Matt E. Patterson

Senior Web Software Architect/Lead

Highly-experienced software architect with a strong passion for engineering team-building, Agile process methodologies, and user-centric, feature-based web software design. Strong background in using open source tech for enterprise software. Proven track record of building up and improving existing web software teams, introducing new ideas and new technologies to solve immediate software challenges, and taking enterprise software apps to award-winning levels, via both planning and implementation.

“In addition to being a Ruby on Rails God, Matt is a rare combination of design and coding talent. I was consistently impressed by the user experience that he delivered and how he backed it with pragmatic maintainable code. He embraced our agile development process and lead our team in his willingness to support his code with tests including the introduction of new testing technologies. He enjoys the team dynamic of design and collaboration. Matt’s was a great addition to my team.”
- Rob Hirschfeld (Director of Product Development, Mirage Technologies; now Trustwave)

Core Skills and Experience

• LANGUAGES: Ruby, PHP, XHTML, HTML5, CSS, Javascript, some Java
• FRAMEWORKS: Rails, Sinatra, Rack, Jquery, Prototype
• TEMPLATING: Haml, Sass, Compass, Slim, Blueprint
• DATABASES: MongoDB, MySQL, Postgres
• PROCESS: Agile/Scrum evangelist, Scrummaster
• OTHER: Photoshop expert with a graphic design and usability background

Passions

• Test-driven and behavior-driven development
• Agile planning through user stories and self-selected tasking
• Standards-compliant web design (XHTML, HTML 5, CSS, and Javascript)
• Human-centric usability and workflow designs
• Team cohesion and velocity through buy-in and ownership (not external incentives)

Career Highlights

Digimonkey Studios — Austin, TX [2002 - Present]
OWNER/FOUNDER

Contract web application development in Ruby, book publishing, book cover design, interior layout formatting, and e-book file conversion services. Have done work big and small for tiny single-owner web apps, a major Austin graphic design firm, and enterprise businesses.

aDealio.com — Austin, TX [2011 - Present]
SENIOR ARCHITECT

Ruby/Rails architect-level app development, including: major refactorings and query optimizations; a full-scale upgrade from Rails 2.x to 3.0; restructuring of key objects to a hierarchical object structure using class-table inheritance; construction of a massively-parallel mail sending job queue system using SimpleWorker integration that reduced the daily email send of tens of thousands of emails to over 200 markets from 3 hours average to only 45 minutes; and development of a new administrative and reporting system using technologies such as jQuery, unobtrusive javascript, semantic HTML 5, and MongoDB.

Cambia Information Group — Austin, TX [2011]
DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING

Transitioned Cambia’s contractor-built legacy systems into a full-time, on-prem engineering department. Personally recruited and hired several senior Ruby developers. Architected and began implementation of a full-stack services-based business intelligence solution, built primarily with Ruby, Rails 3, and MongoDB, running on cloud-hosted Ubuntu instances. Managed the engineering team, conducted hiring, managed all cloud instances, integration and source control, and consulted with the business leaders on software development process and roadmap strategies. Also contributed directly to development effort by building multiple Ruby-based applications and service components as part of the overall architecture.

Moxie Software (prev nGenera Corp.) — Austin, TX [2009 - 2011]
SENIOR ARCHITECT

Introduced and acted as Scrummaster for Moxie’s new Agile process, dramatically accelerating product development and decreasing average defect counts. Brought a high degree of polish and technology improvements to Moxie’s core social networking product, resulting in a completely-rewritten 2.0 version unveiled at the E2.0 Conference to widespread acclaim from both potential customers and analysts. Integral involvement in the architecture, from the selection of MongoDB, to the use of InheritedResources, integration of the Liquid templating engine, and introduction of HAML/SASS to fast-track a professional grade look & feel. Served as a core developer on the product, with hands in nearly every aspect of the software, across all layers of MVC.

Mirage Networks (now Trustwave) — Austin, TX [2007 - 2008]
SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Introduced Ruby and Rails to spearhead the development of a web-based, customer-focused reporting and metrics tool for network-embedded devices built atop a custom C and Java platform. Introduced Test-Driven Development and mentored the QA team on developing Ruby-based test automation systems. Extensive work with multi-million row MySQL tables, including solving various de-duplication, granularization, rollup, and pruning challenges.

Crossroads Systems — Austin, TX [2006 - 2007]
SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Introduced Ruby and Rails as an alternative to a mixed environment of CGI scripts, PHP inherited from a company buy-out, Python, and Java. Directly involved in the adoption of Ruby as the “official company software focus.” Served as one of the core Ruby developers on several software products that ran on network-embedded hardware devices. Devised and co-implemented a shim layer to interface a front-end Ruby/Rails management console with kernel-level C commands.

University of Texas at Austin (Digital Media Collaboratory) — Austin, TX [2002-2006]
SENIOR SYSTEMS ANALYST

Built several custom Content Management Systems for various University groups. Served as Lead Designer on the NER0 Project (see http://nerogame.org for its latest incarnation) – an integration of academic-grade AI technology with commercial game engines. Core developer on a system for helping the military train battle captains to make quick decisions in high-stress situations. Personally designed and implemented several University and University-related websites.

Education

Virginia Tech [1996-2000]
Bachelor of Arts in English (Fiction Writing)
Minor in Digital Design

Trivia

• Published author.
• As a high-school student, ranked 3rd internationally at the International Science and Engineering Fair in the field of Computer Science for work in linear chaos math predictive algorithms as applied to bio-dynamic systems.
• Experienced public speaker and presenter