Gray Watson
I have placed this document online as a CV and not as a calling
card for search firms. I am not interested in moving away from
Boston, MA to another part of the country at this time.
I also have a plain version
online without left-side navigation and some of the footer information.
Summary
I've been working as a Java/C/Unix software engineer for over 20 years with my own software projects, my
own software company, and positions with universities, government, and corporations (small, medium, and
large). A core competency has been Information Retrieval systems combined with distributed systems -- this
said, I consider myself to be a generalist. I consider myself an expert at high performance, distributed Unix
backend systems and have extensive experience with search, database, and Internet delivered products.
I am working right in my first director position, where I managed a team of 8 people. I would say that I
am a good manager with some room to improve. I will never voluntarily relinquish all development and
architecture duties and will continue to defer to others who are better in dedicated management roles --
especially for larger teams that are directly reporting. I continue to enjoy the art of software/systems
architecture, design, engineering, and mentoring.
Primary Work Experience
- JACKPOT REWARDS (jackpotrewards.com): Boston, MA --
March 2007 to Present
Director of Software Engineering for an online sweepstakes and shopping web startup. One of the
initial 7 VPs and directors responsible for shaping the company and overseeing its technology and initial
direction. Responsible for all backend software development and distributed database design and architecture.
Managed a team of 7 developers and an integrated QA engineer who were tasked with developing a
highly-available, distributed, linearly-scalable database infrastructure from the ground up in 7 months time
using 100s of Java/Linux nodes and open source software components. Performed most of the system design and
specification and also contributed to a significant degree as an individual contributor.
Technologies: extended Jgroups network stack, Sequoia SQL replication, multi-threaded database queries and
automations, database security/performance, distributed data management/replication, custom Hibernate/JDBC
drivers and query routing, distributed logging and monitoring.
- IRON MOUNTAIN (ironmountain.com): Boston, MA -- July 2005
to March 2007
Search Architect / Principal Software Engineer for Iron Mountain's Digital division specifically
recruited into a premier internal infrastructure project tasked with storing, searching, and managing a
petabyte (10^15) scale archive with billions of digital assets using commodity hardware. Responsibilities
include distributed search system architecture, evaluation of component and overall system performance, as
well as principal software engineering duties. Helped design and recruit other members of top development
team which was incubated under semi-startup conditions to complete internal release within 14 months.
Technologies: ActiveMQ JMS, Lucene, multi-threaded custom document processing, custom query
merging.
- LYCOS (lycos.com): Waltham, MA -- January 1996 to June
2005
-
Software Architect / Principal Software Engineer for Internet search engine, consistently one of most
popular Internet sites from 1996 through 2005. One of 4 engineers responsible for the initial design and
development of all Lycos Unix technology. Personally responsible for all initial backend search-engine
technology. Designed, developed, and maintained Lycos Information Retrieval search engine running on high-end
Unix servers. Migrated centralized systems to distributed, loosely-coupled Intel computers. Former titles
include Infrastructure Engineering Architect, software engineering manager of Search Research and
Development, team leader of Distributed Architecture, and Engineering Team Lead on Search New
Product Initiatives. I have worked at Lycos the startup, the post-IPO excessive growth reactive
organization, the merged international corporation, and then the strategic niche Internet service.
Technologies: C multi-threaded query processing, custom high-performance disk and memory sub-systems,
custom network wire protocols, various custom index compression formats, performance testing and
monitoring.
Patents
- Top technical inventor of patent US6012053
entitled Computer System with User-Controlled Relevance Ranking of Search Results.
- Contributing inventor to patent US07548913
entitled Information synthesis engine.
Skills
- Extensive knowledge of:
- Java, C, concurrency / threads, scalable high-performance distributed architectures, information
retrieval, software engineering practices, customized database systems, search engine optimization (SEO), BSD
and GNU software, Perl.
- Unix/Networking knowledge:
- Most unix system and network daemons, network hardware, and Unix systems: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
Linux, others.
Secondary Work Experience
- MAILNULL SERVICE (mailnull.com): -- October 2000 to Present
- Conceived, developed, and maintain a free anti-spam mail service for thousands of people on the Net.
MailNull allows its users to create alternate email addresses to give to each online merchant or contact to
protect their personal addresses from spam. MailNull addresses allow easy identification of the source of
improper messages and they can be disabled with a click.
- DMALLOC LIBRARY (dmalloc.com): -- March 1992 to Present
- Designed, engineered, and maintain the Debug Malloc open-source library used by thousands of developers
worldwide. Highly portable heap memory allocation debug library used by software engineers to find problems
in their system's memory usage. The library has been successfully run on at least the following operating
systems: AIX, DG/UX, Free/Net/OpenBSD, GNU/Hurd, HPUX, Irix, Linux, Mac OSX, NeXT, OSF/DUX, SCO, Solaris,
Ultrix, Unixware, MS Windows, and Unicos. It also provides support for the debugging of threaded
programs.
- REMTECH SERVICES INC: Pittsburgh, PA -- September to December 1995
- Network engineer and consultant for the United States Bureau of Mines. Responsible for all Bureau online
publications, system administration for Sun, HP, AIX Unix systems, and TCP/IP WAN operations until the bureau
was disbanded in Congressional appropriations. Upgraded system security, revamped domain name service,
provided national systems support assistance.
- WEB COUNTER (digits.com): Pittsburgh, PA -- August 1995 to
1999
- Founder of what was once one of the more popular Internet sites on the Net. Web Counter servers handled
millions of counter hits daily on over 500,000 web pages. Responsible for all technology including
development of specialized multi-threaded Web and database servers which enabled a Pentium I Unix server to
create 80+ realtime counter images per second.
- USA ONRAMP: Pittsburgh, PA -- January to September 1995
- Systems consultant with startup Internet Service Provider. Responsible for initial system configuration:
T1 network connection, POP mail, Usenet news, WWW, ftp, domain name-service, routing, network design, modem
pool organization. Facilitated all user services, installed high speed frame connections, extensive system
programming to expand product functionality.
- ANTAIRE CORPORATION: Pittsburgh, PA -- December 1989 to December 1994
- Co-founder and CTO of small computer firm specializing in Unix software and customized database and
network systems. Software operations manager, chief applications and systems programmer, technical officer
for multiple projects and proposals. With business associates and small programming staff, successfully
designed, implemented, and marketed nursing-home database system to facilities in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Awarded and completed DARPA SBIR Phase 1&2 grants for Information Retrieval project entitled
Loosely-Coupled Network Processors for Information
Retrieval.
- OFFICE OF BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS: Pittsburgh, PA -- March 1987 to April 1990
- Systems programmer for 40 Unix computers: DEC, Sun, AT&T systems for University of Pittsburgh medical
software development lab. Served 1000s of users in health center with distributed database services,
including ten gigabyte medical periodical database and 100,000 hospital medical records.
Source Code Publications
Java Projects:
C Libraries:
Memory Debug
Free Spam Protection
ORMLite Java ORM
