I currently help develop a few interesting things at Amazon, where I obsess about making Amazon Search increasingly awesome for our customers. Before that, I worked at some other companies, Microsoft among them, where I spent six years shipping lots of great software. I founded two successful start-ups. I specialize in Cloud Computing, SOA and Distributed Architecture.
Currently, I lead an Engineering organization of fantastic folks in three cities and two continents. My management philosophy is simple: I lead by example, through kindness, honesty, respect, integrity and transparency. I believe that family always comes first. I love to win. I loathe process, corporate jargon and micro-management, and detest office politics.
I've written code since I was a kid, and still write code every day. I love Engineering because it leverages technology to help people overcome fuzzy human protocols and make the world a better place. I've traversed the stack, from C/C++ for robotics to web services on every major cloud platform. I wrote and still write software you've used. I build with simplicity, speed and efficiency, and the credo that innovation is incomplete without results. I am as passionate about my craft today as I was when I wrote my first line of code.
When I don't work, I spend time with family, play chess, Judo, and read. I also blog, write, speak, learn and listen.
That's me, today. I'll be different tomorrow, hopefully better.
Random Fact: I was the Technical Consultant for Tom Clancy's #1 NYT Best Sellers "Threat Vector" and "Support and Defend"
Some words that tell a story:
- Cloud Compute: AWS, Windows Azure, VMWare, VMM
- Programming: C#, Java, C/C++, JavaScript, AJAX, PHP, ASP.Net, T-SQL, Python
- OS: Windows, Linux (RedHat, Ubuntu, CentOS)
- Frameworks: .NET, Spring, jQuery, Knockout, Angular, Backbone, Node.js
- DBMS: SQL Server, Oracle, mySQL
- noSQL: memcacheDB, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Cassandra
- SOA: WCF, REST, SOAP, MVC, MVVM
- Machine Learning
Head of Infrastructure Development, Amazon.com Search and Discovery (SnD) @ Amazon has been my home since March 2014. I am currently very happily employed at Amazon as an Engineering Manager, leading several incredibly awesome teams. While grateful and humbled by the high degree of interest my profile receives, please note that I am only entertaining Director-level and higher roles from well-known companies. If at this point you are still interested, a bit about my background can be found below.
I lead the Infrastructure and Platform Development effort for Amazon.com's Search Experience group in Search and Discovery (SnD). Search and Discovery at Amazon creates Amazon's global search experiences across web, tablets, phones and beyond. We enable customers to find anything and everything they need from anywhere at anytime.
***** WE ARE HIRING *****
SnD is one of Amazon's crown jewels - extraordinary Software Development Managers, Engineers, Research Scientists, Designers and Technical Program Managers are encouraged to get in touch with me at nickc [at] amazon [dot] com.
Do you want to continuously innovate and experiment alongside world-class experts within one of the world's largest and most exciting technology infrastructures?
Do you enjoy taking on unique challenges across technology and product domains that involve Machine Learning, Query Understanding, Natural Language Processing, super massive-scale, and complex human-computer interaction and design problems?
Search Experience is responsible for enabling hundreds of millions of customers around the world to discover the right products and digital content from the planet's largest catalog. We build ultra-low latency and massively scalable technology infrastructures, architect query understanding solutions and design search product experiences for Amazon's global businesses across web, mobile and other devices. From January 2015 to Present (10 months) Greater Seattle AreaSoftware Development Manager @ I managed 3 teams of awesome Software Developers that build and innovate upon the biggest transactional cloud service in the world - Amazon.com's Marketplace. We were constantly challenged to solve cloud compute scalability problems of a size and complexity that had not previously existed.
The FRPG and FRPW teams at Amazon are truly at the tip of the spear of SOA and Cloud/Distributed Architecture for the biggest online marketplace in the world, and for those seeking experience in massive online services at scale, offer a challenge unlikely to be found anywhere else. From March 2014 to January 2015 (11 months) Senior Software Engineering Manager @ In this role, I was privileged to work with and manage a technically-stellar organization of Software Engineering Managers and Engineers in Microsoft's Developer Division(DevDiv), working on an innovative R & D project inside Visual Studio. I was part of the original Development/Architecture team for this product (initially code-named Tofino), that ultimately shipped as Application Insights inside Visual Studio 2013, and was awarded Best New Feature in Visual Studio 2013.
Some of my more notable accomplishments during almost 6 years at Microsoft include:
- Building/shipping MSDN.com, TechNet.com, ASP.net, VisualStudioOnline.com and WindowsPhone.com
- Being part of the original Development/Architecture team for Microsoft's Cloud Platform System (CPS)
- Building/Shipping VMM, Windows Azure, Windows/SQL Server, Windows Phone, Visual Studio, and multiple internal and R&D applications
- Recipient of 3 Microsoft HiPo (Bench) nominations and awards From September 2013 to March 2014 (7 months) Redmond, WASenior Software Engineering Lead @ - Managed several teams that helped develop and ship App Analytics, Virtual Machine Manager and several R & D products.
- Project architect and one of 3 core developers for end-to-end product management web portal, which was nominated for a Microsoft Engineering Excellence award, as well as an Azure consumption tracking portal.
- Helped develop an online Test-In-Production (TIP) portal.
- Helped develop and deploy a new and innovative test framework, now used by entire VMM product group.
- Led team that shipped V1 Alpha management and monitoring portal for Windows Azure, and was a hands-on technical contributor for this product From February 2012 to September 2013 (1 year 8 months) Redmond, WASenior Service Architect and Engineering Team Lead @ Lead Sr. Service Engineer (WPS), Sr. SE Service Architect (STO).
- Hands-on technical lead of team of highly specialized engineers whose primary responsibility is the architecture, deployment and support of Windows Phone Services consumer and partner experience portals.
- Core member of MSIT's Architecture Review Board (ARB).
- Responsible for overall STO Service Architecture (MSDN, TechNet, CodePlex), Windows Azure (Cloud Compute) Readiness Initiative, Operations and Security Architecture.
- Served as technical point of escalation to Operations and Performance teams for issues ranging from platform (hardware/storage), to OS and components, to application layer, including simple to complex bug fixes and Ops tooling and development.
- Responsible for designing and implementing the overall Service Design Engineering Architecture framework and roadmap, Strata 1 Engagements, technology roadmaps and technical mentorship of Service Design Engineers.
- Serve as technical point of escalation to Operations and Performance teams for issues ranging from platform (hardware/storage), to OS and components, to application layer, including simple to complex bug fixes and Ops tooling and development.
- Accomplishments included thought and technical leadership on MSIT-wide virtualization roadmap, release process for high-priority applications, BCDR strategy and Standards and Best Practices for SMD.
- Directly responsible for architecting and leading Microsoft's Power Pivot end-to-end deployment plan as well as the Gatekeeper release initiative. From June 2010 to March 2012 (1 year 10 months) Redmond, WASr. SE Service Engineer @ Senior Engineering resource on the team responsible for overall vertical portfolio of applications, as well as escalation point for other engineering resources.
- Directly responsible for several key improvement initiatives, including introducing a new hardware/software resiliency and failure prevention framework, upgrading several platinum application versions and writing code that resulted in drastic improvement in overall time to resolve (TTR).
- Introduced numerous automation tools, physical to virtual (P2V) migration in ASM and SDO and many product and process improvements.
- Directly responsible for delivery of two Top 14 CIO applications. From August 2008 to June 2010 (1 year 11 months) Redmond, WAWintel Software Engineering Lead @ Hands-on technical and people leadership for 5 extraordinary Wintel Engineers.
- Helped architect, build and manage a distributed Wintel/Storage environment consisting of roughly 1400 Windows servers and 2400 terabytes of NAS and SAN data.
- Developed multiple applications to streamline and automate BP North America's numerous environments and processes, mostly on the .NET stack and SQL Server as well as a comprehensive administrative toolkit, consisting of both compiled executables and scripts.
- Beta-tested and introduced virtualization into BP North America data centers through VMWAre ESX server. This effort ended up saving BP roughly $100 million in hardware costs. From August 2006 to August 2008 (2 years 1 month) Houston, Texas AreaDirector of Technology @ Started as a Sr. Software Engineer and was quickly promoted to Director of Technology.
- During my 3 years at AlphaCircuits, I touched every bit of the company's technology. This ranged from developing multiple machine level (native code/bytecode), client/server and web applications to major infrastructure changes such as a datacenter transformation and ERP system conversion.
- Led AlphaCircuits through a "technology transformation" period and was recognized as a key contributor to overall company success. From August 2003 to August 2006 (3 years 1 month) Houston, Texas AreaDatabase Software Developer @ Database Software Developer and Analyst in Wholesale Billing.
- Coded and created reports from multiple data sources and developed utilities that streamlined reporting operations and delivered data to business in a more efficient and expedient manner.
- Worked on several SWAT teams, including billing SWAT and QA SWAT. Actively participated in all facets of QA for Lodestar to SAP CIS interface. From June 2002 to July 2003 (1 year 2 months) Houston, Texas Area
Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science @ University of Houston Nick Ciubotariu is skilled in: Cloud Computing, Microsoft SQL Server, Software Development, C#, Software Engineering, T-SQL, .NET, SOA, ASP.NET, Databases, AJAX, Architecture, C++, JavaScript, Enterprise Architecture, Distributed Systems, IIS, Software Design, Visual Studio, PHP, XML, Data Center, Web Applications, ASP.NET MVC, SQL, Windows Server, REST, Agile Methodologies, Scrum, Web Services, jQuery, SOAP, WCF, Virtualization, Microsoft Technologies, Agile Project Management, Software Project..., SAN, LAMP, Linux, HTML 5, Object Oriented Design, HTML + CSS, Node.js, Operating Systems, Web Development, VMware, Java, Technical Leadership, Spring
Websites:
http://www.booleanzen.com