Sr SAS Developer & Analyst

JOHN WILLIAM PRIOR

Austin, TX *****

SUMMARY Senior data mining practitioner and researcher with deep experience in predictive analytics and business optimization through hands-on creation and employment of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and search & optimization software.

EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

M.S. Computer Science, May 1998

Thesis: Eugenic Evolution for Combinatorial Optimization

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

B.S. Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, May 1992

COMPUTER R, C# (C Sharp), WPF, C++, Python, F# (F Sharp), ASP.NET, STL, UML,

SKILLS OOAD, Visual Basic, SQL Server, Sybase, UNIX/Linux/cygwin, PERL, Lisp

EXPERIENCE uShip, Inc. (Austin, TX)

(Apr 2010-current) Manager of Research

(R, SQL Server)

 Responsible for core predictive analytics and website optimization, such as the

prediction of shipping prices, preferred shipment recommendation engine, and

smart listing sort & filtering criteria.

 A single optimization was conservatively estimated to increase annual company

profits by 1%.

Kershner Trading Group, LLC. (KTG) (Austin, TX)

(Mar 2009-Nov 2009) Professional Equities Trader

 Equities trader transacting in over 600 listings

 Created predictive data mining models to enhance returns.

(May 2008-Feb 2009) Senior Programmer – Innovation and Strategy Group

(C#, WPF, SQL Server, F#, Esper/NEsper EQL)

 Senior engineer responsible for development of C#/WPF client and Complex

Event Processing (CEP) server enabling real-time publishing of financial

information and intra-floor trader communication.

 The CEP system integrated market data and transactional (position) data streams.

 Responsible for integrating outsourced 3D visualization code into KTG’s code base.

NCsoft, Inc. (Austin, TX)

(Jul 2004-Mar 2008) Senior Programmer - Game, audio, animation and database systems

Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa

(Visual C++, Linux/gcc, Python)

 Tabula Rasa is an award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

 Created rules-based animation system easily configurable by animators.

 Centralized modeling of character state. Simplified client-server interactions

eliminating out-of-sync states among clients and servers.

 Revamped complex audio system to manage sounds by type and perceived volume.

 Implemented game systems such as trade, crafting, knockback and crouching.

 Enhanced and championed unit test framework; helping reduce bugs & complexity.

(Jul 2003-Jul 2004) Telecommunication Research Center Vienna (ftw) (Vienna, Austria)

Marie Curie European Community Research Fellow, 2003; Software Developer

(Visual C++, C#, .NET, PocketPC Embedded Visual C++, cygwin)

 Architected a mobile, multimodal question-answering application utilizing

Distributed Speech Recognition as a Microsoft ASP.NET Webservice.

 Researched technologies ranging from SALT, VoiceXML, and J2ME to .NET.

 Implemented the client GUI and digital signal preprocessor on PocketPC 2003.

(Mar 2003-Jun 2003) Trizetto Healthcare/Analysts International (Denver, Colorado)

Software Developer and Consultant (SQL, Sybase RDBMS)

 Optimized legacy stored procedures for speed, reducing running times by up to 95%.

(Jul 2002-Mar 2003) Self Employed (Denver, Colorado)

Day Trader, Modeler and Software Developer (Visual C++)

 Created an adaptive rules-based system to manage day trading signals.

 Achieved a positive median per-trade return, out of roughly 750 trades.

 Overall return was 20% better than NASDAQ market performance.

(Mar 1998-Jun 2002) Narex, Inc. (Denver, Colorado)

Director of Modeling, Technical Manager and Software Developer

(Visual C++, SQL Server)

 Seventh employee of NAREX, Inc., a startup company specializing in credit risk and

debt scoring, fraud detection, recovery optimization and associated analytics.

 Key player in the growth and success of the company as it grew from 7 to over 125

employees, and from revenues of roughly $100,000 to over $10,000,000.

 Chief scientific advisor on statistical, optimization and artificial intelligence issues.

 Instrumental in innumerable improvements to the precision, functionality, and

robustness of NAREX’s proprietary predictive and data mining software systems.

 As one of three primary developers at NAREX, mentored new developers and

researchers. Fulfilled leadership, managerial, consulting, and customer-facing roles.

 Fair Isaac Corporation acquired NAREX, Inc. for $10,000,000.

(Sep 1996-Dec 1997) Cadis, Inc. (Boulder, Colorado)

Software Developer (C++ (Visual C++, gcc), PERL, Visual Basic, UNIX/Solaris)

 Spearheaded reengineering of CADIS-PMX (Parts Management Expert, a fully

object-oriented database) for use in the CD-ROM catalog market.

 Internationalized the CADIS-PMX database server.

 Developed the CADIS-PMX client-side data import API.

(Jun-Aug 1995) Morgan Stanley Group, Inc. (New York City, New York)

Researcher and Programmer, Summer Internship (C++, UNIX)

Data Mining Group

 Created a novel neural network for finding patterns in financial time series,

predicting future price movements 400% more accurately than legacy techniques.

 Designed an object-oriented architecture for general neural network simulators.

Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, New Mexico)

Researcher and Programmer (C++, UNIX, X, NeXT, Windows)

(Jan-Aug 1994) Intelligent Vehicle Highway System (IVHS) - Testbed Design

 Created vehicle sensing models for large-scale traffic simulations.

 Developed protocols for intersection behavior and modeling.

(Jan-Dec 1993) Intelligent Control of Chemical Processes

 Implemented a differential equation-based simulation of transient distillation columns.

 Created a “classifier system” (an expert system with rules discovered by a

genetic algorithm) to control the simulation.

(Sep-Dec 1992) Speech Recognition and Speech Synthesis (SERS Fellowship)

 Discovered and implemented a method to significantly improve synthesized speech.

 Wrote numerous signal processing and speech data manipulation programs.

NOTES: Speaks German, dual U.S./E.U. Citizen, Top Secret security clearance (inactive)

Netflix Prize participant; achieved a top ranking of 230 out of 25,000+ entries.

RELOCATION NOT AN OPTION.

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