This resume is out of date... See current resume

Aaron Maxwell - amax@redsymbol.net
Entrepreneurial Software Engineering, Web Development

Currently QA engineer at SnapLogic, where I get to work with some scary smart people while building our automated testing systems.

Expert in Linux and open source software. Proficient at anything that fits under the Unix umbrella - for use as a work environment, and also fair ability with system administration. My experience includes several Linux distributions, several commercial Unixes, and FreeBSD. My knowledge and skill is greatest with the Debian Linux distribution (and its derivatives, like Ubuntu and Knoppix). As a labor of love, created a Debian Package of the Day site, a fully automated webapp implemented mainly in Python.

I am versatile and handy with many common open source tools, such as the Apache webserver, the MySQL database server, and the Subversion VC system. I voraciously explore others almost every day. For instance, lately I have been exploring the PostgreSQL DB server. I have one open source project, L2P, that I created and maintain, and have plans for more.

Experienced at designing and implementing medium-size webapps. Since development project sizes span many orders of magnitude, I'll define "medium-sized" as "will take a team of 3 good developers 2-3 months to complete." In my current role, I have been involved in more than a half-dozen significant web development projects. In two of them, I have taken a lead design role under the CTO. Using Agile practices and test-first development, I have worked with my team members to nail down initial requirements, design a framework and development roadmap, iteratively implement features and deliver the finished product to the client.

My favorite part of a project is the creation of the "engine" - the body of foundational code that powers the site, under the hood. The challenge and the joy is to come up with a rich, powerful API. (An API is powerful if a good engineer can do powerful things with it.) The feedback from my superiors and coworkers is that I end up hitting that target more often than not.

Fluent in a small plethora of computing languages. I'm strongest right now in PHP and Python; I'm also fairly strong in Perl and Javascript, and know the basics of Lisp and Scheme. I'm in the process of learning Ruby now. At points in the past I have been good in C++, C, and Java, though I have not programmed in them much in the past two years.

I tend to prefer dynamically typed languages to statically typed. Moving forward, I am looking for opportunities to develop more in Python, Ruby, or both.

Modern web development technologies AJAX, database driven apps, etc. The list of buzzwords continually changes; I aim to continually educate myself in new technologies, focusing on those that seem to have greater power and longevity. Feel free to ask about anything specific.

Good engineering practices Test-driven development. Use of design patterns. Agile processes. Version control. Obsessive documentation and automated testing (including unit tests, and other forms of automated testing, such as database tests).

Strong mathematical foundation. My degree is a bachelor of science in physics, with an emphasis on mathematical theory. I have written two small math books, "Inner Algebra" and "Integrate your Brain", and am working on a third one. I read math books for fun.

Great people and business skills; strong, entrepreneurial business sense. After completing my degree and working a short while in scientific research, I took a major detour and worked in retail for several years, for Smart & Final. During this time I ascended to Store Assistant Manager. I routinely supervised crews of 6-9 people, and was responsible for achieving multiple, varying, and sometimes conflicting business goals, most of all building sales with a limited labor budget. An important duty was to lead by example in customer service: in a normal busy day, I would easily interact with well over 100 people. (Incidentally, when I noticed I was spending all my spare time coding, I knew it was time to return to engineering.)

After writing the math books mentioned above, I successfully marketed them. In January 2006, I generated over 31,000 visitors to the site I created to promote the first book. Links to that page reached the #1 position on del.icio.us' popular page, #1 on reddit, and halfway up digg's second page.

Emacs 22 is my weapon of choice. My favorite web site is the programming reddit.