Zack Steinkamp

zack@steinkamp.us
http://steinkamp.us/
San Jose, California

Summary

A professional software engineer experienced in conceiving, developing, and deploying high quality, large scale, high availability, secure internet applications seeks an environment to challenge my skills and stimulate my creativity.

Key Skills

Programming Languages:
C, C++, Perl, PHP, Javascript, Ruby
Operating Systems:
FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, Mac OS
Concepts:
Maximum Performance, Massive Scalability, Fault-Tolerance, Security, Authentication Mechanisms
Alphabet Soup:
HTML, XHTML, DHTML, AJAX, CSS, XML, HTTP, TCP/IP, XSS, CSRF, XUL, RoR, SHA, AES, DevOps

Relevant Experience

Groupon, Palo Alto, California

Sr. Software Engineer :: 9/2010 - current
  • Built an Amazon EC2 management toolkit tailored to the company's needs.
  • Developed system architecture in EC2 to deliver performance, scalability, security, and usability.
  • Identified and implemented significant front-end performance improvements to the groupon.com site.
  • Identified problem with Ruby garbage collection settings, experimented with new ones, and rolled out new settings that reduced average server response time by 33%.
  • Implemented Apache OpenID auth module to restrict access to internal web resources using Google Apps credentials.
  • Implemented a real-time metrics collection and monitoring system. This system collects system, infrastructure, application, and business metrics. Time-series data is plotted on various dashboards, and alerts are dispatched to engineers and non-engineers.
  • Built systems designed to withstand traffic generated by three Super Bowl ads (75,000 req/sec).
  • Rearchitected production operations infrastructure and tooling.
  • Head of Production Security team. Responsible for education, evangelization, and development of security best practices. Implemented a grassroots security representative program to build a strong security culture within the engineering org.
  • Heavily involved in transition from PaaS provider to a dedicated datacenter.
  • Spoke at various internal and external conferences, presenting on the topics of performance, security, and devops.
  • Developed an internal credit card tokenization service to minimize the campany's PCI "in-scope" footprint.
  • Participated in many other aspects of obtaining PCI Level 1 certification.

Symantec Health, Mountain View, California

Sr. Principal Software Engineer :: 3/2009 - 9/2010
  • Symantec Health Safe - a secure cloud storage service for medical images.
    • Designed and implemented HTTP API for appliances installed at customer locations.
    • Co-architected and implemented a scalable (hundreds of TB) yet inexpensive storage infrastructure.
    • Co-architected and implemented inter-datacenter file and database replication.
    • Co-designed and Implemented customer-facing analytics site to show storage trends over time.
  • Symantec Health Image Share - a secure sharing and collaboration platform for physicians.
    • Heavily involved in the conceptual design of this product.
    • Implemented search function using Sphinx.
    • Implemented most of the front-end (HTML, CSS, and Javascript).
    • Assisted with design and implementation of Activity Feed feature.
    • Educated other team members on social media concepts appropriate to this product.
    • Assisted in conceptualizing iPhone and iPad apps.
    • Responsible for application security design and ongoing security testing.
  • General
    • Involved in choosing datacenters, selecting hardware solutions, and installing hardware in datacenters.
    • Designed and implemented virtual server solution using VMWare ESX, VirtualCenter, and CentOS.
    • Implemented monitoring and product analytics solution.
    • Architected test/production code deployment scheme.
    • Active participant in design, sales, and marketing strategy.
    • Primary point of contact for interfacing with Symantec Information Security team.

Dipity.com, San Francisco, California

Co-Founder and CTO :: 3/2007 - 2/2009
  • Assembled a high caliber team to build a web application to visualize data orgainzed by time.
  • Assisted in building a flexible, high performance, scalable application platform. Dipity.com has 2 million monthly unique visitors and serves millions of pages per month.
  • Orchestrated a move from colocated servers to Amazon EC2.
  • Responsible for all aspects of building the product -- from brainstorming to requirements definition to delegation to architecture to execution.
  • Technologically covered the gamut -- Machine setup, monitoring infrastructure, database administration, back-end architecture, security, Javascript/AJAX, product concepts, mockups, and graphics.
  • Developed single-sign-on and content moderation systems to meet customer requirements.
  • Assisted in fundraising activities.

Yahoo! Inc., Sunnyvale, California (1999-2006)

Core Security Team (Yahoo! Paranoids) :: 04/2005 - 12/2006
  • Served as an internal security advisor -- specializing in, but not limited to, issues dealing with modern client-side web technologies (AJAX, Javascript, DHTML, Flash, Web Services).
  • Developed several core libraries to assist developers in creating rich Internet applications in a secure manner.
  • Perform architectural reviews of new products early in the development cycle to ensure the protection of customer trust in Yahoo!.
  • Involved in developing company security policy, working with executive, legal, business, and engineering teams.
  • Developed and delivered coursework to train engineers and others in the company in security issues and best practices.
  • Developed and delivered informational presentations to a wide variety of audiences.
Monitoring Infrastructure Team :: 04/2003 - 04/2005
  • Assisted in the design and deployment of a distributed, scalable performance monitoring and data collection system used throughout the company. This system, built using C, C++, Perl, and PHP components, collects millions of performance samples daily.
  • Worked with many other engineering groups throughout the company to design data interfaces and configuration.
  • Designed and built web-based visual data analysis tools for engineers, production staff, management, and executives. Presented tools to company principals with a very favorable reception.
  • Designed and built an AJAX-based self-serve configuration tool for this system.
  • Eventually took over management and technical lead responsibilities for the team that builds this system.
My Yahoo! Development Team :: 03/1999 - 04/2003
  • Senior Engineer for My Yahoo!, a fully customizable product used by 25 million people monthly, with 30 million daily pageviews. Recognized for interest and skill in designing and implementing front-end solutions, while maintaining expertise in C, C++, and Perl back-end systems.
  • Lead Engineer and Manager for the engineering team that built the next-generation web portal product used by millions of AT&T, British Telecom, Verizon, and Rogers Cable broadband users. This product took full advantage of the latest browser technologies at the time (DHTML, Flash) to deliver an interactive, engaging experience. Worked closely with product managers and visual designers from brainstorming sessions through development and QA to weekly product maintenance meetings.
  • Conceived, documented, and implemented a presentation layer separated from the product's core code without a significant degredation in performance (PHP-under-C). Worked with the inventor of PHP to make this possible. Improved engineering efficiency dramatically.
  • Oversaw a technology evaluation project to explore the use of a dynamic Flash generation and development platform from an external vendor. Worked with the company's OS/ops group (containing several FreeBSD kernel developers) and the vendor's engineers to develop a production server quality build of FreeBSD to support JDK 1.4. Performed load tests, and tests against identical hardware running Linux to determine which OS should be deployed.
  • Conceived and implemented UI changes that doubled (measured by clicks) user awareness of customization in the My Yahoo! product.
  • Built a C++/XML architecture to centralize security functions, user authentication, and other functions common to the My Yahoo! configuration interface. This architecture has been adopted by several different groups in the company and is now handling nearly 1,000 unique URLs.

Multimedia Reference Department, Cal Poly Library, San Luis Obispo, California

Web Application Developer :: 12/1996 - 12/1998
  • Led development of several online educational web sites using HTML, Perl, C, and various databases. Worked with professors, librarians, and university administrators to design projects and see their implementation through.

Independent Contractor

1993 - 1998
  • Worked with individuals, small businesses, and government agencies in graphic design, web site development, and programming projects.
  • Worked with a NASA contractor (Quintron Systems, Santa Maria, California) to write software for a redundant digital communications system that was installed at a NASA space launch facility.

Education

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California

Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, with emphasis in Information Systems / Computer Science.

  • Recipient of the 1998 Peoplesoft Information Systems Award -- Awarded to the Cal Poly MIS student who best demonstrates practical knowledge and interest in the Information Systems field.

Personal Interests

  • High Performance Driving Instructor for the BMWCCA
  • Photography
  • Edward Tufte
  • Hiking
  • Electronic Music Composition
  • Woodworking
  • Anything Mechanical