Sep 2019 – Jun 2025 · 5 yrs 9 mos · Dublin, Ireland · Hybrid

• SportsKey helps venues with sports facilities to save time and increase revenue with an easy-to-use all-in-one software platform. I joined the company in September 2019 and built out the software platform and team which now serves over 500 customers in a dozen countries. Proudly built with Ruby on Rails.

Oct 2016 – Present · 9 yrs 5 mos · Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, Ireland

• Do you have an idea for a software product or service, but no idea how to get started? I help startup founders design and build web and mobile applications, from concept to launch. I offer expert advice for Discovery, Roadmapping, Technical Designs, and MVP implementation.

Oct 2016 – Aug 2019 · 2 yrs 10 mos · Dublin, Ireland

• Optimise is a Dublin based startup that connects shippers and carriers to take the hassle out of ordering a truck.

Jan 2013 – Sep 2016 · 3 yrs 8 mos · Dublin, Ireland

• ...and later as CTO, building out a small Dublin office and overseeing our primary team of talented software developers in the Portland office.

Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 · 1 yr · Dublin, Ireland

• I rejoined LegitScript full-time, remotely from Dublin, first as a contributor....

Apr 2008 – Sep 2010 · 2 yrs 5 mos · Arlington, Virginia, United States

• I joined LegitScript in its coffee shop days, rebuilding the initial website and database application with Ruby on Rails, starting my long love affair with that language and framework.

Jan 2012 – Sep 2022 · 10 yrs 8 mos · Dublin, Ireland

• Travel Mobile sells SIM cards to international travellers. This is my longest running live Ruby on Rails application - it started on Rails 3.1 and Bootstrap 2 and has been kept on the latest release ever since.

Mar 2008 – Dec 2011 · 3 yrs 9 mos · Arlington, Virginia, United States

• As an independent software development consultant, I provided technical advice, system architecture and software development services to clients.

Jul 2007 – Jan 2008 · 6 mos · Washington, District of Columbia, United States

• Unity08 was an attempt to disrupt the 2008 presidential election in the US by launching a moderate third-party candidate, chosen and supported by a grassroots, online network. I joined the team to help scale the Drupal-based platform to support tens of thousand of concurrent users. The technogy stack was PHP and MySQL on dedicated, load balanced hardware, and I had my hands in pretty much all parts of the system, including writing my first and only Facebook app.
• Unfortunately, the campaign itself was completely eclipsed by the Obama-Clinton primary race, and ultimately fizzled out before we could get much traction (but we did eventually get on the ballot in all 50 states!).

Jan 2007 – Jun 2007 · 5 mos · Alexandria, Virginia, United States

• Hook Mobile is a provider of multimedia messaging services (or was back in 2007). I built the initial platform, a trading card system, from scratch to production launch with a campaign for CBS’ “Survivor”, on a LAMP stack.

Jan 2006 – Dec 2006 · 11 mos · Chantilly, Virginia, United States

• 762 Wireless provided ringtone subscription via an affiliate program. I joined as employee #1, taking over an existing PHP code base from a consultant, revamping it to modern production standards, and building up a small team.

Jan 2004 – Dec 2005 · 1 yr 11 mos · Chantilly, Virginia, United States

• Same gig, different role, leading a team of 5 engineers.

Jan 2001 – Dec 2003 · 2 yrs 11 mos · Chantilly, Virginia, United States

• Mobile 365 brought text messaging to the U.S. masses. I joined IC3S, Inc, in 2001, which merged with Inphomatch, which rebranded as Mobile 365 after another merger, and was finally bought by Sybase for a neat 425 million in 2006.
• I set up the first text message exchange system with licensed technology, implemented core protocols and drivers specific to the US market, and over several years had a leading role in building out a platform handling millions of messages per day for all major wireless carriers in the US. Stacks were C++ and Java with an Oracle backend, SwiftMQ for messaging and an in-memory database for real-time statistics, on Windows NT, Linux and Solaris.

Jan 1998 – Dec 1999 · 1 yr 11 mos · Hamburg, Germany

• Netlife was a pioneer of online banking in Germany. I started as a front-end developer, cutting my teeth working on web interfaces for several banks. We used our own CGI stack written in C++. Those were the days. Later I moved towards the backend, using a mix of Python, Java, and Tcl/Tk, backed by Oracle databases. This basically started me down the road as a full-stack web developer and my life-long obsession with verbose log files.