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Work Experience
Vice President
Match Group•  February 2021 - January 2023
Led a team of 45 engineers responsible for all aspects of the SDLC for 35 niche dating websites and native apps utilizing .NET Core, Android/Kotlin, iOS/SwiftUI, Kafka, Redis, SQL Server, SNS, and SQS on AWS. ï‚· Spearheaded AWS platform migration for swipe-based dating apps (BLK, Chispa, Upward) in 13 months, working closely with our Operations and Security teams to ensure success. ï‚· Tuned hundreds of indexes, T-SQL stored procedures, indexed views, and ad-hoc ETL queries to support higher database concurrency, lower CPU utilization, and lower DB/API average response times. ï‚· Drove a 10x decrease in swipe app downtime, increasing monthly availability from 99.9% to over 99.99% in 2022 through database optimization and API performance tuning, changes that increased concurrency and capacity, and better exception detection and resolution processes. These improvements resulted in measurable increases in user retention and lifetime value. ï‚· Identified, mentored, and promoted 5 engineers to lead their respective functional areas, creating a matrixed organization. This change enabled an increased focus on individual contributors, allowing for more 1:1 time, mentoring, and career development. In an industry known for high employee turnover and low morale, my team experienced an annual turnover rate of less than 5% over the last 5 years.
Senior Director, Software Engineering
Match Group•  February 2017 - February 2021
Led a team of 25 engineers focused on feature development and maintenance of over 35 niche dating websites and native apps. ï‚· Spearheaded the creation of a data-driven platform to support three new swipe-based dating apps. This greenfield initiative facilitated rapid feature development and explosive community growth, now supporting over 80 million unique user swipes per day. From their launch in 2018 through 2023, the swipe apps saw revenue growth of more than 100% each year, resulting in $70 million in LTM revenue and over 2 million monthly active users in 2022.
Principal Architect
Match Group•  August 2015 - February 2017
Selected to be one of six enterprise architects for a company-wide consolidation effort; joined the Billing and Tools team to assist with database and back-end service changes needed to support that goal. ï‚· Designed and implemented a Job Processor system in SQL Server to run scheduled jobs and tasks with extremely high concurrency through horizontal scaling of worker processes created in .NET Core. Over the next two years, our system was adopted by three different teams across Match Group and currently processes hundreds of millions of discrete tasks daily. ï‚· Implemented a new payment system for Match.com and LatAm to support all customer transactions, including free trials, new subscriptions, subscription renewals and retries, voids, and refunds across various payment types. ï‚· Replaced the database storage of encrypted/hashed user payment account data with server-side tokenization through a third party to limit our PCI scope and risk.
Director, Database Engineering
Match Group•  November 2008 - August 2015
Led a team of seven database engineers responsible for all aspects of data architecture, design, storage, processing, movement, data quality, and reporting across over 30 niche dating websites. ï‚· Participated heavily in architectural discussions with other functional areas when considering new feature requests. ï‚· Mentored team on performance tuning, design patterns, coding standards, testing, and deployment considerations. ï‚· Designed and built thousands of database objects in SQL Server and T-SQL to support new features. Created rerunnable deployment scripts to ensure each environment received the same objects and code. ï‚· Created and maintained SSIS packages, data pipelines, and ETL processes to move production data to our reporting environment to ensure our Data Analytics and BI teams had full access to necessary customer data and logs without impacting customers. ï‚· Participated in frequent database performance tuning efforts by looking at unused indexes, missing indexes, inefficient indexes (e.g., moving unfiltered data to included columns to avoid key lookups), and specific T-SQL queries that were causing stress or limiting concurrency. ï‚· Built and maintained a dynamic, rules-based product and pricing engine in SQL Server so that devices and customers would receive the correct rate cards based on real-time evaluation. This system was later used to create a full database-driven A/B testing engine. Both of these systems are still in use after more than 10 years.
Co-Founder
longhead.com, inc.•  July 2000 - June 2012
Responsible for all aspects of design, development, maintenance, and system/network administration related to building and hosting dynamic websites and providing email hosting. ï‚· Procured rack space in a data center; designed, purchased, and installed all power and networking systems for full redundancy; designed logos and website templates; configured and deployed firewalls and email servers on FreeBSD; configured and deployed several Windows Server-based web, FTP, and file servers; built websites from the ground up, many with ASP.NET and SQL Server/MySQL back ends; provided support for hosting customers; handled all budgeting and invoicing of clients.
Database Architect
US Airways•  March 2007 - November 2008
Architected, designed, and developed all SQL Server databases for a redesigned usairways.com site.
Senior SQL Server DBA/Engineer
Zencon Technologies•  December 2005 - March 2007
Responsible for all SQL Server development, administration, tuning, and infrastructure, supporting over 25 niche dating websites.
SQL Server Developer
US Airways•  September 2005 - December 2005
Designed and developed a SQL Server backend for a branded credit card integration project with USAirways.com.
Systems Administrator/Senior Developer
Preferred Medical Claims Solutions•  September 2002 - September 2005
Assisted in the design and build-out of a new data center, maintained all servers and network infrastructure, and resolved hardware and software issues for over 70 employees. Maintained and built EDI systems (in VB 6 and SQL Server) to support medical provider and payor integrations.
Analyst/Programmer IV
America West Airlines•  May 1999 - May 2000
Created several applications and reporting using VB 5/6, Excel VBA, DB2, and Crystal Reports.
Desktop Finance Solutions Developer
Micro Modeling Associates•  September 1998 - May 1999
Created several financial models for banking clients using Excel, VBA, Essbase, and custom COM objects.
Actuarial Analyst/Consultant
Price Waterhouse LLP•  October 1996 - September 1998
Reduced the time spent creating annual pension validation and disclosure reports from days to hours by automating time-consuming, error-prone workflows using Excel VBA, Word, and FoxPro/Access.
Education
Purdue University, West Lafayette
Mathematics, BS•  September 1990 - May 1996
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