Jim Butler

Current

• CTO & VP Engineering at Nexage

Past

• CTO & Founder at Grid Nova, Inc.
• CTO & VP Engineering at matchmine
• Consultant at Pioneer Investments

• CTO & EVP at eCredit.com, Inc.
• Consultant at BAE Systems
• Consultant at J.P. Morgan Chase
• Chief Application Architect at EC Cubed, Inc.
• Senior Principal / Chief Architect at American Management Systems
• Senior Systems Development Engineer at Raytheon Company
• Consultant at University of Washington

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Education

• University of Maryland
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• University of Lowell

• Wentworth Institute of Technology

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Recommended

6 people have recommended Jim

Connections

169 connections

Industry

Information Technology and Services

Jim Butler’s Summary

Jim Butler is an accomplished technology executive and the CTO of Nexage, the premier optimization platform for mobile advertising. Prior to Nexage, Jim was CTO of matchmine, a media discovery network, where he provided technical leadership in the areas of Architecture, Engineering, and Operations. In the aftermath of the dot-com era, Jim was instrumental in the dramatic turnaround of eCredit.com, an enterprise software company recently acquired by Fidelity Ventures. Serving as its CTO and EVP, he directed eCredit's technology strategy, onshore and offshore product engineering, and Software-as-a-Service infrastructure operations. Jim has held Chief Architect positions at EC Cubed and American Management Systems. He has also served in various architecture, engineering, and consulting roles at Pioneer Investments, JP Morgan Chase, CapitalOne, Ameritech, Royal Bank of Canada, Boston Consulting Group, BAE Systems, and Raytheon Company. Since 2002, Jim has served as the founding Chairman of the Technology Leadership Council, Boston Chapter. He is the author of the 2003 book "Technology Blueprints: Technology Foundations for High Performance Companies" along with numerous technical publications in IEEE, ACM, and other journals and conferences. His portfolio of patents pending spans the areas of web services architecture, genetic computing as applied to decision optimization, and content identification. Jim holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, an MSEE from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a BSEE Magna Cum Laude from the University of Lowell.

Jim Butler’s Specialties:

Architecture, Scalability, Reliability, SaaS Operations, Web Services, Agile Development, Offshore Development, Aligning Technology & Business Strategies.

Jim Butler’s Experience

• CTO & VP Engineering

  Nexage

  (Privately Held; Computer Software industry)

  August 2009 — Present (4 months)

  Chief technologist at Nexage, the premier optimization platform for mobile advertising.

• CTO & Founder

  Grid Nova, Inc.

  (Information Technology and Services industry)

  March 2005 — August 2009 (4 years 6 months)

  Founder and Chief Technology Officer of this startup venture in the area of enterprise grade web services. Grid Nova is currently in stealth mode. Grid Nova also provides advanced technical consulting.
  
  One such consulting contract was for the Kraft Group during the period from Feb 2006 to January 2007. On this contract, I served as Chief Architect for consumer scale intelligent media systems and was co-inventor on patents resulting from the designs. Grid Nova was the prime contractor for the build-out that included subcontracting to an engineering firm in India. This contract formed the basis for the technology and business concept that launched matchmine LLC.

• CTO & VP Engineering

  matchmine

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)

  January 2007 — October 2008 (1 year 10 months)

  matchmine users discover highly personalized content through our network of media partners. Each user has a MatchKey; an open and portable encoding of their preferences that passively evolves. These MatchKeys are the basis for substantial $CPM lift among otherwise untargeted ad inventory.
  
  -- Founding CTO responsible for technology strategy, its alignment with business and user requirements, assembling and managing the engineering team to realize it, and building out the 24x7 infrastructure to operate it, always exceeding SLAs.
  
  -- Designed the architecture and major components of platform. Key aspects included a technique for controlling massive web services scale, hot-swappable plugins for iterative refinement of key algorithms, and a subsystem for harmonizing numerous inbound content and metadata feeds.
  
  -- Directed the engineering build-out of the platform using J2EE, Web Services, XML, JavaScript, Flex, and several open source technologies with an agile methodology.

• Consultant

  Pioneer Investments

  (Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Financial Services industry)

  November 2005 — February 2006 (4 months)

  Performed a strategic assessment of numerous applications used throughout their investor communications operation to determine disposition (e.g., augment, decommission, replace) and launched remedial actions.

• CTO & EVP

  eCredit.com, Inc.

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

  July 2001 — January 2005 (3 years 7 months)

  eCredit.com produces automated B2B credit decisioning products and services to the Fortune 5,000. The Technology Division comprises 20 team members based locally plus a staff of 40 in Bangalore India. The Technology Division architects and engineers all product software and includes the IT infrastructure department.
  
  As Chief Technology Officer, responsible for technology strategy, directing product R&D and IT functions, and reporting periodically to the Board of Directors. Executive VP of the Technology Division reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, managing 60 professionals in the U.S. and India as well as the IT and ASP hosting infrastructures with a 2004 budget of approximately $5 million. Director on the Board of a wholly owned offshore subsidiary, eCredit India Pvt. Ltd.

• Consultant

  BAE Systems

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

  April 2001 — July 2001 (4 months)

  Role - Systems Engineering Methodologist. Redesigned the methodology of large-scale systems engineering to embrace object-oriented technologies. This was pioneering in that object-oriented engineering has rarely been applied to life-critical, multi-disciplinary systems on a $1 billion scale. The result is currently being applied to an $8 billion defense contract.

• Consultant

  J.P. Morgan Chase

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Financial Services industry)

  January 2001 — March 2001 (3 months)

  Role - Systems Architect. Architect and senior designer of an Internet-based invoicing and payment engine for B2B eMarketplaces. This application extends client eMarketplaces by accepting multiple XML protocols and integrating with Chase credit card and funds transfer systems. Responsibilities included system-wide architecture design, specification of all application components, and detailed design of several of these components.

• Chief Application Architect

  EC Cubed, Inc.

  (Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

  June 2000 — December 2000 (7 months)

  Chief Application Architect for this B2B eCommerce firm, which executes a “build to order” model for the design, development, and hosting of J2EE-based eMarketplaces and portals. Directed a team of eight Application Architects assigned to customer development projects, participated in system designs, officiated over architecture reviews, and consulted on complex issues as required. Provided extensive mentoring in client facing skills, requirements and design techniques, risk assessment, and writing.
  Collaborated frequently with Component Architects to ensure that internally developed reusable components complied with the needs of application development.

• Senior Principal / Chief Architect

  American Management Systems

  (Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; AMSY; Information Technology and Services industry)

  April 1996 — June 2000 (4 years 3 months)

  Chief Architect for all product development efforts within the consumer finance industry practice including a radical evolution of credit decisioning products to a J2EE & XML based architecture. Developed the strategic vision, collaborated with product managers on migration approaches, and led an architecture team to launch the strategy.
  
  Architect of a high volume, realtime credit/collections system and leader of its infrastructure and integration teams. This technology was co-developed with CapitalOne onsite at their premises. Architect for several other engagements including Internet banking strategies, telecommunications data warehousing, credit origination systems, and other CRM and automated decisioning projects.

• Senior Systems Development Engineer

  Raytheon Company

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

  October 1981 — March 1996 (14 years 6 months)

  Started as a Technician repairing missile guidance seekers while earning B.S. degree. Finished as the Lead Systems Engineer for the $80 million computing infrastructure of a $1.4 billion surveillance network for the Brazilian Amazon.
  
  Designed, implemented, or otherwise contributed to advanced technology projects including Air Traffic Control initiatives, a Personal Rapid Transit prototype, and a Commercial Aircraft Over-Flight Prediction System.
  
  Designed and launched an integrated network for manufacturing, workflow, and compliance systems in concert with an ISO-9000 TQM program. Designed realtime hardware and software test systems for missile manufacturing. Credited with myriad cross-discipline innovations.
  
  Twice awarded the Miccioli Scholarship to obtain M.S. and Ph.D. degrees on a paid and full-time basis

• Consultant

  University of Washington

  (Educational Institution; 10,001 or more employees; Higher Education industry)

  January 1992 — August 1995 (3 years 8 months)

  Pro bono consulting to the Human Genome Project. Heuristics research directed at computational problems in DNA sequencing. An order of magnitude performance improvement was achieved.

Jim Butler’s Education

• University of Maryland

  Ph.D. , Electrical Engineering , January 1988 — April 1990

  Dissertation: “Intelligent Task Mapping in Loosely Coupled Heterogeneous Multiprocessors”.

  Activities and Societies:

  Major of Computer Engineering with minors in Microelectronics and Communications.

• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

  M.S. , Electrical Engineering , 1984 — 1985

  Thesis: “EUCLID: An Architectural Simulator for Distributed Computers and Multiprocessors”.

  Activities and Societies:

  Major of Computer & Systems Engineering

• University of Lowell

  B.S. , Electrical Engineering , September 1981 — May 1984

  Graduated Magna Cum Laude in the top 5%.

• Wentworth Institute of Technology

  A.S. , Electrical Engineering , September 1979 — May 1981

  Graduated 11th in the class.

Additional Information

Jim Butler’s Interests:

Architecture, scalability, reliability, high availability, distributed computing, SaaS, agile engineering, entrepreneurship, private pilot since 1996.

Jim Butler’s Groups:

Technology Leadership Council - Boston Chapter Founding Chairman.

•    Service Oriented Architecture Special Interest Group
•    CIO/CTO Leadership Council
•    Boston Innovators
•    CTO Network
•    Boston Information Technology Executives
•    matchmine alumni

Jim Butler’s Honors:

Five patents and numerous publications including the book "Technology Blueprints: Technology Foundations for High Performance Companies", published by Aspatore, Inc. in 2003

Jim Butler’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch