Vice President, Engineering and Operations at ChaCha
Indianapolis, Indiana Area
- Current
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- Vice President, Engineering and Operations at ChaCha
- Past
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- Vice President of Product at Compendium Blogware
- CTO at 404 Internet
- Chief Architect at Mixxer
- Director of Engineering at Mixxer
- Director of Technology at 3GUpload.com, Inc.
- Research Engineer at Purdue University
- Application Security Engineer at Infotex
- Senior Software Developer at Backwatcher, Inc.
- Security Engineer II (Firewall Implementation) at Sprint
- Security Engineer II (Authentication & Encryption) at Sprint
- Senior Network Engineer at Bussert Consulting
- Education
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- Purdue University
- Recommended
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13 people have recommended Blake - Connections
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270
connections
- Industry
- Computer Software
- Websites
Blake Matheny’s Summary
Engineer with broad experience in web application and open source software development, virtualization, cryptography, network defense, language design/creation, wireless and community applications.
I have typically been responsible for building scalable, secure and highly available distributed systems for large and small customer bases including banks, wireless carriers and high traffic websites.
I am interested in challenges in the areas of system architecture, the semantic web, startups and scalability. Additionally I am interested in security focused research in the areas of forensics, intrusion detection and vulnerability development.
Blake Matheny’s Specialties:
Server and software architecture, distributed systems analysis & design, application and protocol assessment, wireless application development, vulnerability discovery and intrusion detection.
Blake Matheny’s Experience
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Vice President, Engineering and Operations
ChaCha
(Privately Held; Internet industry)
August 2009 — Present (4 months)
Responsible for software engineering and architecture across three platforms, testing strategy and implementation, system operations and 24/7 support, hiring, budgeting and providing technical direction to the organization. Report to President/COO.
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Vice President of Product
Compendium Blogware
(Privately Held; Online Media industry)
September 2007 — August 2009 (2 years )
Responsible for technical strategy, system and software architecture, hiring, product support, management of development resources and OEM/partner integrations. Reported to President.
* Segmented single tier software architecture into an n-tier, distributed, service oriented, multi-site architecture
* Created an asynchronous event driven callback infrastructure allowing for internal and external developers to modify runtime behavior of the application.
* Created SDLC based around agile methodologies including Scrum and XP which allowed for regular, scheduled weekly releases.
* Introduced system and software configuration and change management systems to the SDLC
* Created a channelized support offering which was successfully integrated into the product development lifecycle.
* Created standards for documentation, testing, web services, releases, performance and hiring.
* Utilized: PHP, MySQL 5.0, SQLite, AWS (EC2, SQS, S3, SimpleDB, CloudFront), Java (Spring, Tomcat, Hibernate), YUI, Agavi, PHPUnit, Memcache, Gearman -
CTO
404 Internet
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)
May 2007 — September 2007 (5 months)
Provided a variety of contract services to primarily startups and small businesses. Responsibilities included software development, database engineering, system architecture and analysis, and process development.
* Designed and implemented a site and system for volatile memory analysis. Utilized Java, Groovy, Grails and MySQL 5.0
* Wrote a distributed hash table in Java using the Chord protocol, custom HTTP Client and Server
* Implemented load testing for a site utilizing JMeter and Java -
Chief Architect
Mixxer
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Wireless industry)
September 2006 — February 2007 (6 months)
Responsible for the design, development and deployment of high availability, fault tolerant and secure back-end systems. Coordinate deployment and installation of new systems with all engineering departments. Provide support to other engineers including documentation and tutorials. Reported to the VP of Engineering.
* Designed and deployed a distributed cache mechanism that supported multiple programming languages, centralized configuration and transparent fail-over. Used C & PHP.
* Prototyped and deployed a content acquisition application using Firefox (XUL) as the platform.
* Designed a mobile messaging and authentication system for user generated MMS. -
Director of Engineering
Mixxer
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Wireless industry)
January 2006 — September 2006 (9 months)
Responsible for technical strategy as well as managing data operations, quality assurance, and development. Managed 10 engineers across 3 departments. Reported to CTO.
* Designed and implemented a system (OpenLocker) that performed automated handset recognition, on the fly transcoding and delivery of media (audio, video, images, text) to end-users. Utilized data mining and pattern recognition. Implemented using C, Java, PHP and the Bourne shell.
* Prototyped and built a system to allow mobile handsets to be utilized as an authentication mechanism. Implemented using SMS and PHP. -
Director of Technology
3GUpload.com, Inc.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Wireless industry)
February 2004 — January 2006 (2 years )
Led architecture design and development of all system and software projects. Managed 7 engineers across four departments including data operations, quality assurance, development and project management. Responsible for process development and documentation. Reported to CEO.
* Completely redesigned existing software architecture and database schema. Implemented and deployed new system with a team of 3 engineers over a 4 month period of time. Used PHP, MySQL, Perl, Linux, GFS and Memcache. Deployed new hardware architecture at Savvis.
* Built a distributed mobile messaging platform utilizing information obtained by reverse engineering device handsets and carrier network protocols. Used C, Perl and Postfix.
* Wrote data mining applications used for user recommendations and fraud detection utilizing machine learning algorithms. Used PHP and Perl. -
Research Engineer
Purdue University
(Educational Institution; 5001-10,000 employees; Research industry)
October 2003 — February 2004 (5 months)
Research focused on high performance computing. Research areas included distributed file systems, cluster monitoring and compute grid authentication mechanisms. Mentored junior programmers.
* Implemented, tested and documented a LUSTRE system for use as cluster scratch space.
* Developed an LDAP authentication module for NFSv4. -
Application Security Engineer
Infotex
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer & Network Security industry)
October 2001 — October 2003 (2 years 1 month)
Served as a subject matter expert on information security, software design and system automation. Provided code and protocol audits for numerous private businesses and government agencies. Worked on a contract basis, as needed.
* Wrote a portal site integrating IDS/IPS technologies, secure password storage and retrieval, and single sign on to multiple applications utilizing PHP, C and Perl.
* Designed a secure application for rural banks wishing to give their customers online access to their deposits using PHP. -
Senior Software Developer
Backwatcher, Inc.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)
February 2002 — February 2003 (1 year 1 month)
Worked on a contract basis to provide clients with custom security solutions utilizing open source technologies. Developed internal tools for penetration testing and security audits.
* Ported OpenVRRP and OpenH323 to OpenBSD . Worked on OpenBSD kernel drivers for T1 card. -
Security Engineer II (Firewall Implementation)
Sprint
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; FON; Computer & Network Security industry)
June 2001 — August 2001 (3 months)
Primarily responsible for tool development for the team. Also implemented Checkpoint, PIX and Raptor firewalls in HA and Cluster configurations.
* Wrote Solaris command line utility in C++ with a MySQL back-end for connecting to OOB encrypted modems.
* Built web based Solaris jumpstart system in OOPerl to allow for easier automated OS installations.
* Wrote code for several other projects including a knowledge database, VPN jumpstarts and a user import utility for Checkpoint firewalls. -
Security Engineer II (Authentication & Encryption)
Sprint
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; FON; Computer & Network Security industry)
July 2000 — June 2001 (1 year )
Responsible for training operations groups in Atlanta, DC and Kansas City as well as giving product presentations to customers on technologies including PKI, SecurID/OTP, LDAP, Radius and VPN Authentication. Rapid design, development and deployment of scalable authentication systems.
* Designed and implemented radius authentication system with LDAP back-end. Wrote tools for user administration. Wrote documentation and trained operations groups.
* Redeployed Entrust PKI for internal and external Sprint customers.
* Solaris (2.5 through 8) administration (all aspects) with dozens of enterprise class servers. -
Senior Network Engineer
Bussert Consulting
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer & Network Security industry)
August 1999 — July 2000 (1 year )
Designed and implemented LAN/WAN solutions as well as new Unix and NT networks using Samba, bind, FreeBSD firewalls and sendmail. Monitored customer sites for vulnerabilities and intrusion attempts. Investigated and responded to incidents.
* Wrote custom Samba solution in C for customer needing remote office integration.
Additional Information
Blake Matheny’s Websites:
Blake Matheny’s Interests:
Graph theory, language design, the axiom of choice, fault-tolerant protocols, cryptography, application and protocol security analysis, combinatorics, set theory, elementary quantum physics.
Blake Matheny’s Groups:
IEEE Member, ACM Professional, EFF
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Smaller Indiana -
Distributed Systems Developers -
Business Blogging Network -
Athletes for a Cure
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