Don Thorp

Startup Architect and Serial Entrepreneur with experience starting and working in several startups in addition to working for larger companies.

My primary skills are software architect, development manager, and principle software developer. I also have system administration skills in Microsoft and Linux environments. I manage the network for my own company including remote data center operations as well as provide small business services related to IT.

In addition to my development related skills, I have opened and managed offices for companies. Worked with accountants and attorneys to create S-Corps and LLCs and been primary business manager for several of my startups.

Don Thorp’s Specialties:

Java, Ruby, XML, Web Application Development, JSP, Tomcat, Servlets, Linux Administration, Rails, CSS, HTML, Eclipse, Ant, UML, bookeeping, network design, client server architecture, n-tier application design and development.

Don Thorp’s Experience

Mobile Development Lead

Appcelerator

(Privately Held; Computer Software industry)

March 2009 — Present (9 months)

Project lead on the Titanium mobile project. Author of the Android version of Titanium.
Owner

TradeCrystal, LLC

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Investment Management industry)

January 2007 — Present (2 years 11 months)

Website devoted to trade system development.
Owner

GameDev.net, LLC

(Privately Held; Computer Games industry)

November 1999 — Present (10 years 1 month)
President/Owner

ZWave, LLC

(Computer Software industry)

February 1998 — Present (11 years 10 months)

ZWave, LLC is development and small business services company.

We currently own, develop, and operate LOL.com.

We hold an interest and help run GameDev, LLC.

We conceived, self-funded development, and built Select Payment Processing, LLC an ACH/Electronic funds processing system. The company was later sold to Jack Henry and Associates.
Software Development Manager

CREDANT Technologies

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)

March 2002 — August 2008 (6 years 6 months)

Managed the server development team and was responsible for a large portion of the multi-threaded, multi-process server code base. Wrote and maintained the data abstraction layer which communicated with MS SQL and MySQL. Designed and co-implemented many of the back-end server processes. Built and maintained build tools for a component based build system based on Ant. Performed server production builds.

Alternate sysadmin helping design our IT infrastructure and providing occasional support. Responsible for CVS and Subversion servers as well as the development team test systems.

Responsible for software distribution, license key management services and software, and release process oversight. Helped coordinate releases with the release manager.
Senior Software Developer

ChipData, Inc.

(Computer Software industry)

May 2001 — March 2002 (11 months)

Designed and developed infrastructure extensions to Java based Design Chain Management software. Tasks included using SQL for managing data, developing server-side data transfer components in Java to interact with databases and to produce XML documents for client side processing.

Developed Swing based client client, sever-side components, and SQL for maintaining a complex data classification system. Restructured existing build system with more than 20 modules to ease maintenance, reduce build times, and reduce server resource utilization.
Software Architect

Vast Solutions, Inc.

(Telecommunications industry)

December 2000 — April 2001 (5 months)

Company went out of business in April of 2001.

Designed and developed message oriented middleware product for wireless application development and deployment. Used Java 2, RMI, JMX, and JDBC in the implementation. The application utilized multiple classloaders to allow dynamic loading and unloading of MBean services without terminating the application.

Built a scalable message server that would scale from one to many machines, provided for an in-memory or database backing store, utilized thread pools for receipt and dispatching of messages, provided sophisticated logging via log4j, and handled disconnected recipients with an internal scheduling service. Developed numerous MBeans to deploy services in the middleware environment. Used JUnit for automated unit testing. Developed a structured build process for repeatable builds on multiple platforms using Ant.
Director of Software Development

V.Cities, Inc.

(Internet industry)

September 2000 — December 2000 (4 months)

Company went out of business in December of 2000.

Helped identify products and services that were deployed on the companies proprietary Media Exchange Matrix (MEM) a national network utilizing Terabit routers. Worked heavily in testing of the Ellecoya products for integration into MEM. Developed and implemented corporate marketing website using ASP, XML, XSLT, Javascript, and VBScript.

Developed maintenance and release procedures for deployed services including web hosting and streaming media.

Began definition of software development guidelines and procedures to implement after company received its' first financing round.
Contractor

Over The Moon Productions

(Public Company; Computer Hardware industry)

May 1997 — October 1999 (2 years 6 months)
President/Owner

Bells & Whistles Software, Inc.

(Computer Software industry)

June 1993 — June 1999 (6 years 1 month)

Developed an object-oriented assembler for the Texas Instruments speech synthesizers using Borland C++. The assembler generated code for an emulator that provided debugging facilities on par with Turbo Debugger, a development IDE, and integrated assembler.
Applications Development Manager

Crystal Semiconductor

(Computer Hardware industry)

May 1995 — May 1997 (2 years 1 month)

Located, acquired, and furnished a remote development office in Bedford, Texas

Managed a team of six developers. Built an animated 3D environment using DirectX and Visual C++ to demonstrate the capabilities of Crystal's 3D audio hardware and Cirrus Logic's 3D video hardware. The environment was navigable to allow the user to experience the sound and graphic interactions.

Created internationalization software kit using Visual C+ for Windows 95 that allowed localization of applications into 20 languages. Build localization tools utilizing C++ and Perl for localizing audio drivers for DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT 4.0.

Helped design and manage a Microsoft TAPI based answering machine and speakerphone. Co-developed a prototype VOIP speakerphone hat was used between the Austin and Bedford offices.
Software Developer

Tandy/TE Electronics/AST Research, Inc.

(Computer Software industry)

1988 — 1995 (7 years )
Software Developer

AST Research

(Public Company; Computer Software industry)

1992 — 1994 (2 years )
Industrial Engineer

General Dynamics

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; GD; Defense & Space industry)

May 1987 — September 1988 (1 year 5 months)

Operations Research/Computer Applications - Developed applications in C for the industrial engineering staff's use in estimating the production costs of the F-16. Participated in a team project that specified, designed, and implemented a system to automate a large portion of the cost estimation process.

Don Thorp’s Summary

Don Thorp’s Specialties:

Don Thorp’s Experience

Mobile Development Lead

Appcelerator

Owner

TradeCrystal, LLC

Owner

GameDev.net, LLC

President/Owner

ZWave, LLC

Software Development Manager

CREDANT Technologies

Senior Software Developer

ChipData, Inc.

Software Architect

Vast Solutions, Inc.

Director of Software Development

V.Cities, Inc.

Contractor

Over The Moon Productions

President/Owner

Bells & Whistles Software, Inc.

Applications Development Manager

Crystal Semiconductor

Software Developer

Tandy/TE Electronics/AST Research, Inc.

Software Developer

AST Research

Industrial Engineer

General Dynamics

Don Thorp’s Education

Texas Christian University

Oral Roberts University

Bixby High School

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