Download Curtis, Paul LCC-resume-201107

Paul F. Curtis
8 Rex Street
Greenwich, CT 06831
+1 203-660-0015
[email protected]
SUMMARY:
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20+ years of professional development and project team experience across a broad spectrum of
industries
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Extensive experience in both pre-sales and post-sales technical account support
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Management of projects from the analysis of business requirements and goals to project planning and
execution
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Effective communicator of technical knowledge to all levels of personnel through presentations, technical
forums, executive seminars and informal discussions
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Able to identify project team needs, research potential solutions, and execute deployments
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Management of project teams using both commercial and open source technologies to develop web
based applications and services
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Extensive hands-on experience with technical problem solving and customer management.
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Current technical skills: Ubuntu Linux (primarily 10.04), Apache 2.2, Tomcat 6, Nagios, High Availability
(Linux Heartbeat/Pacemaker), Vyatta (routers), KVM, Java 6, Perl, bash, C, Debian packaging, KVM
imaging, OpenStack/Eucalyptus/AWS, Standard Unix networking (TCP/IP, DNS)
EXPERIENCE:
MapR Technologies
Senior Engineer
January, 2012 to the Present
MapR produces a complete Apache Hadoop distribution for use in large scale data analysis applications. I
currently architect and help deploy these systems in the New York metropolitan area.
Umami Co.
Senior Operations Engineer
September, 2011 to November, 2011
Umami is a early start up that has provided a consumer facing IOS app and the backend infrastructure to service
the application. I was focused on hardening the backend infrastructure, and implementing monitoring. The back
end systems are both hardware, data center based and cloud based utilizing Amazon EC2, RDS, and EBL
services.
Umami is using Zenoss as the monitoring core system. In order to adequately monitor the custom software and
hardware used in the back end system, I programmed and implemented Perl scripts to send alerts and
information directly to Zenoss when abnormal conditions occurred. I also implemented xinetd based scripts to
allow Zenoss to poll these services, verify nominal operations, and gather statistics. These techniques are used
on the cloud based systems as well.
Spiral Universe, Inc.
Systems Manager
January, 2010 to September, 2011
Spiral is a small start up company providing school administration software as a service. The product and
development environment use Google Web Toolkit for the “client” and Java servlets (customized GWT RPC
servlets) for the service layer. The persistent data store is currently PostgreSQL.
Being a startup, very little of the normal development and production processes were in place when I arrived. As
system manager, I developed and documented a complete build, test, QA, release process, and then
implemented using available hardware. I also instituted a standard production system platform for all testing and
production servers. Over time, my role has expanded to release management and a return to Java development
and debugging.
Spiral Universe, Inc., continued
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Mapped physical network. Changed internal switches to provide redundancy for all network ports using
spanning tree protocol and multiple physical network paths.
Moved production servers from CentOS 5 to Ubuntu server 10.04LTS
Installed virtual servers (KVM) to handle internal systems.
Installed and configured Hudson (continuous build) and Jira (issue tracking)
Installed, configured, and populated OpenLDAP + RADIUS to provide internal authentication
Created a secure APT repository for all production software.
Created build scripts to build production packages and modified ANT build scripts for allow for DEB
packaging.
Installed and configured private VPN between development office and production networks (Vyatta)
Installed and configured VPN for road warriors using PPTP, LDAP, Radius
Moved the production data center from NY to Westchester County
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
October, 2001 to November, 2009
After the Netscape/AOL merger, my position was transferred to Sun Microsystems.
Senior Support Engineer, Communications Products (3 years)
Supported Netscape's and Sun's messaging, and instant messaging technologies. In supporting these large
customers, I gathered information, diagnosed the customer's issue, and provided or engaged the development
engineers to resolve the problem. I was assigned to specific customers with large or complex problems involving
several interrelated issues, provided top level issue management, and problem resolution.
 Source code level diagnosis and resolution of customer issues for Sun's messaging and instant
messaging products
 Assigned to specific large (Fortune 500) customers to provide high level technical support, issue
resolution management, and customer management
 One of two primary advanced support engineers for Sun's instant messaging (XMPP) client and server
product
Senior Support Engineer, Web Services (2 ½ years)
Provided standard technical support for the Sun web server and associated products (servlets, JSP), but also was
tasked with specific customer issues and resolutions. In all cases, these customers had complex web services
environments integrating several Sun products (application server, LDAP, proxies, load balancing) that required a
broad knowledge of the customer's business and the technologies they have deployed.
 Implemented a total solution support process for General Electric which became a standard support
offering for Sun
 Providing priority support case resolution for high visibility web sites (CNN. MLB.com) on an emergency
basis
 Designed and programmed real time alerting tools for the instant messaging network accessing LDAP
and JMQ. These tools allowed instant messaging users to check support case status, receive real-time
alerts for high priority cases, and provided access (from instant messaging) to support case information
and knowledge bases
 A part of the design team for Sun's Java Monitoring Framework. This allows real-time monitoring of all
Sun internet technologies (web, messaging, LDAP) in real time
Advanced Support Engineer, Java Developers (2 ¾ years)
Supported Netscape's large scale customers who are using Java, messaging, and web service technologies. This
required me to be thorough in the information gathering, concise in the problem description, and persistent in the
follow through. In supporting these large customers, I had frequent contact with both the customer's technical
teams and Sun's development engineers. My position also required me to work with colleagues from differing
levels of technical expertise and customers from many countries.
Sun Microsystems, Inc., continued
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Source code level diagnosis and resolution of customer issues for Sun's web server including Java web
technologies (servlets, JSP, Sun/Netscape web server)
Designed, implemented and maintained a worldwide instant messaging network for 1,500 internal Sun
employees
Provided all third level support for Netscape's messaging server products. I also trained engineers as
third level support personnel for these products
I was instrumental in high priority support cases for several Fortune 500 customers (Comcast, Bank of
America, Telstra, General Electric)
Netscape Communications, Inc.
Enterprise Support Account Manager
April,
1988 to October, 2001
Assigned as the Enterprise Support Account Manager for General Electric worldwide. Prior to my responsibility for
General Electric, I was responsible for the pre-sales account support, strategy, and planning for twenty large
Netscape clients in several different industry groups. I worked with both the decision-makers and the technology
personnel implementing Netscape/iPlanet technologies.
The Netscape server technologies and personnel were acquired by Sun subsequent to the Netscape/AOL
merger.
Prodigy Solutions
Senior Programmer Analyst
September, 1997 to April, 1998
System and Network Administrator for Prodigy’s development environment.
Icon CMT Corporation
Senior Application Consultant
October, 1996 to September, 1997
Designed and implemented both Inter- and Intranet based systems to augment or replace existing business
applications, and designed and developed web sites. I was the project lead and manager for small teams of new
and experienced programmers.
Applix, Inc.
Senior Applications Consultant
September, 1995 to October, 1996
Provided post-sales application, installation, and configuration consulting primarily to financial and brokerage
institutions in the New York City area. Designed and programmed several Applixware based systems including
management of a currency trading desk, transaction confirmation for a commodities trading desk, an Oracle
based bond research and portfolio tracking system. Evaluated network design, server implementation, and
application design for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.
ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Jabber Software Foundation
2002 to 2006
I was elected a member of the Jabber Software Foundation (JSF) during the early development of the
Jabber/XMPP protocol and RFCs.
EDUCATION:
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, Bachelor of Science, 1986.
Additional Experience and References Available on Request