Arno Plug

Current

Engineering Manager at Que! at Vocento

Past

Director of Media Market Engineering for Europe at Yahoo!
Market Engineering Outsourcing Manager for Europe at Yahoo!
Head of Regional Rollout for Europe at Yahoo!

Manager of European Media Engineering at Yahoo!
Market Engineer at Yahoo!
Senior Software Engineer and DBA at Terma
Software Engineer and Web Master at Terma
Programmer at Terma
Trainee at European Space Agency

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6 more...

Education

Hogeschool Haarlem

Recommended

12 people have recommended Arno

Connections

327 connections

Industry

Internet

Arno Plug’s Summary

I have 16 years experience of working in large software engineering projects, both in Internet and the Space Industry, with teams spread across international locations. During the last 8 of those years I worked as a Software Engineering Manager at Yahoo!

My last position at Yahoo! was Director of Media Market Engineering for Europe managing a distributed team of 8 people. My team and I were responsible for giving support to the business, like the localization of web sites and the integration of their content, in the 5 European markets where Yahoo! is currently present.

The last project I worked on consisted of outsourcing part of the work of our team to a third-party in India, making a cost saving of 45%.

As a senior software engineering at the European Space Agency I worked on the ISO and CLUSTER projects, building software to command one of the scientific instruments, implementing the ISO post-mission archive and building a web-based visualization application in Java.

• Managing distributed teams,
• Project management employing both waterfall and agile/scrum methodologies
• Outsourced services relationships
• Internet technologies like SEO
• Frontend web development using AJAX and Javascript
• Backend web application development using PHP, MySQL, Perl, Apache, Java and C
• Content Management Systems based on Perl and MySQL parsing XML/RSS content feeds
• Space Industry

Arno Plug’s Specialties:

managing distributed teams, project management, outsourcing, internet, web applications, content management systems, content feeds, xml, internationalization, localization, international environment, space industry, perl, php, apache, mysql

Arno Plug’s Experience

Engineering Manager at Que!

Vocento

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; Online Media industry)

September 2008 — Present (1 year 3 months)

Responsible for working with and coordinating various physically distributed engineering teams at Vocento to implement incremental releases of the web site at Qué! while providing guidance and help regarding development processes and techniques.
Director of Media Market Engineering for Europe

Yahoo!

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; YHOO; Internet industry)

November 2007 — April 2008 (6 months)

Responsible for European market engineering teams (12 people based in 5 offices), supporting 5 countries and 10 products, performing localization of international platforms, content integration, and alignment of strategic activities to business goals.
In close cooperation with business partners like production, marketing and sales, I defined an in-take process to prioritize local projects.
Market Engineering Outsourcing Manager for Europe

Yahoo!

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; yhoo; Internet industry)

January 2007 — November 2007 (11 months)

In 2004, Yahoo! bought the price comparison site Kelkoo. I played an important role in the integration of Kelkoo, and as a member of the strategic team to improve the cost and time efficiency for market engineering in Europe, I mastered this new aspect of the business. I planned and outsourced part of the team to a third-party in India (8 people) making a cost saving of 45% on a total function cost of $600.000/year while maintaining already existing relationships with outsourced services from a financial and strategic point.
Head of Regional Rollout for Europe

Yahoo!

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; yhoo; Internet industry)

April 2006 — December 2006 (9 months)

I improved the quality and efficiency of the internationalization and localization of European developments through the implementation of post-mortems, training sessions, greater visibility of roadmaps and a greater implication of the market engineering teams. Reduced time to market of the new European News platform by advising the News and Information Products management team to launch in a non-English speaking country as well as in England before rolling out to other markets.
Manager of European Media Engineering

Yahoo!

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; YHOO; Internet industry)

January 2003 — March 2006 (3 years 3 months)

Manager of a team of 8 people based in 6 countries, responsible for European sites like News, Sports and Finance in 5 markets, I managed the provider content integration and maintenance, as well as large internet projects like the redesign of Sports for Europe in close cooperation with various teams like production and web development.
Designed and developed an international provider content processing platform shortening integration times by 75% which is currently being used in content based web sites in Europe as well as internationally.
Reporting to the European Engineering Director, I was greatly involved in the due diligence of Gamesdomain and Dotmusic in England as part of the creation of “BT Yahoo! Broadband”. I worked on the evaluation of their content and user figures affecting the pricing of the deal, and a technical integration plan.
Market Engineer

Yahoo!

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; YHOO; Internet industry)

January 2000 — December 2002 (3 years )

As a member of the Spanish engineering team, providing support to the local business, I worked on the development and maintenance of web sites like Movies including content integration, and the integration of ticket selling partners. In cooperation with the USA I localized and integrated the first Message Boards platform in Europe.
Senior Software Engineer and DBA

Terma

(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Defense & Space industry)

May 1998 — December 1999 (1 year 8 months)

As a member of the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) Post Mission Archive, at ESAC, in Spain, I worked on the design, development and maintenance of the archive’s DB. I designed and developed a Java web application allowing users to visualize and manipulate ISO observation images and spectra.
Software Engineer and Web Master

Terma

(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Defense & Space industry)

January 1994 — April 1998 (4 years 4 months)

Being part of the ISO project, at ESTEC, in the Netherlands, I developed software to translate scientific parameter data into instrument commands for one of the scientific instruments. Relocated to ESAC in Spain, I maintained the software while supporting the users in their daily use of the software during the ISO mission.
Programmer

Terma

(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Defense & Space industry)

September 1992 — December 1993 (1 year 4 months)

As a member of the CLUSTER satellite project, in the TERMA A/S offices in the Netherlands, I was responsible for the design and development of test evaluation software for evaluating data generated during the course of a functional test of the satellite which I performed at EADS in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
Trainee

European Space Agency

(Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; ESA; Defense & Space industry)

February 1992 — May 1992 (4 months)

As a trainee at the European Space Agency (ESA) at ESTEC in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, I made a top-level design of a data archival and retrieval system based on the user requirements obtained from the System and Software section at ESTEC. The ESA software engineering standards where used to produce a user requirements-, software requirements document and finally an architectural design document.