Kitt Hodsden


P.O. Box 1812kitt_at_hodsden_dot_com
Mountain View, CA 94042-1812 

Having been involved in projects for their entire life cycles: from idea to data constructs, from UI design to system administration, from paper workflows to databases implementations and code, and from server tuning to front-end UI development, technological challenges are no longer intimidating: they are fun problems to solve. From the experience of having run my own company for eight years, I know that working with passionate people is important, as is working on meaningful projects. I'm looking for such a position, where my skills in full-stack web development and process automation help individuals and institutions create a better world.


Highlights:

    Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, NodeJS, Dart, MySQL, Postgres, Bash, Linux/Mac OSX, UNIX sys admin, and all sorts of variations there of.
    Here, more keywords to trigger on: Flutter, Rails, Drupal, HapiJS, JavaScript, Grunt, Gulp, jQuery, HTML5, CSS3, JS, Sass, automation

    I've given talks and workshops on automating workflows, from command line, scripts, git hooks and using APIs, through Sass and Grunt work, to website performance automation. My most recent talk was Beyond Resizing, The Image Performance Checklist at ImageCon in San Francisco, CA.


Recent Relevant Experience:

Mackenzie King, LLC, May 2017 - present

Mackenzie King, LLC, is a small web and software consultancy located in Portland, Oregon. We develop web site projects with Node.JS, PHP, and Ruby, using VueJS, Drupal, and Rails; as well as mobile applications using Flutter and Dart. My project is a mobile collector's cataloging app with a social twist. The project includes the supporting website, with both facets helping collectors inventory, track, and complete their collections with the help of friends.

Apple, Inc, July 2015 - May 2017

Apple is an American multinational technology company that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. I worked in hardware, on an undisclosed not-yet-launched product. I am unable and unwilling, per NDA, to talk about the product. My major work included a number of node.js applications, from requirements gathering through deployment to end-users, using hapi and loopback. The application foci ranged through project security, vendor tracking, and product safety. I enjoyed most building an internal-facing publishing application designed to increase inter-departmental communication and company-wide research awareness. Other projects included systems process analysis tools.

Shopify Inc, June 2014 - July 2015

Shopify is the premier retail platform for business owners, small to large. Enabling everyone to open an online store and have a strong online presence, Shopify integrates all levels of commerce, from physical stores to web sites, payments and inventory to shipping and invoicing. As a back-end developer at Shopify, using the Rails stack, I worked on the Shoplfy Shipping project, then on the Shopify Payments team, the highlight being the Shopify-Amazon integration work.

Phase2 Technology, 2013 - 2014

Phase2 is a full-service development firm, helping clients build and maintain sites and applications. As a front-end developer at Phase2, I worked on projects as the finisher, helping the projects reach done-and-delivered. Much of my work was focused on multi-browser issues: fixing cross-browser rendering issues, implementing site designs, integrating specialized video players, handing CORS and cross-domain browser caching, and speeding up browser rendering.

Twitter, Inc., 2012 - 2013

You might have heard of Twitter. I hope you have! I helped build the platform for non-core sites on the Twitter network, including https://transparency.twitter.com/, https://blog.twitter.com/, and https://business.twitter.com/.

Highlights of my work include:

  • As the first engineer on the team, I defined the world! Introduced PHP to Twitter, implemented initial infrastructure, onboarded the rest of the team, integrated existing testing systems with PHP, including monitoring, security reviews, thrift protocol/finagle integration and other fun things
  • Integrated internal authentication protocols to work transparently with Drupal: when you are logged into the main site, you are automatically logged into the Drupal sites also, with roles and permissions centralized in your Twitter account
  • Content migration and import from non-Drupal sites to our installs.
  • Automated content export and import for translation, internalization and localizations of sites.
  • Continuous improvement and automation of sites and deployment processes, including site and module upgrades, so that we could roll out a new site with complete infrastructure in fewer than 3 days from concept to launch
  • Wrote, extended and customized Drush commands to do our bidding!
  • Theme work, including responsive designs, with Bootstrap, leading the initial work on our base theme, and owning https://transparency.twitter.com/ and https://dev.twitter.com/.
CodingClan, LLC, 2004 - 2012

CodingClan was a small website development firm in Sunnyvale, California, specializing in developing customized, community websites for large and small clients. As co-founder of the company, I've been exposed to all aspects of the business, from web development to project management, finances to personnel. The company specializes in Drupal websites, built on the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack.

Larger client projects included:

  • Built from concept to launch, DrupalPros, a listing website for Drupal Professionals, from one person consultancies to large multi-national corporations providing Drupal services, it's the place to find a developer, themer, trainer, hosting or integration specialist with Drupal experience.
  • For Kaazing Corporation, converted their website's HTML into a Drupal theme and aided the conversion of their content into the Drupal system. Follow up work included customizing the training and e-commerce sections of the site.
  • For Future US, built, supported or customized websites for many of their properties, using Drupal, Wordpress, CakePHP and custom PHP/MySQL as the project needed.
  • For Yahoo!, helped with the Drupal customizations for the Yahoo Style Guide website, which supports the Yahoo! Style Guide book.
  • For US Ultimate, formerly the Ultimate Players Association (UPA), imported existing static file website into Drupal, enabling employee site updates instead of gated updates via webmaster. Follow up projects include a rostering system for event and member management, replacing the paper-based system used for 20 years and saved the association over $500,000 over the last 6 years.
  • For Stanford University, overhauled the Stanford ICA Departmental information site
  • For Teqlo, built a website with Drupal as the front end, with integration with the company's user management system. Developed heartbeat processes for user flood control from the website to the Teqlo product backend.
  • Other projects include company brochure websites, allowing clients to update and maintain site; security discussion portals; community filesharing sites; corporation web-based invite system similar to Evite.com, with event scheduling, email handling, and response tracking; training registration systems; RSS networking application, and high traffic community sites.

VA Software (subsequently GeekNet and ThinkGeek), 2002 - 2004

VA Software was an enterprise platform company after their hardware exit. I worked on the SourceForge Enterprise Edition rewrite from PHP to Java. I implemented the user interface, working on "front-end" work before "front-end" was a term.

FusionOne, Inc. (formerly Sinia Corporation), 2000 - 2001

FusionOne was an enterprise applications company providing employee management and communications software on the emerging mobile app platform. I was a software engineer in the wireless applications group.

  • Bulk user importation via text files and LDAP servers. Additional tasks included LDAP authentication, LDAP server administration, and all other things LDAP. Please don't ask me to ever do LDAP work again. I figure you should know that I could do it. My experience here was strongly useful when I used it again at Apple, 15 years later.
  • Enhanced calendar application, streamlining user interface


Outside Experience and Interests:

I have a passion for open and collaborative spaces and events. Through that passion, I've participated in organizing Barcamp events (including the inaugural one in Palo Alto in 2005) and was a founding director of Hacker Dojo, an event and co-working space based in Mountain View.

As an ultimate frisbee player and serial organizer, I've been involved with organizing ultimate leagues and teams, including running the San Francisco Bay Area South Bay Ultimate League (SBUL) for years as the Executive Director, founding the Mid-Peninsula Ultimate League, and herding cats on my last club team before retiring. I do enjoy the occasional pick-up game.

I'm an avid gardener, having been a Santa Clara County Master Gardener where I helped manage the website before it was subsumed by the state program.

I am a huge fan of Kickstarter.


Education:

California Institute of Technology, B.S., Engineering & Applied Sciences

All sorts of awesome references available upon request.