Bill Merrill is a professional software developer who creates novel applications in many domains. He has delivered products as an independent full-stack web developer, as a leader of feature-driven teams, and as a member of multiple startup engineering departments. He uses modern development and quality processes, works toward excellent team communication, and finds value in making work visible.
Experience
Interviewed leadership and software development team members to understand current practices, problems, and goals. Discussed potential avenues of improvement and delivered a set of recommendations and resources with the aim of enacting industry best practices for software development and project management.
Sindeo is creating an online mortgage shopping and closing experience.
Created Sindeo's automated Credit Score Check experience. Work included data modeling, integration with reporting services and a secure storage vendor, and creating a user interface for requesting and viewing credit data.
Built a service to use third-party analytics while preserving privacy. Work included a server-side proxy and instrumenting the client-side javascript application.
Javascript Coffeescript AngularJS Python Django Django Rest Framework Celery Postgres
LaunchPad Central builds Lean Startup curriculum and tools.
Created a Video Classroom presenting curriculum to students. Built an analytics dashboard allowing educators to easily track students’ progress thru the semester. Utilized Youtube APIs for highly available and low cost video delivery.
Piloted conversion of the existing server-rendered web application to an AngularJS-based single page application. Expanded server APIs to support the new paradigm.
Javascript Bootstrap jQuery AngularJS PHP Symfony Jenkins MySQL AWS
Topophile offers people the ability to build custom 3D models of the Earth’s terrain.
Using Open Source GIS tools, developed a parametric CAD creating printable 3D terrain models and integrated this application with a third party 3D print fulfillment service. Manages own GIS server and data.
Javascript jQuery Bootstrap Python CherryPy NumPy UMN Mapserver
Zattoo.com
Zattoo is a European virtual Cable TV provider.
Created features spanning Zattoo's platform including the Desktop JS application, web applications for mobile, tablet and set-top TV. Work spanned from Web UX to the Python API and multi-tiered storage backend.
Managed engineering for advertising across all platforms. Successfully transitioned entire ad serving infrastructure on a compressed timeframe. Specified, rewrote, tested, deployed and supported operations to switch before UEFA Euro 2012, an event which brought record breaking viewership.
Bootstrapped and launched Zattoo’s Live TV Android App. Managed the major challenge of Android’s lack of live streaming video protocols.
Javascript jQuery Python CherryPy MySQL Hadoop Android Developers Kit
Create web tools for biochemists. Provided front-end application development, data management, operations, and user testing.
Work included converstion of prototypes to deployable products, curation of a large database of all known chemical compounds, and user testing and iteration with domain experts.
Javascript YUI PHP Python MySQL httpd
Built tools to monitor and analyze high frequency trading systems.
Work included building custom unix-based tools for real time data analysis and marshaling, designing a data warehouse in Microsoft SQL Server, and supporting the data warehouse, data analysis, and reporting.
Python C# MSSQL
Worked as a consultant with clients in many domains:
- Designed and developed social web publishing and networking software
- Designed and implemented a security-hardened Red Hat Enterprise Linux image for large-scale deployment, including monitoring integration
- Analyzed and improved a major university's online registration user experience
- Analyzed and prototyped a real estate social web system
- Provided technical guidance and developed a lead generation website backed with a Customer Relationship Management system for advertising agencies.
- Development of user-focused websites for education and commerce
As a founding member of the Arbor Networks research and development team, Bill was directly involved in the initial design, implementation, and ongoing improvement of 3 world-class network security and management products: Peakflow DoS, Peakflow Traffic (later Peakflow SP), and Peakflow X.
Focused on user experience, data representation, and systems management, Bill developed and led teams developing components for web-based user interfaces, report generation tools, and business logic for data storage and management on a highly distributed network monitoring infrastructure.
Developed software supporting environmental science education curriculum and Learner Centered Design.
Designed and developed tasked-based web interfaces for compiling and sharing photos and narratives based on travel experiences.
NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduate at University of Michigan Dearborn, developed an intelligent system for safety glass analysis later used by Ford Motor Company.
Interned with the IBM AS/400 Language Tools team profiling and improving the C, C++, and Modula-2 compilers.
Coordinated a student run self-driving vehicle project; developed visual analysis and path planning systems.
Current Tools Expertise
| Web Standards | HTML 5; CSS, SCSS/SASS; Javascript ES5, ES6 |
|---|---|
| Javascript | jQuery, Bootstrap, AngularJS, Ember.js, jslint, bower, npm |
| App Servers | Servers: Apache, NGINX; Python: Django, Cherrypy; PHP: Symfony, WordPress |
| Infrastructure | Git, SVN; Postgres, MySQL, key-value; Jenkins, Fabric, grunt, gulp, make |
Education
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan — 1998 to 2000
Graduate studies in Education Technnologies and Artificial Intelligence
Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan — 1994 to 1998
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science