Mark Mzyk

mmzyk at this blog programmersparadox.com

www.programmersparadox.com

8628 Swarthmore Drive

Raleigh, NC 27615

(919) 412 – 4567

Summary

I need to work with people who share my passion for writing software and who will help me elevate my skills to the next level, all while producing great software that helps others.

My focus is on developing well designed backend code for applications.  I read voraciously to increase my knowledge and attend conferences and user groups so I can learn from those who know more than me.  I have a strong desire to understand how code works and am not satisfied by believing in magic.

Education

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

B.S. in Computer Science, May 2007

B.A in English with Honors, May 2007

Experience

Software Engineer

Opscode (Seattle, WA): October 2011 – Present

My work is focused on improving Chef server across all the Chef offerings of open source, hosted, and private. I work in Ruby and Erlang, with a primary focus on Erlang development. I am part of a team that orchestrated a rewrite of the Chef server into Erlang for improved speed and reliability while using less computing resources. I’ve also completed work to improve Chef’s Windows interoperability.

Being an Opscode employee has also brought a focus on operations into my career as I rotate though the on call rotation and share in those duties.

Software Engineer

iContact (Morrisville, NC): March 2010 – October 2011

I worked as software engineer focused on maintaining and adding features to the iContact web application. In a LAMP environment using primarily PHP, I helped create the initial Twitter and Facebook iContact integration.

I helped design and implement a new spam detection system. The new system removed load from existing servers while putting in a place a new flexible user interface to enable easy and rapid updating by the customer service team.

I also focused on improving backend scaleability, working to integrate a new MTA into iContact’s backend while rewriting the mail merging system to speed up email delivery.

Software Engineer (Contractor)

Lenovo (Morrisville, NC):  November 2009 – March 2010

I helped developed a custom Linux UI to drive multimedia applications for the Skylight product.  My work involved integrating Google Desktop gadgets, written in Javascript, with multimedia applications, written in Python.  I communicated with teams in America and China to resolve bugs, while maintaining the schedule for product launch.

Developer

More Better Labs (RTP, NC):  October 2008 – December 2009

I developed the back end for http://encourage.ruzuku.com, a web application that integrates with Twitter to generate word of mouth for ruzuku.com.  The application was written using Ruby and the Sinatra framework.

Software Engineer

Lulu.com (Raleigh, NC):  May 2007 – August 2009

I worked in a PHP legacy application, developing new features and fixing bugs hidden by complex code.  I worked on the integration of Apache Solr, a search engine written in Java, with Lulu’s existing infrastructure.  As a result of the project, the cost of full reindexes dropped by 100% and user engagement with search on Lulu increased 20%.

I worked in Python to develop a payment service that integrated with Lulu’s main commerce code using Thrift for cross language communication.  I wrote XML to communicate with third party credit card services, while enabling a clean encapsulation of credit card handling code from the rest of the system.

A major challenge was working to implement better testing practices across the company.  To help this along, I prepared a presentation focusing on test driven development best practices and delivered it to the engineering team.  My focus was on creating more human readable tests to serve as better documentation for the legacy code, while moving the company towards true test driven development.

Software Engineer (Intern)

Lulu.com (Raleigh, NC):  May 2006 – August 2006

I took the existing PHP API and ported it over to Java using SOAP and Apache Axis.  I completed the work early and went on to fix bugs in the main PHP application while working across the various engineering teams, depending on which bug needed attention.

Activities

Societies:  Phi Beta Kappa; Phi Kappa Phi; Upsilon Pi Epsilon

Conferences:  BarCampRDU, 2008, 2009, 2010; No Fluff Just Stuff, 2008

RubyRX, 2009; Developer-Day, 2009, 2010, Surge 2012

Conference Organizer:  TEDxTriangleNC, 2010

Meetup Organizer:  Triangle DevOps, 2012 – Present

Book Reviewer:  Career 2.0