Resumes can be dry, so I've put together a better explanation of who I am, what I can offer, and what I expect.
| Address | 839 W Harlan Avenue San Antonio, TX 78211 USA |
| ed@leafe.com | |
| EdLeafe | |
| Phone/Text | +1 585-734-3881 |
| Blog | https://blog.leafe.com |
I am looking for a role where I can best use my years as a programmer, technical lead, and solution designer to contribute to the success of your projects. I have been working primarily in Python for the last 15 years, but in that time I have led teams working in diverse languages such as JavaScript, Go, Ruby, and Visual FoxPro.
I'm currently working for IBM as an upstream OpenStack developer. My primary areas of focus is the Placement project, which tracks the resources available in the cloud, and the Nova project, which is the heart of OpenStack in that it provides the compute virtualization service. As part of the team that manages how Nova handles physical resources for virtualization, we've successfully taken the original resource model, which was very specific for virtual machines, and created a more generic Placement service, which can handle any kind of resource. This will enable OpenStack to continue to grow to better support virtualization of networks, specialized PCI devices, and any future technical resource that may be developed.
I am also one of the core members of the OpenStack API Special Interest Group. This SIG's charter is to work throughout the entirety of OpenStack with the various project teams. The goal is to create more consistent APIs by providing best practice guidelines, and occasionally to arbitrate API design when there is internal disagreement within a team.
This work is all done in a virtual environment, with my colleagues scattered across the globe, and who work for a variety of companies. We communicate via IRC for real time conversations, and in email for async conversations where time zones prevent people from working at the same time.
Within IBM itself I've mentored several of the more junior developers to get them familiar and productive with OpenStack development. I also serve as a resource when someone in the company needs help with Python programming.
My first years at Rackspace were spent as a tech lead for some internal development teams. These teams were responsible for maintaining existing home-grown tools that enabled the sales and support teams to do their work efficiently. The biggest project in this period was the re-write of the global maintenance calendar, which controlled when machines in the data centers around the world would be taken offline for upgrades. It suffered from poor handling of timezone differences, especially around daylight savings changes. The result was a system that maintained time internally in UTC, but could display that in any local timezone, and handled daylight savings differences without a problem.
In 2010 I switched roles to become one of the developers who were to create the next version of the Rackspace Cloud. This effort eventually became OpenStack when we teamed up with NASA in July 2010. As one of the original developers of OpenStack, I was involved in the initial designs for both the software architecture as well as the developer community. We created the systems of code review, integrated testing, IRC communication, and overall governance that is still used today.
I worked in a variety of technical roles, but primarily as a combination of business consultant and software developer. My most common task was to evaluate an existing system, gather requirements from different parts of the business, and then create a solution. Unlike most consultants, who would write up a solution, collect their check, and leave, I also programmed the solution myself, or with the internal developers for the client. In many cases where the task was large enough, I recruited a team to implement the solution, and oversaw the development process.
The companies I worked for ranged from large Fortune 100 companies to small local businesses. Among my larger clients were:
If you're really interested in things I did in this period, maybe we can sit down over a cup of coffee and I'd be happy to tell you some stories. Suffice to say that I started several businesses that did well enough to pay the bills; these were mostly in the construction industry. I am a photographer, and worked for many of these years in the photo industry. I sold Encylopedia Brittanica. I formulated automotive adhesives. There is no straight line in my career; the one thing these all have in common is that I was driven to work hard to make my ideas real.
Graduated with High Honor from the MSU Honors College. My undergraduate thesis was about optimizing yields of monoamine oxidase from rat brains in order to better be able to determine the relation of MAO levels to schizophrenia.
As a result of this award I received a 4-year scholarship to Michigan State University.
Spent the summer between my junior and senior years of high school taking courses for the entire first year of college chemistry. Received 12 college credits with a 4.0 average.