Brad Schneider

brad@brad-schneider.com

Profile

Software developer with 17 years experience in a broad range of technologies and methodologies. Proven track record in large scale Internet eCommerce web sites. Hands-on experience as an architect, tech lead, project manager and ScrumMaster. Leadership on strategic technology direction, SDLC and organization structure. Effective communicator at all levels, from operations to executive. Advocate of Agile methodology, process and technology.

Experience

Hotels.com                                                                                                                   Dallas, TX

Director of Architecture and Release Management                                  January 2003 – February 2009

·       Intimately involved with all aspects of the ongoing development and operations of www.hotels.com and back end systems. Direct team composed of 20 covering systems administration and engineering, release engineering, and development.

·       Brought into the company by the CIO to assist in resolving significant technical and organizational challenges.

·       Extensively involved in the integration of Hotels.com into the Expedia, Inc. family of online travel sites.

·       Participant in the Expedia next generation platform initiative, defining the technical architecture of future Expedia on-line platforms crafted around Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principals.

·       Responsible for enterprise-wide Architecture issues associated with the internal software development.

·       Technical management of a large Java based web site, with peak loads over 10,000 concurrent user sessions. Migrated to Open Source Tomcat Application server.

·       Implemented Agile methodologies utilizing Scrum (certified Scrum Master).

·       Implemented extensive changes to the Hotels.com development process, completely overhauling the Configuration Management and Technical Design processes. 

Hilton Hotels Corp.                                                                                                      Dallas, TX

Director of Technology, eBusiness                                                               April 2002 – January 2003

·       Recruited by the Senior VP of Hilton eBusiness to establish an internal development team for Hilton.com, based on past working experience while at Xceed (detailed below).

·       Hilton.com is a $700M eCommerce site with peak loads over 5,000 users.  The web site serves multiple brands, such as Doubletree and Embassy Suites, allowing for independent branding and marketing while leveraging a common technology platform.

·       Lead a team of up to 19 people located in Dallas, L.A. and Chicago. Directly involved in the project planning, technical architecture and resource assignments for software developers, web designers and QA.

·       Successfully introduced Agile development methodologies to Hilton. Agile methodologies focus on getting results more quickly with a higher level of quality by changing the approach to software design and development. Our Agile approach was based primarily on Extreme Programming (XP) principles.

Kanati, LLC                                                                                                                 Dallas, TX

Co-Founder                                                                                              October 2001 – March 2002

·       President of a startup organization, primarily serving as the integrator for Herman Miller's retail eCommerce site. Herman Miller funded the startup of Kanati, LLC in the wake of Xceed’s bankruptcy, because they wanted to continue to work with the development team that had served them at Xceed. I and a partner established the company with 4 full time employees and several part-time contract resources.

·       Performed all aspects of the startup process and ongoing operations, including payroll, insurance, 401k and benefits setup and administration.

·       Performed project management and development, delivering a site checkout process redesign, product detail pages redesign, and initial work towards an expanded product offering.

·       Utilized ATG Dynamo, Apache-Tomcat, Windows, Linux, Microsoft SQL Server, CVS, PostgreSQL, Microsoft Project, Office and Visio.

·       Under significant economic pressure, Herman Miller decided to discontinue its eCommerce efforts, despite a promising outlook and extensive industry accolades. Without this keystone client, Kanati was unable to continue operations.

Xceed, Inc.                                                                                                                  Dallas, TX

Director of Technology                                                                          January 2000 - September 2001

·       Manager of the Dallas Office’s Technology Department. Promoted from Technical Lead to Director of Technology in July 2000. Responsible for a development and QA team of 15.

·       Headed technology efforts associated with the acquisition, transfer and development of the Hilton.com site. Hilton.com is built on the ATG Dynamo Java Application Server. The site was re-architected to fully take advantage of the Dynamo platform.

·       Developed systems using Sun Solaris, Sybase, ATG Dynamo, CVS, Windows and Linux.

·       Participated in all aspects of the project lifecycle, from initial proposal and client meetings through design and delivery. Worked with the directors in other disciplines (creative, strategy, marketing and project management) in a matrix organizational structure.

·       Big Theory was acquired by Xceed in January 2000.

Big Theory, LLC                                                                                                         Dallas, TX

Technical Lead                                                                                          March 1999 - January 2000

·       Technical Lead for the Herman Miller, Inc. eCommerce site. Responsible for all aspects of technical development. Supervised 3-7 developers and QA personnel. Worked closely with project managers and the client to shape the direction and operation of Herman Miller’s eCommerce efforts.

·       Worked extensively with ATG Dynamo Java Application Server (Personalization and eCommerce), Java, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft IIS, Windows, CVS, Linux.

·       Together with the company’s founders, helped build up the company from 24 to 56 people.  Significantly improved the deployment process to insure that deliverable were being built, tested and delivered in a controlled, repeatable manner, while still keeping up with the rapid pace of development required in the Internet industry.

SABRE (American Airlines)                                                                                    Fort Worth, TX

Senior Consultant                                                                                     February 1995 - March 1999

·       SABRE took over Canadian Airlines IT systems as part of a comprehensive partnership. While still working for Canadian, I spent a considerable amount of time in Dallas, converting Canadian’s systems to the SABRE equivalents. My performance on that effort resulted in a permanent job offer to work for SABRE in Dallas.

·       Responsible for establishing our team's development platform for building three tier Internet applications, selecting the BEA WebLogic application server. Evaluated many application servers and competing architectures. Successfully deployed the BEA platform as a complimentary extension to the existing client server architecture. (technologies: Java, Servlets, JDBC, RMI, Sun Solaris UNIX)

·       Performed application development for the AirServe-Automated Meal Ordering System (AMOS) project, concentrating on interfacing with the Sabre reservations system. The gateway components were capable of working through outages in either the reservations or database platform, seamlessly recovering from errors and reconnecting without any operator intervention, 24X7. (technologies: Microsoft Visual C++, MFC, TCP/IP, Windows NT, SQL, ODBC, PVCS, Oracle, PL/SQL, Sun Solaris UNIX)

 

 

 

Canadian Airlines                                                                                                    Vancouver, BC

Business Systems Specialist                                                                         June 1991 - February 1995

·       Designed and developed applications in a client/server environment interfacing with SABRE systems. (technologies: Borland C++, Microsoft Windows, Oracle).

·       Developed configuration utilities for a PC/LAN based front end to the airline's reservation system (technologies: C, Novell Netware 3 and 4, OS/2).

·       Supported and enhanced Airline Catering and Duty Free systems (technologies: C, B-Trieve, Unisys Mapper, dBase III+).

·       Developed PC/LAN based systems linking IBM and Unisys hosts to the airline reservation and departure control systems (technologies: C, DOS, LAN Manager, BASIC).

Education & Conferences

Bachelor of Commerce Degree - Information Systems Concentration, University of Calgary (1991).

 

Certified ScrumMaster - Danube ScrumMaster Certification, Scrum Alliance approved.

 

JavaOne 2005, 2006 - Presenter in 2006 , Travel Web Services

 

No Fluff, Just Stuff 2005 – Attendee

 

BEA WebLogic Portal - Week long BEA conducted course on developing enterprise portals using BEA Portal 8.1 (December 2003).

 

ATG Dynamo - Dynamo Application Server and Personalization and training on Dynamo 5 enhancements.

 

Writing Distributed Applications with WebLogic - Magelang Institute (1998) week long course in using BEA's WebLogic Java Application Server to develop systems using Servlets, RMI, EJB and other services.

 

Distributed Programming with Java - Sun Microsystems Educational Services (1998) one week course in using Java's distributed programming capabilities covering RMI, JDBC, and Corba.

 

Intensive Java - Compuedge Training (1997) one week course in Java programming for experienced developers.

 

Object Oriented Programming in C++ - British Columbia Institute of Technology (1993) semester length course in C++ programming and object oriented analysis/design.

Employment Status

·       US Citizen