Jon Raphaelson

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Jon Raphaelson

http://jonraphaelson.name
jonraphaelson@gmail.com
(303) 746-6897

About Me

Experienced, energetic, and enthusiastic software engineer, available for contract engagements to help design and develop web and back-end software solutions. I am eager to apply my talents and creativity to new and difficult problems and to immerse myself in unfamiliar technologies and domains.

Qualifications

A strong, creative and exacting front-end web developer, both from a technical perspective (HTML5/XHTML, CSS, Javascript) and from a user experience standpoint (design principles, progressive enhancement, markup optimization, etc.).
An experienced, extremely savvy object-oriented software developer, having been noted for the quality of my code, the speed with which I write it, and the depth and insight of my solutions and architectural analysis.
A very fast learner, quickly picking up and becoming proficient with new technologies and frameworks when presented with them.
A forward thinking engineer, passionately interested in new ideas, new ways of accomplishing things, and leveraging new insight into existing methods and practices.

Skills

Solutions architecture, dipping into both my experience as a dedicated software engineer and as a web-focussed developer to make informed, long-term recommendations on technology solutions.
Back-end development, using a variety of languages and runtimes, including C#, Server-side Javascript under Node.js, Python, Java, C and SQL, as well as a number of different application frameworks, including ASP.Net with C#, ASP MVC (2 & 3), Django, Rails, JSF and JSP/Servlets. Also proficient with and excited about developments around NoSQL backends, including MongoDB and Redis specifically.
Front-end, client-facing web development, including coding standards-compliant, progressive HTML5/XHTML and CSS with heavy emphasis on Javascript development, specifically with jQuery. Also proficient with desktop and mobile development using WinForms on Windows and Cocoa on Mac OS X and iPhone.
Unix and Windows server maintenance and configuration, including configuring web and database server clusters, developing automated and assisted application deployment strategies and development environment setups.
Dynamic leadership, with an emphasis on learning teammates's skill sets and helping to combine those unique skills into positive outcomes.

Testimonials

During our recent website overhaul, Jon was the technical lead who pushed our project through extremely tight deadlines and quite demanding requirements. Despite these hurdles, he never once lost his sense of humor and completed the project with really well thought out code. His skills are still apparent to me as I have taken over his code to extend and maintain. I have delved pretty deeply into his code and have yet to be let down by anything that seems sub par. I would recommend him to anyone as a great programmer, team lead and client liaison. Ralph Burrows, Managing Director of Web Development, America's Promise

Jon is in the top 10% of 'high-powered' engineers I've encountered in my career. In particular, with regard to technical expertise, ability to be very productive in an object-oriented software environment, self-starting capability, and critical thinking and discussions, Jon is a very notable asset to a software development team. Mitch Black, Software Engineer, Sun Microsystems

Jon is an extremely intelligent software developer with an ever-expanding skill set. He is known to be able to learn new programming languages and related technologies for application and web development in days or even hours. Quality products in a timely manner are a must to Jon as he is always willing to put the extra time and effort in to get the job done. Phil DeOrio, Software Developer, Siteworx

Experience

IP Commerce

Denver, CO

Web Applications Engineer

February 2011 - Present

Web applications engineer on a team responsible for the UX and functionality of three major publically accessible web applications, one huge internal administrative application, and a host of smaller UIs for various internal services.

EMC

Louisville, CO

Senior Development Engineer

April 2010 - February 2011

Senior Engineer and UI development lead for a browser based tape archive administration system. Utilizing ExtJS, Java Servlets, and ActiveMQ, I was responsible for all of the product's UI and data integration between various backend services.

Highlights

Created and maintain a library of custom ExtJS components, which are now being shared across three upcoming and current products teams. The component library consists mainly of composite UI elements and data access components.
Designed and developed a data caching layer, using JPA and Hibernate, used for caching service responses and for providing a SQL query interface onto services that don't provide selection, sorting, or paging facilities.
Participated in a service level refactoring to the OSGI framework, including upgrading all of our build process to create OSGI bundles and managing bundle dependencies.

Siteworx, Inc

Rochester, New York

Senior Software Developer

August 2008 — December 2009

Senior engineer and technical lead on a fluid team of engineers and designers, doing web development work, mainly in C# (ASP.NET) and Python (Django). I was personally responsible for team schedules, task assignments, and as a final gatekeeper on code, as well as general development and architecture. My expertise became the Sitecore CMS, and I engineered solutions for three separate clients in that system. My code responsibilities took place mainly on the back-end, doing domain modelling, search interfacing, and systems integration, though I handled a large portion of front-end development as well.

Selected Projects

Glimpse.org (http://glimpse.org/), a social network for students abroad, sponsored by the National Geographic Society. Written in Python with Django, and including a bespoke editorial submission system and Facebook integration.
Americas Promise (http://americaspromise.org/), a non-profit headed by Gen. Colin and Alma Powell. Developed in the Sitecore CMS under ASP.NET and C#, technical challenges included a multi-tiered membership system, a searchable resource library, PayPal donation integration, and a Lucene-based search system. This project also included several back-end integrations with America's Promise's various IT systems (Dynamics CRM, etc.)
The Heritage Foundation (http://heritage.org/), Again developed in the Sitecore CMS, the grand majority of technical challenge came from search requirements, which were met with a Sitecore-integrated Solr search system, including multiple search facets and automatic indexing on publish. Also for this project, I developed a system for automatic indexing and linking of fixed taxonomy terms in the body text of articles, to allow automatic categorization and cross-article linking.

Highlights

Designed and implemented an Apache Solr connector for the Sitecore CMS, enabling automatic full text indexing of articles and metadata, including sponsored results and "most popular" metrics, and an associated model-level API for queries and query caching.
Successfully delivered several client projects using technologies I was originally unfamiliar with, including Django, C#, .NET and ASP.NET and the Sitecore CMS, with mainly self-directed training.
Introduced and implemented continuous integration and automated deployments into our build system and process, successfully reducing time to deploy to less than 5 minutes for various Sitecore implementations.
Developed an iPhone application as an in-house marketing tool, sent to potential contracts as a Christmas present in 2008. Siteworx Holiday Crystal Ball

Sun Microsystems

Broomfield, Colorado

Staff Software Developer

March 2008 — July 2008

Software Developer

June 2006 — March 2008

notewise.com

Boulder, Colorado

Co-Founder, Engineer

November 2005 — March 2006

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

Boulder, Colorado

Contractor, Simulation & Testing Group

August 2005 — December 2005

Intern, Simulation & Testing Group

June 2005 — August 2005

Education

University of Colorado at Boulder

Boulder, Colorado

B.S. Computer Science

May 2006

Fosdick Award Nominee and "Best Senior Project" Award Winner, 2006 Engineering Design Expo