
Computer Scientist / Web Developer
Berlin Area, Germany

Computer Scientist / Web Developer
Berlin Area, Germany
Languages: PHP, Javascript, BASH (high proficiency, use every day); C, Perl, C++ (extensive experience, or “rusty”); Java, Python, Ruby, Objective-C (limited experience); SQL, HTML, XML, CSS, LATEX
Interests: computational linguistics, computer vision, scalable PHP, unobtrusive JavaScript, database architecture, embedded systems
(Computer Software industry)
2009 — Present (less than a year)
(Public Company; YHOO; Internet industry)
March 2008 — March 2009 (1 year 1 month)
Yahoo! Profiles (http://profiles.yahoo.com/ – central Yahoo! user profile, overhauled to integrate with social platforms on Yahoo! and the web)
– performed code reviews for the front-end team (PHP, JavaScript, MySQL), ensuring compliance with performance, internationalization, and standards best-practices
– participated in all major architectural decisions for the new Yahoo! Profiles and in supervising the launch, especially in troubleshooting performance and scaling issues
– created a comprehensive live-debugging system for all back-end dependencies to pinpoint failures and visualizate parallel back-end requests for performance improvements
– designed standard Object-Oriented interfaces for major common functionality (including asynchronous requests in JavaScript and back-end webservice requests) to both allow code re-use and better unit-testing functionality
– involved in coordination with other related teams at Yahoo! including API changes, deployment scheduling, and load issues
– designed, implemented, and deployed data migration project for Yahoo! 360 (ca. 100M users, 2TB of data)
Yahoo! Social Platform SDK (http://developer.yahoo.com/social/sdk/ – SDK for third-party developers to access Yahoo! Social APIs)
– worked on OAuth and webservice requests in the PHP SDK, helped implement support for OAuth 1.1
– developed prototype JavaScript SDK that allowed OAuth integration without third-party server-side integration (all signing/authentication happening directly in JavaScript)
(Public Company; YHOO; Internet industry)
October 2005 — March 2008 (2 years 6 months)
Yahoo! 360◦ (360.yahoo.com – social networking site, currently in End-of-Life)
– primarily developed front-end code (PHP and JavaScript)
– developed an extensible webservice system (primarily for internal use) that is format-agnostic (code produces data, adapters determine how to format XML, JSON, HTML, or any other format)
– wrote tools to automate redundant parts of development work for the team
– maintained and developed a customer care and and an editorial tool to control and promote user-generated content
Yahoo! Mash (beta social experiment, now shut down, precursor to profiles.yahoo.com)
– worked closely with Yahoo! Application Platform to enable third-party developers to write modules that could be directly embedded in Mash, including adding persistent drag-and-drop functionality to user profiles
– developed precursors to many of the key components leading to Yahoo! Profiles
– filed patent for "Secure Inter-Module Communication Mechanism" used on webpages for embedded third-party modules (http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090064183)
(Computer Software industry)
June 2004 — November 2006 (2 years 6 months)
(Start-up, now defunct)
– developed a product to allow users to share physical media with people in their communities
– managed a team of 3 engineers and 1 designer together with co-founder
– designed and implemented the front-end component-based architecture using PHP and JavaScript
– developed a system to abstract behaviour from code and markup, inspired by Ben Nolan’s “Behaviour”
– administrated the server, repository, build and release, including tools to allow each developer to run a fully functional instance of the code on their laptop and keep database patches in sync
(Government Agency; Research industry)
June 2005 — August 2005 (3 months)
– rewrote existing TinyOS code (in NesC) for reliable mesh networking of wireless sensors on a ZigBee (802.15.4) network
– wrote data visualization software using Java, DHTML, Javascript and XMLHttpRequest to present real-time data collected from a distributed network of wireless sensors, including raw data, data graphs, webcam images and routing graphs
– designed a fault-tolerant, modular system for handling data and event transmision between wireless sensors and UNIX server, including database integration with MySQL, ideologically based on the UNIX “filters and pipes” approach
– work on wireless sensor networks led to the paper "The Earth Vision Time Machine" (http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/fl/flevents/wace/wace2005/papers/beckman.pdf)
(Computer Software industry)
2003 — 2005 (2 years )
– administered 73 OS X desktops for general use and 5 servers (OS X, BSD, Linux) for print management and file serving
– developed specialized tools for remote administration, imaging, and print queue management
– scheduled shifts
– wrote a drag-and-drop print queue management web application that sent and received updates asynchronously to/from the server (didn’t have the term “AJAX” yet)
M.Sc. , Computer Science , 2009 — 2011 (expected)
BA with Honors , Computer Science , 2002 — 2005
Specialization and graduate-level courses in Artificial Intelligence, with focuses on Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision.
Abitur , LK English & Math , 1988 — 2002
ACM, Sigma Xi