Nimrod Hoofien

Current

Director of Engineering at Ning

Past

VP of Development at Outcome Concept Systems
Founder & CEO at Six Slice Studios
Sr. Manager at Amazon.com

Streaming Server Team Leader at AppStream
Adjunct Faculty Member, Computer Science at Academic College of Tel-Aviv
Senior Software Engineer at Tecnomatix
Software Engineer at Mapat Amal

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Education

University of Washington, Seattle - Business School
Tel Aviv University
The Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo

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Recommended

16 people have recommended Nimrod

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Computer Software

Nimrod Hoofien’s Summary

I’ve been tinkering with software construction and the people who make the magic happen for a long time. My passion is creating and leading teams of creative people to deliver products that are so great they become invisible – they just work. I’m a big fan of self-organization and love helping teams evolve into that elusive state of flow where products, skills, and ideas just materialize.

My career took me from startups to large corporations and back and I’ve found joy on both ends of the spectrum. I get excited about owning an entire business and love getting immersed in the many different aspects of a problem. I also love having the volume and scale to have immediate impact on the lives of millions of people. At the end of the day it’s the beauty of all the pieces falling into place when everything works perfectly. And the adrenaline of getting things back up when they don’t. It’s complicated.

In my previous life I was fortunate to spend time with a lot of smart people trying to solve all sorts of interesting problems. I’ve learned what it takes to actually deliver a software product that people really like. I’ve learned what it takes to build a great team and to keep it headed in the same (right?) direction. I've learned what it takes to help people get a little better every day and hope some of it rubs off on you. I was lucky.

Nimrod Hoofien’s Specialties:

Changing my mind whenever I find a better one; getting groups of people to come together and solve interesting problems in peculiar ways; constantly knowing where we are going, why we are here, and what we are doing about it.

Nimrod Hoofien’s Experience

Director of Engineering

Ning

(Privately Held; Internet industry)

September 2009 — Present (3 months)
VP of Development

Outcome Concept Systems

(Privately Held; Hospital & Health Care industry)

June 2009 — September 2009 (4 months)

Acted as interim VP of Development. Led the software development group in adopting Scrum and other best practices. Greatly improved the performance and scalability of the new reporting platform, introduced load-testing and performance metrics. Hired two engineers and a permanent VP of Development.
Founder & CEO

Six Slice Studios

(Computer Games industry)

July 2008 — June 2009 (1 year )

Six Slice Studios is a game development studio engaged in building econome - an online business simulation game where players create and run companies while competing with their friends
Sr. Manager

Amazon.com

(Public Company; AMZN; Internet industry)

August 2003 — July 2008 (5 years )

10/2005 - 7/2008 Sr. Manager, Retail Customer Experience
Promoted to lead eight teams of 50 engineers, development managers, program managers, and quality assurance engineers. Built key components of Amazon’s retail websites growing sales and improving customer experience.
Responsible for Amazon's B2B business, the retail wireless store, launching and running Endless.com, improving the video-games store, and the QA group.

8/2003 - 10/2005 Fulfillment Promise 2PTL
Recruited to lead two teams of 14 engineers owning the fulfillment planning area. Responsible for providing ship and delivery estimates for customer orders and for generating optimal execution plans for Amazon’s worldwide supply-chain.
Streaming Server Team Leader

AppStream

(Privately Held; Computer Software industry)

April 2000 — July 2003 (3 years 4 months)

Led a team of 5 software developers, acting both as team leader and lead engineer, designing and implementing the AppStream for Windows™ Streaming Server. The Streaming Server was able to serve up to 2000 concurrent users running up to 50 different desktop applications from a single commodity host
Adjunct Faculty Member, Computer Science

Academic College of Tel-Aviv

(Higher Education industry)

1998 — 2001 (3 years )

Taught seven undergraduate Computer-Science courses in the fields of software engineering and artificial intelligence.
Senior Software Engineer

Tecnomatix

(Public Company; 201-500 employees; TCNO; Computer Software industry)

1997 — 2000 (3 years )

Developed infrastructure and applications for PDM (Product Data Management) integration with Tecnomatix products. Took part in architecting the integration framework used in several large-scale projects. Identified and analyzed customer requirements and managed customer relationships through project work
Software Engineer

Mapat Amal

(E-Learning industry)

1995 — 1997 (2 years )

Developed educational multimedia software and information-bases for K-12 organizations as a part time job throughout undergraduate studies. Worked in a diverse team with graphic artists, animators and education professionals. Took part in fund-raising, demos and presentations

Nimrod Hoofien’s Education

University of Washington, Seattle - Business School

MBA , Executive MBA , 2005 — 2007

Graduated with Honors (top 10% of the class)
Won second place in EMBA Business Plan Competition, and third place in CIE Business Plan Competition
Tel Aviv University

M.Sc. , Computer Science , 1998 — 2001

Completed required coursework. Suspended research in neural networks in order to pursue opportunities with AppStream in California
The Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo

B.A. , Computer Science , 1995 — 1998

Graduated Magna Cum Laude - top 5% of the class

Activities and Societies:

VP of student council

Additional Information

Nimrod Hoofien’s Groups:

Amazon Alumni
University of Washington - Foster School of Business MBA Program (Official Group)
University of Washington - Foster School of Business Alumni
Amazing Amazonians
Lean Agile Software Development Community
Tecnomatix