Kevin Collins
(415) 637 - 2242
kcollins@gmail.com

• Goal: Combine my extensive software development experience, powerful interpersonal inclinations and blossoming design skills to make great software with a great team.

• Current:

  • Sutro Media, Co-founder, February 2009 to Present
  • • Started Sutro in 2009 and grew it to over 400k in annual revenue with no outside financing. We partner with expert authors to publish travel apps for mobile devices. The project uses iOS on the client and a LAMP stack on the server.
    • Primary author of Sutro's original product, the "San Francisco Exploration Guide", the top-ranked guide to San Francisco on the App Store as of April 2013.
  • Harvest Automation, Consulting Engineer and Designer, April 2012 to Present
  • • Custom analytics database and web interface for tracking robot performance. Originally intended to help Harvest improve robot reliability in a systemic manner, the analytics database and UI is now a sizable project covering a variety of tasks ranging from QA, to customer reporting, to performance optimization. I receive high level direction and am otherwise responsible for the design, engineering, and testing of the system. The project uses Python, Pyramid and MySQL.
• Education:
• Stanford University
  • M.S. (2008) in design and human-computer-interaction (HCI). Taught (TA'ed) "Intro to HCI" with Terry Winograd and "Interaction Design Studio" with Scott Klemmer, in addition to researching end-user redesign in Professor Klemmer's lab.
  • UC San Diego
    • B.S. (1998) in Computer Science, including graduate course work in software design (2: first, second) and operating systems.

• Skills:

• • Strong interpersonal skills!
  Extensive experience designing and building software systems. Successful experience leading software development teams, informally and in project and product management roles. Strong interaction design experience and passable (improving!) graphic design skills. Practical understanding of basic business principles.
  • Experienced software developer most recently with Python, PHP and Javascript, previously Java. Considerable UNIX knowledge both as an administrator and developer (primarily Linux). Excellent familiarity with MySQL databases, previously Oracle and PostgreSQL. Strong SQL skills.
  • Specific experience in Python, PHP, Javascript, Ruby/Rails, Java, Linux/UNIX, MySQL (and SQL in general, including scalability and optimization), Oracle DB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, HTML, Amazon AWS (specifically EC2/EBS), Photoshop, Illustrator, Perl, C, C++, numerous source control systems, Apache, VMWare, Windows, iOS, Mac OS, design patterns and MVC.

  Previous Experience:

  • Genentech Corporation, Consulting Product Manager, October 2004 to October 2005
  • • Provided a unique combination of product management, project management and technical leadership on a custom sales automation tool for Genentech. The application is a very large Palm application integrated with numerous data sources. The team included 2 people I managed directly and a much larger set of people I coordinated with. I was responsible for system specification, project/process planning, debugging and architectural decisions.
  • Oracle Corporation, Senior Software Engineer, June 2003 to October 2004
  • • Worked with a large development team (30+) on Oracle's Enterprise Content Management system, a Java application connecting to an Oracle database through the cmsdk library
    • Worked with a team of 5 people on a website content management system that provided versioning, locking, templating, searching, secured access, diffing, etc for users without traditional web-development skills. It was built in Java and accessed an Oracle database through the cmsdk library. In addition to my engineering responsibilities, I worked closely with (internal) customers to make sure functionality met their needs.
  • netRequisite, Co-founder, January 1999 to July 2002
  • • netRequisite was a consulting company focused on high volume transactional systems, particularly in the financial industry. My individual contribution included the following clients ➔
    • CNET Networks, Consulting Engineer, December 2001 to July 2002
    • • Worked with a team of 7 people on a sales application to consolidate CNET's many different sales channels & teams. I worked with the development team to resolve implementation issues and with business people to resolve functionality issues. The system uses Java swing to connect to Oracle and Oracle financial and it is still in use.
        
    • Brodia, Consulting Engineer, July 2000 to December 2001
      
    • • Built and debugged Discover Financial System's deskshop application with a team of 5 people. I built the connection & data-sharing mechanism between Discover and Brodia systems, and contributed widely to other pieces. It was a Java jsp system and connected to Discover's systems using a partial implementation of IFX protocol.
        
        Led a 7-person development team (5 developers & 2 QA engineers) to build an identity management system for automated & web service access to Brodia applications by 3rd party systems.
        
        Finally, I was the lead developer on a library to provide shared data and business logic. The role was a fallout from my previous two positions with Brodia, during which time I built a data & business library that other groups started to adopt. I gathered requirements from users of the library, and ensured their needs were met while maintaining consistency across projects. This task involved a repeating cycle of careful design and rapid development. The team had two other developers & 1 QA engineer.
    • Providian Financial, Consulting Engineer, January 2000 to July 2000
    • • Built and debugged Providian's online credit card application with a team of 5 people. The application is built in Java and netdynamics with an Oracle database and a custom corba server, and is still in use.
    • Bank of America, Consulting Engineer, January 1999 to January 2000
      
    • • Built, tuned, & debugged Bank of America's online banking application with a team of 9 people. Internally, the system uses Java servlets & jsps, connecting to informix databases and various corba servers. The application is still in use.
    • • System administrator responsible for administering & debugging live and development websites. These systems were primarily solaris systems running apache webservers and Oracle databases accessed by custom Java applications. Sites administered included Motorola, Nike , Levis and Kinkos. Sites developed were primarily Rational Software and Fragrance Counter.
    NCR Inc., Intern, March 1996 to June 1997
    
  • • Intern for NCR's massively parallel Teradata database group. Designed and built web-based Java applet system administration tool allowing a user to remotely administer a very large database system.