Thomas D. ChildersFairfax, CA |
tdc@alum.mit.edu +1 415 448 6621 |
Retired Software Architect/Chief Technology Officer |
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| Decades of experience building large systems, helping engineers work together, stay focused, and grow. I deliver products — from architecture, planning and prototyping…to building and leading the implementation teams. I’m hands-on, experienced with many technologies, and get features out the door on time and on budget. I work easily with international teams, and know how to communicate to enable their success.I am great at: lightweight Agile management, high-performance/high-availability microservices, API design, databases, planning and staffing, scalability modeling, clear documentation, amusing presentations. | |
| Specialties High-Performance Cloud Architectures Benchmarking & Capacity planning Agile Engineering and Project management |
Platforms & Facilities React, GraphQL, Javascript, Java, C/C++ Linux, Unix, Windows, Macintosh, IBM zOS MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Sybase, DB2 |
Professional Experience |
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Stealth Startup, San Francisco, CA 2016 – 2022 |
| Chief Technology Officer, building an iPhone app and back end using React Native and Redux, Node.js, PostgreSQL, Docker, Terraform, Kubernetes. The architecture is fully scalable for automated cloud deployment, and fully instrumented for monitoring and management. | |
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Adobe Inc., San Francisco, CA 2015 – 2016 |
| Senior architect for Adobe Campaign, bringing new large customers onboard with widely-varying configuration and integration requirements. | |
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Lyris Inc., Emeryville, CA 2013 – 2015 |
| Lead architect, developing a new Platform-as-a-Service for direct marketing. Managed both local and remote engineering teams and documented all new features, while writing/reviewing/debugging and mentoring. Company was purchased and dissolved in 2015. | |
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Responsys Inc., San Bruno, CA 2010 – 2013 |
| Senior manager responsible for scalability and performance of a state-of-the-art, very high-reliability SaaS platform. Established automated benchmarking and scalability modeling to mathematically describe system behavior under various workloads. Established and documented a deployment architecture. Stress-tested product components, and provided capacity planning models for new features in an agile environment. | |
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Sun Microsystems, Santa Clara, CA 1999 – 2009 |
| Member and chair of the Architecture Review Committee for Solaris middleware like Glassfish, Java CAPS and NetBeans. Lead engineer and program manager for the Forté product suite, providing architectural, configuration and tuning support for mission-critical systems at Lufthansa, Telefónica de España, Bank of America, the US Department of Defense, and dozens of other major customers. | |
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Forté Software Inc., Oakland, CA 1997 – 1999 |
| Ported 3.5M lines of C++ to IBM zOS, then enhanced the application integration and workflow products to improve multithreading performance. Benchmarked product performance on large IBM and Sun mainframe systems, and presented results at various technical conferences. | |
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Sybase, Inc., Emeryville, CA 1993 – 1997 |
| Led the team porting Open Client and Open Server 10 to IBM mainframes, and later worked on the generic middleware products, as architect and member of the implementation team for the company’s CORBA and Java Transaction Services support. Major contributor to the engineering organization’s ISO 9000 certification. | |
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Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, CA 1989 – 1993 |
| Responsible for all database benchmarking and customer performance issues on IBM MVS. Designed, configured, optimized and ran tests to evaluate competitive performance and expose kernel issues. Presented technical papers at most IOUG conferences, and wrote articles for Oracle Magazine. | |
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E-Net Corp., Greenbrae, CA 1988 – 1989 |
| Co-architect of the IBM DB2 Remote Recovery Data Facility, and the underlying ENET1 product. Co-holder (with the company founders) of software patent 5,412,801. | |
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IBM Santa Teresa Laboratory Fireman’s Fund, Viasoft, MIT 1978 – 1988 |
| I began my career working my way through school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, programming commercial applications on IBM mainframes. For four more years, I did similar work at Fireman’s Fund Insurance Companies, then co-founded a Silicon Valley startup in 1984 (Viasoft). At IBM, I led the team that designed and implemented one of the first worldwide distributed relational database systems, managing documentation processes across 72 international sites. | |
Education |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 1976 – 1979 |
| Undergraduate studies in Electrical Engineering and Geophysics. | |
References |
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| Available upon request. See my profile on LinkedIn.com. | |
Publications and Samples |
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| NOTE: Material on this web page is generally out of date. All content has been released into the public domain, concerns products that are no longer marketed or sold by the company that owns them, or has been edited to remove confidential material.My most current material is generally confidential to my employer.
White Papers
Presentations
Oracle Magazine Articles
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