Software Manager
Resume:
Extended Resume: Brian M. Clapper
Brian M. Clapper
President: ArdenTex, Inc.
Email: ***@********.***
WWW: www.ardentex.com
Technical Blog: http://brizzled.clapper.org/
A summary resume is also available.
Professional Experience
March, 2009, to date
Owner, President, and Principal Consultant: ArdenTex, Inc.
25 Walnel Dr., Royersford, PA 19468
Current Contracts
June, 2010, to date
Independent Consultant, Hozzle Rocket, LLC, 1123 Ashbridge Dr., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Hozzle Rocket is developing a web-enabled, subscription-based site for customers with multiple res-
idences. The software is developed using Ruby on Rails, with a jQuery-based user interface. As a
consultant to Hozzle Rocket, I am helping to design and build the nal system.
Past Contracts
July, 2011, to September, 2011
Independent Consultant, JMV Services, Inc. s ITS Property and Casualty Consulting subsidiary, 17950 Preston
Rd., Suite 750, Dallas, TX 75379
JMV Services provides software solutions for the insurance industry. JMV contracted me to build a
custom Java library, to be integrated into the Talend data processing tool, using Apache XMLBeans to
convert insurance- related data into an XML data export format.
July, 2011, to December, 2011
Independent Consultant, Orocast, LLC, Berwyn, PA
Orocast is a startup, developing a web- and smart-phone-based service. (A non-disclosure agreement
prevents my disclosing the exact nature of the service.) With another consultant, I built a prototype
system, which Orocast then used to test the market with investors. While my colleague focused on the
mobile user interface, I built the back-end services layer. We settled on a Ruby on Rails solution, to
provide for later expansion to a full-featured web site
March, 2011, to March, 2012
Independent Consultant, Alphabuyer, LLC., 1410 Russell Rd., Suite 102, Paoli, PA 19301
Alphabuyer is a consumer group-buying site, currently focused on the energy market. I was contracted
to help debug and enhance their Python- and Django-based software application.
August, 2010
Independent Consultant, Dow Jones & Co., 4300 Route 1 North, Monmouth Junction, NJ 08852
Made custom enhancements to my curn open source RSS reader, which Dow Jones uses internally.
February, 2011 to May, 2011
Independent Consultant, QAD, Inc., 100 Innovation Place, Santa Barbara, CA 93108
Contracted to address some performance problems and correct some other defects in the product I
originally helped to develop for FullTilt Solutions.
February, 2010
Independent Consultant, Technology Co-Pilot, LLC, 6743 E. Tyndall Circle, Mesa, Arizona 85215
Technology CoPilot provides custom integration and software development for, among other things, the
Stone Edge Order Manager ecommerce order management software suite. I have done some integration
work for Technology CoPilot, mostly PHP/Linux-based.
March, 2009, to February, 2011
Independent Consultant, SDI Health, LLC, 220 West Germantown Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462
SDI Health provides health care data solutions and analytics to various companies in the health care
business space.
My duties, as an independent consultant for SDI, included:
Tuning and reverse-engineering existing legacy systems
Designing and implementing new data normalization software
Participating in the rearchitecture of the internal data warehouse
Providing software technical advice and direction
The data warehouse rearchitecture e ort requires consuming, normalizing, mastering and maintaining
millions of rows of health care-related data records from disparate sources, using Microsoft SQL Server
Integration Services (SSIS), Oracle, PL/SQL and custom components.
This was a 40-hour-a-week contract.
February, 2008, to March, 2009
Senior Software Engineer
Invite Media, Inc., 1716 Chestnut Street, Suite 4, Philadelphia, PA 19103
Invite Media builds technology and provides network services to facilitate Internet optimized advertising. As
one of the senior developers, I was a member of a small team that was responsible for speci cation, design, and
implementation of large-scale, real-time advertising technology. As of March, 2009, Invite Media s systems were
providing optimized advertising solutions to a number of customers.
The system was written primarily in Python with some components in Java. It consisted of various Internet-
visible servers and several back-end databases, and it is designed to scale to very large numbers of connections
and transactions.
Technologies and techniques used included:
Amazon s Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) services
Amazon s Simple Storage Service (S3)
The Hadoop map/reduce framework
The Twisted Python framework
The RabbitMQ messaging framework
PostgreSQL
Django
SQLAlchemy
These, and other, technologies were tied together with proprietary ad-serving software that provided highly
optimized ad delivery.
June, 1999, to February, 2008
Enterprise Architect / Senior Developer
FullTilt Solutions, Inc., (acquired by QAD, Inc. in 2008),
1400 Liberty Ridge Drive, Suite 100, Wayne, PA 19087
I was one of a handful of senior-level developers of the FullTilt Perfect Product Suite product information manage-
ment tool. We developed a business-to-business ecommerce product that streamlined the maintenance of product
data. The product embodied a work ow process that enabled a company to process, classify, attribute, search,
maintain, and deploy large volumes of product data, while minimizing the need for data entry personnel. The
product s server-side software was written entirely in Java. Perfect Product Suite s user interfaces consisted of
browser-based HTML screens that interacted with server-side Java servlets.
Perfect Product Suite was able to import product data in a variety of formats, including spreadsheet data and
Perfect Product Suite s XML format. Once the data was been normalized and attributed, Perfect Product Suite
stored it in a relational database, where it was organized according a powerful, proprietary data model.
Perfect Product Suite performed all database access solely via JDBC; consequently, it ran against any robust,
full-featured relational database that supports JDBC access. We explicitly supported and tested against Oracle,
IBM s DB2 and Microsoft s SQL Server.
Perfect Product Suite is patented; I am listed as a co-inventor.
As a senior developer, my duties included architecture, design, development, and, occasionally, sales support. I
have worked on every component of Perfect Product Suite; among these components are:
the UIs and servlets
the database API, which mapped the relational database view to an object-oriented one
the utility library
the proprietary back-end Import Manager process that automatically classi ed and processed imported
product data
the XML parsing engine
In March, 2007, I assumed the position of Enterprise Architect, putting me in charge of the overall architectural
direction of the product.
The members of our team were located all across the country, and many of us (including me) worked from home
o ces. Producing a quality product required us to master the challenges of collaborating across large distances
and several time zones.
April, 1997 to June, 1999
Senior Architect / Senior Software Developer
PLATINUM technology International, inc., (acquired by Computer Associates in 1999), Three Valley Square, 512
Township Line Road, Suite 300, Blue Bell, PA 19422
One of two architects responsible for overall design of PLATINUM s Open Enterprise Management System (PO-
EMS), a uni ed infrastructure into which all PLATINUM products were integrating, to provide seamless operation,
administration, and look-and-feel across the PLATINUM product line. As architect, my duties included:
Reviewing designs to ensure consistency with existing POEMS architecture, future POEMS and PLATINUM
product directions, and current development methods.
Keeping abreast of architectural changes to POEMS software.
Staying current with competing products and with industry trends.
Designing components that reach across the internal POEMS teams.
Participating in management decisions for current and future software releases.
Analyzing requirements for internal POEMS consumers and external customers, and to help design and plan
POEMS/product integration.
Serving as internal senior consultant for other software developers.
Engaging in short-term research and prototyping. In this capacity, I built a working Java prototype of the
POEMS back-end IPC services. This prototype bcame the basis for our internal Java IPC solution.
Assisting in software development and production (e.g., lling in on development teams when necessary).
Participating in PLATINUM-wide architecture meetings.
Shortly after PLATINUM was acquired by Computer Associates, I left the company to join FullTilt Solutions.
October, 1993, to April, 1997
Senior Member of Engineering Sta
N2K Inc., 435 Devon Park Drive, Suite 600, Wayne, PA 19087-1943
Senior developer, computer security professional, and internal sta consultant for N2K Inc, an Internet-oriented
entertainment company and an on-line music retailer that ultimately merged with CDNow.
During my tenure at N2K, my duties included:
Designing and implementing a UNIX development environment.
Designing and implementing a UNIX-based corporate rewall.
Building and maintaining an in-house C++ tool library consisting of more than 200 reusable C++ classes.
Designing and implementing a C++ network-based server to eld credit card transactions and forward them
through Visa-supplied hardware to a clearing bank.
Building a C++ lex- and yacc-driven command shell for a proprietary full-text database system.
Designing and partially implementing an NFS proxy to permit tunneling NFS tra c safely from behind the
corporate rewall to machines in the rewall s DMZ. (See document entitled Notes on a Proxy for Securely
Tunnelling NFS through Firewalls for details.)
Filling in for and training our Unix system administrators.
February, 1991, to October, 1993
Senior Member of Technical Sta
Tangram Enterprise Solutions (formerly, Rabbit Software Corp.), 7 Great Valley Parkway, Malvern, PA 19355
Senior developer and team leader for Rabbit Software, a small company that developed PC-based SNA networking
software, primarily for the UNIX, DOS and Windows environments. Duties included:
Performing system requirements analysis, design, and implementation, especially on the following compo-
nents: Unix-based SNA RJE emulation software, large libraries of reusable software components, distributed
con guration architecture, interprocess communications layers, custom language parsers, local software devel-
opment tools, software internationalization support libraries, X-Windows and character-based user interface
software.
Acting as technical resource for rst- and second-line managers.
Mentoring less-experienced developers.
Working with other development leaders and managers to analyze and solve technical and development
process problems.
Filling in for rst-line management.
Performing occasional customer support.
February, 1990, to February, 1991
Computer Scientist
Naval Air Development Center (now the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, MD), Warminster, PA 18974-5000
Senior developer and researcher for a department that focused primarily on de ning, standardizing and building
software engineering environments.
After returning from the Software Engineering Institute, I was assigned to a project that attempted to de ne a
set of industry-based computer standards for the Navy. Responsibilities included:
Examining and de ning areas of possible user interface standardization.
Participating in industry standards e orts.
Following and reporting on current user interface research.
Attempting to de ne long-range user interface goals for software development environments.
Experimenting with various user interface paradigms and products.
Serving as chairman of the user interface working group for a software engineering environments standards
e ort (NIST-ISEE) sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Other duties included:
Acting as an in-house Unix consultant.
Performing occasional UNIX system administration.
Serving on division s local area network planning group.
February, 1989, to February, 1990
Navy Resident A liate
Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
Selected to serve as NADC s Resident A liate to the SEI for one year. Served primarily as a Navy representative
on the User Interface Prototyping Project, helping to build a UNIX-based user interface management system
(UIMS) called Serpent.
Duties included:
Tuning user-interface language s compiler run-time code.
Developing algorithms to replace a commercial production-model support package initially built into the
system.
Assisting the design and development of a graphical user interface editor.
Writing X Windows-based UIMS demos.
Building general purpose library routines for both internal use and release with the system.
Fixing bugs.
Writing documentation.
Representing NADC s interests at the SEI.
Keeping abreast of new technology, with an eye to its transition back into software practice at NADC.
In February, 1990, I co-authored a paper about Serpent and presented it at the Winter 1990 USENIX Technical
Conference (available in the Proceedings of the 1990 USENIX Technical Conference ).
May, 1985, to February, 1989
Computer Scientist
Naval Air Development Center (now the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, MD), Warminster, PA 18974-5000
Initially served as a principal member of a team who developed a software engineering environment for System V
UNIX. This environment, used by several Navy contractors, provided controlled access to the software development
process; it consisted of a complex set of interdependent software tools and support utilities.
As a member of this project, my duties included:
Performing analysis and overall system design.
Developing inter-process communication facilities.
Building support tools, such as a specialized include preprocessor and audit-trail management utilities.
Creating general purpose library routines.
Designing and implementing data protection software.
Developing a message-driven user interface layer.
I also served as system manager for a network of UNIX-based workstations.
May, 1983, to May, 1985
Programmer/Analyst
Financial Automation Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, 1900 Market Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Member of the technical sta responsible for maintaining and developing software for Centramart II, a complex,
event-driven computer system providing central trading support for the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Duties
included design and implementation of new software, as well as maintenance and enhancement of existing software.
All software was written in an extended Pascal dialect, and ran on a Honeywell minicomputer.
January, 1983, to May, 1983
Adjunct Instructor
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122
As an undergraduate, I taught an introductory Fortran programming course in the College of Engineering. I was
solely responsible for course material, classroom presentation and examinations for a class of approximately 25
students.
Publications
Bass, L., Clapper, B., Hardy, E., Kazman, R., Seacord, R. The Serpent User Interface Management System.
Proceedings of the 1990 USENIX Technical Conference.
Patents
Co-inventor: US Patent #6,668,254, Method and system for importing data. (Also patented in Europe, patent
number EP1227411).
Activities
Member of the Association of Computing Machinery since 1983.
Founder of the Phillly Area Scala Enthusiasts Scala users group.
Miscellaneous
Languages: Java, Scala, Javascript, Co eeScript, C++, C, C#, various assemblers, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby,
all UNIX shells, HTML, XML, SQL, Emacs LISP
UI technologies: jQuery, GWT
Frameworks: Spring, Django, Ruby on Rails, J2EE
Miscellaneous Tools: Subversion, Git
Cloud computing and related technologies: Google App Engine, Amazon EC2
RDBMS-related technologies: Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Hibernate, Django (ORM), SQLAlchemy, Squeryl,
ScalaQuery, ActiveRecord, Microsoft SSIS (including writing custom components)
Operating Systems: Most avors of UNIX (including Solaris, HP/UX, AIX; Open Source operating systems
such as FreeBSD and Linux); Mac OS X; Windows
Education
B.A., Computer and Information Sciences, May, 1983 (Magna Cum Laude )
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Elected to Phi Beta Kappa in April, 1983
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