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.
Work Experience
- JACKPOT REWARDS INC (jackpotrewards.com): Boston,
MA -- March 2007 to Present
- Director of Backend Technologies for an online
sweepstakes/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 5 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 Java/Linux and other open source software
components. Performed most of the system design and specification and
also contributed to a significant degree as an individual
contributor.
- IRON MOUNTAIN INC (ironmounain.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 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.
- LYCOS INC (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.
- 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.
Patent
Top technical inventor of patent
US6012053 entitled Computer System with User-Controlled
Relevance Ranking of Search Results.
Source Code Publications
Skills
- Extensive knowledge of:
- Java, C, concurrency / threads, scalable high-performance
distributed architectures, information retrieval, software engineering
practices, customized database systems, BSD and GNU software, Perl,
CSS/HTML/HTTP.
- Unix/Networking knowledge:
- Most unix system and network daemons, network hardware, and Unix
systems: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, others.
Older Work Experience
- 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 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 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. Participated in continuing system
administration, user support and education.
- ANTAIRE CORPORATION: Pittsburgh, PA -- December 1989 to
December 1994
- Cofounder 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 manager and 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.