My professional experiences below showcase my ability to bring ideas to life, whether it’s creating MVPs from scratch or launching brand-new projects within established companies. From initial concept to building and leading teams around these initiatives, I have consistently delivered results that drive impact. While these examples highlight my capabilities in professional settings, my personal projects offer an even deeper glimpse into my creativity and passions.
Miva • Software Engineer • 2006 – 2007
Miva, founded around 1996, has been a trailblazer in providing e-commerce software and services to small and medium-sized businesses. Learn more about Miva here.
Jon Burchmore’s Legacy
Jon Burchmore, Miva’s founder and original CTO, left the company before I joined in 2006. By then, the company had undergone significant layoffs, leaving only five engineers on the team, including me. Despite these challenges, Jon’s influence on Miva’s architecture and technology was monumental.
Jon’s technical achievements were even more remarkable considering he was entirely self-taught, without a formal computer science degree. I discovered his library during my time at Miva and was unsurprised to find that he had read every book that was covered in my college curriculum, and then some. His deep understanding of technology was evident in the systems he built, which were incredibly well-architected. Here are just a few examples of his innovations:
- MivaScript: An XML-based programming language he designed to power a shopping cart system. He wrote the parser and compiler by hand, without using Flex or Bison.
- SQL Database Server: Developed in C++ to address client concerns over MySQL’s $50 cost at the time.
- Custom Web Server: Built in C++ to streamline testing on Windows environments.
- Load-Balanced Web Servers: Implemented DNS-based load balancing ("poor man’s load balancing") to optimize performance.
- Recurring Billing System: While functional, this system was likely a rapid implementation, showcasing his speed and versatility.
Years later, I had the privilege of meeting Jon at the wedding of a mutual friend from Miva. His brilliance and dedication left a lasting impression on me, and I’m thrilled to know that he has returned to Miva as CTO, continuing to innovate and lead the company’s technological vision.
My Role and Accomplishments at Miva
As part of a lean engineering team, I had to wear many hats. Beyond my technical responsibilities, I even found myself helping to organize a client conference with just eight staff members, three of whom were developers. Despite our limited resources, the event was a success, though asking us to make cold calls to clients proved humorous - we were all terrible at it.
On the engineering front, I tackled some of the company’s most challenging projects:
E-commerce Integrations: Developed VeriSign and PayPal payment modules. Integrated MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, Sybase and MSSQL.
Recurring Billing System: ModernBill, an obfuscated PHP-based billing system encoded with IonCube, was plagued with bugs. I reverse-engineered the system by extracting code from memory and fixed critical issues, making it functional for complex billing scenarios. I implemented the ModernBill recurring billing solution for company services and led the migration from the legacy system. This upgrade enabled the collection of unpaid service fees, saving the company over $50,000 annually.
SQL Database Bug Fix: I resolved a long-standing bug in the B-tree indexing system of the custom SQL database server Jon had built. Fixing this issue improved update and delete performance by up to 100%.
Technologies: C/C++, PHP, JavaScript, MivaScript, SOAP, MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris.
