Brian K. VanLoo, MBA

Responsible for all development and production operations activities for company's online protection product.

• Production operations in multiple co-lo facilities running on Debian Linux based on various open source technologies: Ruby (Rails and Sinatra), Squid, I-Cap, MySQL.
• Relocating operations support infrastructure to AWS cloud computing resources: Nagios, git source repositories, WordPress blog.
• Managing several outsourced development teams, responsible for all backend and frontend web-based products and client-side browser plugins and mobile applications.
• Converting development process to agile: iteration-based planning, test driven development (TDD), and continuous integration.

Lead international software development team responsible for providing the core services for industry-leading network testing equipment.

• Manage multi-disciplinary team developing control systems applications for Windows and Linux in C, C++, and C#. Plan, schedule and track all work to meet the requirements of various application development teams.
• Improve the software development process by implementing new-to-the-organization Agile methodologies to plan team's work, insure all process steps are executed and drive team to meet quality and schedule goals. Consistently reduced open bugs at release by average of 30% per release.
• Rebuild development team by establishing new off-shore teams, and shifting personnel and responsibilities for local teams to improve ability to deliver more innovative infrastructure improvements while still addressing a large volume of customer problems.

Entrepreneurial and contract project work using current web development technologies. Ruby on Rails eCommerce web services development and deployment. Back office automation and workflow management.

• Agile Development Methodologies: TDD, Scrum, XP. Agile tools: Scrumworks, Jira, Greenhopper
• Web Development Programming: Ruby, Java, Javascript/Node.js/AJAX (JQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous, Dojo), PHP, MySQL, CSS
• Open Source Platforms: Rails, Eclipse Plugin Development, Zend Framework, MySQL, Apache, Nginx, Drupal, TikiWiki, WordPress, Sox audio file processing, Kaltura CDN, ProcessMaker workflow management
• Cloud computing architecture using Amazon EC2, Rackspace, RightScale controls, Google Web Toolkit, Ubuntu

Promoted to take over newly formed project management organization under direct report to the CIO. Directed 10-member team (including 2 director-level managers) in managing project portfolio for a 250-person software development and operations group across multiple locations (domestic, overseas). Worked with senior executives to populate portfolio with projects to drive business strategy.

• Built world-class professional project management organization from the ground up within 1 year and introduced several major programs that substantially improved project execution across the organization:
• Team Building & Leadership: Hired qualified senior project management staff (over 50% PMP certified), documented job roles, and created performance metrics. Increased productivity to grow project portfolio by 30%.
• Best-Practice Project Tools: Directed team of senior project management staff in selecting and deploying Clarity project portfolio management tool to standardize planning, tracking, and reporting. Improved management visibility into projects, automated reporting (10% man-hour reduction per week), and increased report consistency/accuracy.
• Project Visibility & Reporting: Designed single view of project portfolio with simplified priority rating system to create division-wide alignment around portfolio. Created various reporting processes and materials to keep stakeholders (technology and C-level executives) apprised of project status. Eliminated surprises on key projects (reduced late-stage project cancellations as much as 90%) and lowered project delays with 50% more projects delivered on-time.
• Project Expense Reduction & Estimating: Introduced process to accurately capitalize development costs, reducing expenses by $7 million annually. Also implemented project estimating process that, within 2 years, reduced project workload over-runs from as much as 400% to less than 50% variance.
• Managed development of $55 million annual IT budget for the CIO and defended to corporate management. Completed budget preparation on time and in alignment with goal of maintaining flat budget year-over-year.
• Managed projects for first-to-market launch of dial-up accelerator product. Leveraged highly integrated, international development teams to speed development process. Grew revenue from existing customers 15% and expanded customer base 10% with this revolutionary product upgrade.

Oversaw all aspects of operational service quality for software development and service operations. Coordinated quality improvement projects and post-development activities (test to production release).

• Founded and chaired cross-functional committee to evaluate service availability issues impacting targeted service metrics. Developed framework for monitoring metrics and sponsored quality improvement projects. Brought metrics up from 95% availability to targeted 99.9% in less than a year and improved user connectivity rates 20%.

Directed team of 12 (including 2-3 direct-reporting managers) in all aspects of software release management and production deployment. Instrumental in setting strategic direction for this startup.

• Hired to spearhead efforts to take development practices from start-up roots to professionally managed, enterprise-quality service organization. Designed service operations and project management functions and established best practices for both organizations.
• Led several teams (composed of staff from NetZero and Juno) in rapidly piloting integration strategies in M&A that formed United Online. Enabled combined company to realize benefits of merger (cost savings, increased revenue streams) within weeks. Became one of few dot-com era companies to reach true GAAP profitability.
• Teamed with other operations and development managers to rapidly resolve problems to capitalize on market opportunity that doubled size of user base. Optimize overtaxed areas of service, established limits for new signups, and expanded system capacity to handle sudden user growth. New infrastructure and service optimizations ultimately saved systems from collapse, improved user response times and service availability, and enabled unrestricted growth.
• Recruited team to take new software features from development through production release. Spearheaded cross-functional board to review, approve, and schedule production changes. Reduced problems released to production by 60% and nearly eliminated system outages (one previous mistake cost $100,000 in revenue loss).
• Key team participant in rolling out new software and billing systems to transition company from advertising-driven free service to monthly paid subscription model. Successfully processed 100,000 paying members within 4 months.

Managed all aspects of software quality department including operations, $1 million budget, quality improvements, and customer satisfaction. Hired, trained, and led team of 12 software test engineers. Introduced new test tools, processes, and strategies to ensure continued market competitiveness of software. Defined software quality goals and tracked quality metrics. Worked closely with software engineering, product management, applications engineering, and client staff.

• Selected to take over underperforming software test team and resolve substandard software quality. Gained expertise in best practices, reorganized team, liaised with customers to understand product needs, and integrated new tests. Halted frequent complaints by eliminating 100% of bugs in production for customer-specific devices.
• Led quality improvement teams in achieving internal recognition 2 consecutive years as best examples for TQM.

Handpicked by senior management to build and manage division-wide reliability program. Led cross-functional teams in process improvements to meet client reliability demands. Set performance goals and reported on hardware reliability metrics to executive leaders. Direct liaison with largest client in market space, Intel, accounting for ~1/3 of market.

• Enhanced mechanisms to track reliability (mean time between failure—MTBF) for new systems in product line and worked with cross-functional teams (engineering, production) to analyze and resolve system failures. Delivered 300+% improvement in system reliability (increased MTBF from 300 to 1300 hours, exceeding contractual goals), yielding $900,000 savings in anticipated annual warranty costs for this single product line.
• Raised division awareness of importance of hardware reliability; led strategic planning and staffing change initiatives in Operations and Hardware Engineering to reach reliability goals.

Directed software engineering organization (20 direct and indirect reports) in developing and maintaining software to control VLSI automated test systems. Oversaw project scheduling, system administration, configuration management, software testing, release management, process documentation, software build processes, and customer relationships.

• Key player in division making SEI Software CMM (Capability Maturity Model) Improvements. Hired consultants to perform CMM audit for process deficiencies and provide training in SEI's Software CMM. Improved awareness within software organization for developing repeatable processes, well-defined requirements, and clear documentation.
• Developed and delivered new software features to address specific needs of major new customer. Created project plan and updated customer on development progress. Participated in cross-company working groups to rapidly resolve software problems. Pivotal in satisfying customer that generated $50 million annual revenue.
• Selected as Chair for division's Software Engineering Process Group.

Designed, coded, debugged, tested, and maintained variety of software programs.

• Lead architect and developer for VLSI automated software test platform that became basis for all new hardware delivered for next 12 years. Defined interfaces for other development teams to author software to fit within test architecture. Achieved on-schedule delivery core and integrated components from multiple teams.