Professional Objective
To obtain a position as a senior software developer or architect in an environment where
I can apply all of my software development skills, from hands-on coding to
team leadership/mentorship, collaborative project planning, system architecture/design,
and software process improvement.
Technology Skills
Programming Languages: Java, Objective-C, C, C++, Python/Jython, JavaScript, ActionScript, Tcl/Tk, Perl, Pascal, Ada, Lingo, LISP, UNIX Shells (bash, csh, sh), SQL.
Software Engineering Methodologies/Techniques/Frameworks: eXtreme Programming (XP), Scrum, UML, Design Patterns, CRC, Use Cases, Booch/RUP, Capability Maturity Model (CMM).
Web/Internet Technology: HTTP, XML, XSL-T, XSL-FO, Java Servlet API, JSP, FTP, HTML, JMS, Tomcat, Apache, JBoss, Xerces, Xalan, FOP, WebObjects, WebLogic, CGI, TCP/IP.
Operating Systems: UNIX (Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux, SCO, AIX), Windows 95/98/NT/2000.
Tools: IntelliJ IDEA, Xcode, Subversion, CVS, Ant, Junit, Velocity, Log4J, CodeWarrior, Emacs, Rational Rose, Together Control Center, TOPLink, EOModeler, StarTeam, Aqua Data Studio.
Employment History
Senior Software Engineer
Apple Computer, Inc. (Cupertino, CA)
June 2005-Present
- Senior developer on Analytics & Automation team for the public-facing
online Apple Store.
- Led team of five developers.
- Responsible for designing and implementing features whereby customer behavior is
observed, analyzed and fed back into the functioning of the online store.
- Designed and implemented a generic Cross-Sell Recommendation Service that mines
aggregate historical purchase information to recommend products that will
complement a customer's current, past, or potential purchases on the Apple Online Store.
- Member of the online Apple Store's Design and Architecture ("DNA") team,
charged with establishing and ensuring standards of technical excellence in
the store's engineering projects.
- Helped pioneer the online Apple Store's implementation of the Scrum
agile development methodology.
- Completed Certified ScrumMaster
training, 3/8/2006.
Chief Software Architect
Walker Digital (Stamford, CT)
September 2004-June 2005
- Led development of a probabilistic, AI-based simulation system supporting the development of Walker Digital's
intellectual property in the casino space; initially developed to model slot machines with varying payout tables
and standard deviations, the system was then expanded to model various flavors of video poker, accounting for
a range of player strategies and their effects on payout models.
- Managed, coached, and pair-coded with team of six developers.
- Ported GameShow24's lightweight web application framework to support non-web-based applications.
Chief Software Architect
GameShow24.com (owned and controlled by Walker Digital) (Stamford, CT)
November 2001-September 2004
- Led development team at GameShow24.com, a new venture initiated by Priceline founder Jay Walker, to create an e-commerce web site
where customers win prizes from local merchants by playing online versions of TV game shows (e.g., The Price is Right,
Let's Make a Deal, etc.).
- Managed, coached, and pair-coded with team of nine developers.
- Designed and coded lightweight Web application framework based on the Model/View/Controller pattern, using J2EE technologies
such as the Java Servlet API, JSP, JMS, JDBC, JNDI, XML, and XSLT.
- Deployed public web site serving more than 1000 unique users per day, as well as internal web applications, using Apache, JK2,
Tomcat, JBoss, and Oracle 9i, and Verisign PayFlow Pro API for credit card processing.
- Employed agile development process (inspired by eXtreme Programming)
in order to adapt to rapidly changing business requirements without losing momentum or sacrificing code quality.
Technical Team Lead
Skillgames, Inc. (owned and controlled by Walker Digital) (New York, NY)
January 2001-November 2001
- One of three team leaders in the development of a web site providing games of skill, played on the Internet; users pay per game, and win prizes based on their skill at the games.
- Hands-on leadership: equal parts coding and management.
- Led four teams of 2-4 developers each; each team was responsible for a portion of the development effort: Customer Profile Management, Presentation Layer (JSP/JavaBeans), Persistence Layer (TOPLink), Security Infrastructure.
- Helped institute eXtreme Programming (XP) practices: User Stories, Pair Programming, JUnit Testing, User Acceptance Tests, Continuous Integration, etc.
Director of Software Engineering
Shooting Gallery Interactive (New York, NY)
September 2000-January 2001
- Responsible for technical design, architecture, and implementation of Web sites specializing in both e-commerce and the delivery of rich media.
- Formulated standards for software engineering practice and development process improvement.
Senior Developer/Architect
iClick, Inc. (now ProAct Technologies) (White Plains, NY)
May 1999-September 2000
- Participated in the development and re-architecture of ClickHR, a Java servlet-based product allowing employee self-service via Web-enabled access to human resources databases.
- Participated in the design and development of a generic workflow engine built into ClickHR.
- Designed and implemented an XML-based language (and compiler) for representing and enacting workflow processes (predated XPDL, but similar).
- Designed and implemented a secure, web-based single-sign-on system allowing seamless login to multiple web applications, potentially across disparate domains (patent pending).
- Chief architect of iCAN, an employee portal integrated with ClickHR to provide employees with personalized savings and benefits on goods and services, leveraging information from the human resources application suite.
- Adapted ClickHR to send/receive information via XML, allowing integration with any external system that can interpret XML messages (predated XML Web Services, but similar).
- Provided leadership in formulating organizational policies for configuration management, software engineering, etc.
Lead Developer, Core Development Team, Application Server Division
Information Architects (New York, NY)
February 1999-May 1999
- Continued work on Metaphoria Data Transformation Server (see previous position) as team leader when Information Architects purchased the Metaphoria technology group from Pencom Web Works.
Internet Technologist/Web Developer
Pencom Web Works (now known as Xtivia, Inc.) (New York, NY)
January 1996-February 1999
- Co-architect and principal developer of the patented Metaphoria Data Transformation Server (see Patents, below), an all-Java Web application framework providing support for analysis, modeling, and flexible presentation of heterogeneous, distributed data, using the Java Servlet API.
- As technical lead of methodology committee, initiated the use of software engineering practices such as lifecycle management, version control, UML, coding standards, documentation standards, and technical reviews.
- Helped PWW (now known as Xtivia, Inc.) build a consulting team of over 75 developers spread over six offices nationwide.
- Co-author, with Edith Au, of Java Programming Basics (Henry Holt/MIS:Press, 1996).
Additional Experience
Education
Studied Jazz Composition with William Thomas McKinley and George Russell at The New England Conservatory of Music from 1985-1987, with significant coursework in classical and jazz theory and arranging
Patents
- System for Indexing and Displaying Requested Data Having Heterogeneous Content and Representation, 9 November 1999
- System for Indexing and Displaying Requested Data Having Heterogeneous Content and Representation (continuation in-part), 26 June 2001
- Centralized Single Sign-On Method and System for a Client-Server Environment
David Makower, Jay Sachs, and Steve Schwell. (U.S. Patent Pending, Application Number 20,020,184,507 filed May 31, 2001)
Publications
- Leon Shklar, Dave Makower. "An Application Development Framework for the Virtual Web". Proceedings of the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics, Vol. 3. July 1998. 317-326. http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~shklar/isas98/.
- Dave Makower. "Four Mac-based IDEs compared: Which should you choose?". JavaWorld. September 1997. http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-1997/jw-09-mac-ides.html.
- Leon Shklar, Dave Makower, Wei-Yeh Lee. "MetaMagic: Generating Virtual Web Sites Through Data Modeling". Proceedings of the Sixth International WWW Conference. April 1997. http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~shklar/www6/poster714.html.
- Brian Overland, (Technical editors: Dave Makower and Edith Au.). Java in Plain English. Henry Holt/MIS:Press, New York, NY. 1996.
- Dave Makower. "March of the Mac IDEs". JavaWorld. August 1996. http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-08-1996/jw-08-mac-ides.html.
- Edith Au, Dave Makower. Java Programming Basics. Henry Holt/MIS:Press, New York, NY. 1996.