Developer.