I have been in the technology industry since 1999, and have worked on projects ranging from one-on-one consulting all the way up to the international scale. My specialty lies in joining a team or a project, understanding all of the people and components, and then creating and executing upon ideas that can help the team or project do better. I am a independent self-starter who takes ownership of projects while also collaborating heavily with an agile team. Technology-wise, I have focused on Ruby since 2003 and Rails since 2004. I have worked with most every major language in use today, but prefer to continue using Ruby when it is appropriate for the task. I have acquired a special talent for planning and completely replacing or retiring legacy code and systems with modern techniques and technology.

Senior Software Engineer @ From April 2015 to June 2015 (3 months) San Francisco Bay AreaLead Architect & Engineer, Product Developer @ BeRecruited is a longstanding, established business that provides an online platform connecting high school athletes with college coaches. I was instrumental in updating the technology platform, taking the lead in retiring the 11 year old Perl-based application and replacing it with zero downtime by wrapping the database with a modern Rails application. I also played an integral role in managing, hiring, and leading a team of engineers. During my three years at BeRecruited, we increased profit by 3x, connected one million athletes with college coaches, and doubled revenue every year. At the end of my time here, I was setting a direction to break up the Rails application into component services to be shared by a larger organization. - Researched, directed, and ultimately eliminated an existing legacy application by replacing components with Rails, while growing the business simultaneously - Working with the designer, revamped the front end architecture into reusable components, relying heavily on Rails' cache digests technology - Identified large problem areas in the existing denormalized database schema; frequently changing the database in place with no downtime - Worked with the sysadmin team to keep the Ruby version current (starting at 1.8 and ending at 2.2) while ensuring application compatibility. In doing so we were able to decommission 20% of our AWS servers - Became the de-facto engineering lead and technology lead, reporting directly to the CTO - Mentored junior and mid level engineers about advanced Ruby concepts and the inner workings of Rails - Introduced and enforced Ruby coding standards - Created and implemented the test suite for the application - Aggressive in refactoring the Ruby code to be maintainable, utilizing tools like Code Climate, Flog, Flay, and others, and raised our Code Climate score from a 1.7 to a 3.1 From March 2012 to February 2015 (3 years) San Francisco Bay AreaMentor @ From March 2013 to September 2013 (7 months) Web Developer @ I served as the technical lead of a three-person team responsible for converting the Center’s website from a basic proprietary CMS to a modern, content-focused site. I learned Drupal, researched the best practices for development in Drupal, established a Git-based workflow for the team, and translated a designer’s Photoshop templates into HTML5 templates for Drupal. During this time I also contributed many patches and bugfixes for Drupal and community modules. From January 2011 to December 2011 (1 year) Iowa City, Iowa AreaDeveloper @ During this time I wrote JAwesomePlayer, a pure ECMAScript library with no external dependencies, which easily plays audio streams in the browser utilizing HTML5 or Flash with one function call from the implementer. I open sourced this library with the intent on assisting other developers solve this difficult problem easily. From June 2010 to December 2010 (7 months) Iowa City, Iowa AreaBioinformatics Developer/System Administrator @ I took over a hodgepodge collection of home-brewed information systems on a central server, which were loosely related and written in a variety of Perl, PHP, C, and shell scripts. All server and desktop management had been done separately, so I worked with various departments within the University to shift desktop and server management responsibilities to full-time management departments within the University. I then focused on replacing the genetic data collection utilities with a central Ruby and Rails based system with greater ease of use for the researcher-end user. During this time I also wrote several new multi-lingual Rails applications for clinical and scientific data collection, and also contributed patches to many Ruby community libraries. From September 2006 to March 2010 (3 years 7 months) Iowa City, Iowa AreaSystems Administrator @ I was the primary Mac OS9 and OSX administrator for this school district with very limited financial resources. I served as the technical lead for integrating an OSX server with Novell eDirectory into a district wide cross-platform single account sign-in. Utilizing a combination of Ruby programming, Applescript scripting and various OSX server technologies, I created an imaging system to deploy a standard workstation image for OS9 and OSX through the network. Finally, I applied the same techniques utilizing Novell Zenworks to deploy a single district wide image for Windows 2000 and XP. From May 2004 to June 2006 (2 years 2 months) Fort Madison, IowaSystem Administration Consultant @ I joined PC Consultants when it was a two-man business focusing on home-computer repair. I helped it grow to a ten-man venture providing consulting services to a variety of companies in technology, finance, industrial, and retail sectors. I worked independently to find solutions to customers’ problems large and small, doing everything from troubleshooting personal computers to running cable and developing networks for corporate branches. I also assisted with the development of a new web storefront for several established small businesses. From December 1999 to May 2004 (4 years 6 months) Keokuk, Iowa

Chemistry, , Biology, , Mathematics @ University of Iowa From 2006 to 2011 Rory O'Connell is skilled in: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, ECMAScript, HTML5, Vim, HTML 5, Web Development, Advanced CSS, WordPress, Web Design, Photoshop