Manager Software

Ray Fergerson

408-***-**** ***.*********@*****.***

Software Engineering Manager

Results-oriented technical leader of high-performing global teams developing complex applications

** ***** ** ****gement experience recruiting and leading global teams of up to 30

developers

Led development on 3 person projects and as part of 600 member cross-disciplinary teams,

gathering and prioritizing requirements, planning releases, and coordinating developers,

contractors, and researchers to deliver timely, solid software

Led development of complex applications distributed, fault-tolerant, statistical, numerical,

client-server, real-time control, visualization, data capture, data analysis, and language

interpreters

Led design and development of a product from research prototype though multiple releases;

product became the de facto worldwide standard with a user community of 30,000 people

Broad experience in industries such as web advertising, mobile devices, aerospace,

telecommunications, physics, and artificial intelligence

Communicated software capabilities, architecture, internals, and roadmaps at international

forums to diverse audiences of 200 people

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Director of Engineering, Bluepulse, Sunnyvale, CA; 2009–Present

Led team developing mobile applications. Team consisted of 7 employees and contractors, including

front & backend development, QA, and operations. Applications allow users to retrieve information

from both automated systems and call centers. Bluepulse has ceased operations.

Drove development of iPhone application from prototype to App Store release

Led creation of web-based desktop software for asking and responding to arbitrary queries

Managed creation of simplified web-based mobile version for generic mobile browsers

Managed relationship with off-shore call center. Diagnosed connectivity and performance

issues

Senior Engineering Manager, Yahoo!, Sunnyvale, CA; 2005–2009

Managed software development for Yahoo’s display advertising inventory, supply forecasting and

pricing systems. These components are a key part of Yahoo's premium display advertising business.

Contributed actively to product development initiatives and system-wide architecture reviews.

Selected as 1 of 4 original engineering track leads on 600 person project to redesign the

company’s entire $1.5B display advertising system

Twice nominated for Yahoo’s yearly highest honor, the “Superstar Award”

Grew development effort from 4 to 30 people organized into five teams in two locations

Led software redesign to create a more scalable, flexible, and distributed inventory system to

better adapt to new feature requests

Improved system performance by introducing application performance tuning to development

process

Increased ad inventory availability by 20% (with a potential gain of $300M) by redesigning the

inventory allocation mechanism

Removed constraining data size and memory scalability limits by modifying system design

Explained complex, unintuitive, inventory system calculations to internal groups so that they

could better use and have more confidence in the software

Delivered software on schedule and with high quality across 30+ releases for both isolated

enhancements and for major upgrades tied to larger advertising business and system

changes

Facilitated formation of inventory development, QA, and Operations into a cohesive team

Coordinated 50+ tech talks for both the inventory group and for the advertising department, to

enhance awareness of technical activities elsewhere in the company

Developed and coordinated technical training for new employees to provide an understanding

of the entire system; 90% of employees reported that this training improved productivity

Manager/Technical Lead, Stanford University, Stanford, CA; 1994–2005

Led the design and construction of the Protégé open-source modeling tool. Protégé is similar to an

object-oriented data base designer and is used to create complex, adaptable applications.

Evaluations rate Protégé superior overall to all alternatives particularly for robustness and usability.

Designed and built both standalone and multiuser client-server versions of the system

Constructed the software as a framework supporting 100+ user-developed plug-ins

Drove the evolution of the software from a local project with 5 users to a robust, documented,

and supported product with 30,000 users

Led Protégé to become de facto worldwide standard tool for ontology development and

knowledge acquisition

Consulted with users such as DaimlerChrysler, SAP, Perot Systems, NASA, the National

Cancer Institute, and the Center for Disease Control to integrate Protégé into their projects

Advised startups that use Protégé as their main technical infrastructure

Organized Protégé conferences and courses around the world for hundreds of attendees

Senior Software Engineer, Centigram, San Jose, CA; 1991–1994

Centigram was a small telecommunications company; IPO in 1993; RIP in 2000. Enhanced systems

software for processing recorded voice, text, and generated speech.

Improved by 10x the performance of a telecommunications-language interpreter

Selected by the Engineering VP to 3 person architecture team to redesign product line

Encapsulated Windows and UNIX operating system dependencies in a uniform infrastructure

Additional Experience

Designed and implemented laser control-system algorithms for real-time simulations

Created 2 and 3 dimension visualization software for signal processing applications

Built and used data acquisition and analysis software

Designed and developed real-time instrumentation, control, and monitoring software

Wrote device drivers, interrupt handlers, and other low-level system software

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Languages: Java, C++, C, assembly, FORTRAN, XSLT, SQL, UNIX Shells

Platforms: UNIX, Windows, Linux, MacOS, QNX

Databases: MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MS Access

Standards: XML, RDF, OWL, HTML, UML, JDBC, RMI

Tools: Eclipse, JUnit, JProbe, OptimizeIt, Subversion, Bugzilla

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Experimental Nuclear Physics, University of Texas, Austin, Texas

B.S., Engineering Physics, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado

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