David G. Miller

Project Management – Technical Leadership – Systems Engineering – Methodology Improvement – Software Product Architect – Software Design – Linux Expert – Network Monitoring

Proven team leader with over 15 years of experience in project management and technical leadership roles plus over ten years of experience as an individual contributor seeks technically challenging management opportunity.

Career Experience

Project Management: Successful leader of teams of up to thirty developers in the specification, design, development, testing, and customer acceptance of large, real-time and near real-time, distributed systems. Able to deliver products on time and within budget.

Technical Leadership: Took over technical leadership of the SGML Analyst group while at Jeppesen-Sanderson. Decreased document conversion error rates while providing faster turn-around of document conversion projects. In addition, my project management positions all required providing domain specific technical guidance to the development team.

Analytic Problem Solver: Successfully defined and implemented several original algorithms in diverse fields. Able to quickly understand real-world system constraints and implement applications that model these constraints.

Excellent Communications Skills: Developed both structured and unstructured documents and developed and delivered technical presentations. Skilled technical mediator able to listen to “both sides” and achieve a workable solution. This includes working with non-technical personnel such as sales and marketing, customers, and other stake holders.

Quick Learner: Able to quickly grasp and apply problem domain specific knowledge as well as master new and emerging technologies and methods.

Standards, Processes and Methodologies: In depth knowledge of the Software Capability Maturity Model (SCMM) as well as various agile development methodologies. Able to work in either a highly structured or a non-structured development environment with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both. Researched and wrote a book analyzing various software methodologies.

Technical Expertise: Expert level knowledge of Red Hat Linux, several Unix variants, shell scripting, perl programming, relational databases, TCP/IP network monitoring, software engineering, and several arcane, defense related application domains. Able to interact with technical personnel on a detailed level.

Chronology

Completed my first book analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of various software development methodologies. The book synthesizes my twenty-five years of experience in various software development roles. The book has not yet been published but I am working with a prospective publisher.

As Manager of Quality Engineering led a small team of testers responsible for final product test, definition and automation of production processes, providing quality engineering inputs throughout the company and troubleshooting. Production target was based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and included both a Java Servlet based user interface and C and perl programs for configuration, data capture and data analysis. Automation tasks involved scripting in perl and various UNIX shell scripts. Testing involved both “white box” and “black box” testing of a network monitoring product to both integrate the various product components and to verify final product functionality. Specialized testing included confirming product functionality for regulatory compliance monitoring (e.g., SOX, HIPAA, etc.). As needed, provided tier three product support as well as Linux and networking technical expertise. Windows experience included integrating the product with Active Directory services programs and Windows network logon as well as testing the product for compatibility with various Windows programs for both access and network activity capture. Oracle experience included ensuring correct product operation when utilizing an Oracle database (Oracle 9i and 10g).

Senior Software Engineer responsible for supporting various projects for a large, subscription e-mail company including advertisement serving, e-mail product customization and enhancement, custom report development and troubleshooting. All development was done in perl against either an Oracle 7 or Oracle 8i database. Advertisement serving was accomplished using mod-perl with an Apache web server running under Linux. E-mail product customization included defining and developing XML interfaces with various customers. This position was strictly technical.

Contractor performing tier two support for Lucent Technologies Professional Services Organization. Duties include creation of custom reports using both Informix SQL and Lucent proprietary tools, shell scripting, minor system administration and trouble-shooting problems on Lucent customer systems. This position was technical but included performing tier-two customer support.

Supported the Jeppesen Maintenance Information Services (JMIS) business area. This group extracted legacy aircraft maintenance data from various manufacturer file formats, translated the result to SGML (ATA compliant DTDs) and provided the data back to the airline or airplane manufacturer viewable through a custom SGML browser. Essentially, this was an extract, translate and load (ETL) task. My duties changed over time within the JMIS business area and included both technical and team leadership tasks.

Senior SGML Analyst (1997 - 1998)

• Team lead for the SGML Analysis group within JMIS.

• Specified and led the development teams for conversion processing for several customers’ manuals. Teams consisted of an SGML analyst, conversion programmers and production and quality assurance personnel.

• Consistently developed automated mark-up programs to accomplish document conversions with low resource requirements and low error rates.

• Supported the organization's ISO 9000 certification effort.

Technology Specialist (1994 - 1997)

• Provided technical leadership to the JMIS group.

• Led software development tasks as needed to support the JMIS business area (C, perl and csh)

• Developed process automation techniques for production tasks to be performed on UNIX workstations that were accessible to computer novices. These scripts significantly reduced the organization’s error rate and the resources required for these tasks.

• Served as UNIX mentor to the organization.

Managed teams of up to 30 individual contributors and their first level managers while providing domain specific technical guidance. Later projects included participating in SEI capability audits (SCMM) and working to improve the organization's software development process. Systems experience includes IBM System/370, CDC Cyber 760, DEC VAXes (11/780 and 8600), HP 9000/3XX workstations and IBM compatible PCs. Programming languages utilized were primarily FORTRAN and Ada. Notable successes and roles included:

• Brought in a $2M cost plus project within five percent of budget and ahead of other project elements.

• “Sold off” a $14M custom software development project as principal test engineer.

• Successfully led portions of several of the organization's original “spiral model” development efforts.

• Department manager for a software development skill center.

Later projects involved significant experience architecting and developing real-time, distributed, survivable network solutions as a cost account manager (cost and schedule responsibility). All projects were for U.S. government customers.

Technical Expertise

Platforms and Networking: Red Hat Linux starting with Red Hat Linux 5.0 and including current experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux through version 5 and Fedora Core through version 6 on SMP systems. Unix experience includes both HP-UX and Sun Solaris. Extensive user experience with OS/2 beginning with version 2.0, Microsoft Windows starting with Windows 3.0 and including user experience with Windows XP. Working knowledge of TCP/IP routing, firewalls, switches and hubs.

Programming Languages: perl, FORTRAN, C, Ada, C-shell, SQL

Databases: Postgres, MySQL, Oracle (9i and 10g)

Education

Certifications and Honors

• Los Angeles Community Colleges District teaching certificate for Mathematics and Computer Science

• Co-recipient, Times Mirror Innovation Prize, 1996

• Internal TRW project management and cost/schedule control system certifications.