Technical Program Manager/Team Lead
Greater Seattle Area
- Current
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- Director, Technical Operations & IT at Apex Learning
- Past
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- Director, Platform Integration at Jobster
- Group Director, Operations & Technical Systems at Jobster, Inc.
- Senior Program Manager at Microsoft
- Director of Software Test & Technical Operations at Apex Learning, Inc.
- Technical Account Manager at Microsoft
- Systems Analyst at Microsoft
- Education
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- Washington State University
- University of Idaho
- Recommended
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10 people have recommended Jason - Connections
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500+
connections
- Industry
- Information Technology and Services
- Websites
Jason Grimes’s Summary
More than 10 years of progressive experience in web development, operations, quality assurance and management. A proven leader and expert in managing large and small technical teams with a focus on building and maintaining high availability web applications in an Agile development environment.
•Managing across multiple departments at both Jobster and Apex Learning; helping lead each of the companies to be a well-positioned, high traffic, high availability web solution
•Thrives on building strong teams and with more than four years of Agile experience, and is excited about helping to bring Agile to maturity at an organization
•Exceptional ability and enthusiasm to communicate ideas and build teamwork without losing momentum and cohesion and the business acumen to work well with other managers toward a projected goal
•Bachelor of Arts in Management Information Systems from Washington State University
Jason Grimes’s Experience
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Director, Technical Operations & IT
Apex Learning
(Privately Held; E-Learning industry)
June 2008 — Present (1 year 2 months)
Led the re-architecting effort behind stabilizing the Apex Learning SaaS suite of online curriculum in an effort to redefine the project management methodologies and development practices to support a highly efficient, high available solution in line with the department and company’s strategies and goals
Highlights:
•Organized teams based on competencies with an emphasis towards Agile methodologies where teams do not operate in silos; no sacred cows
•Created a sense of Operational Maturity with the Apex Learning SaaS suite of product offerings; operating at or above 99.99% application availability
•Migration of legacy HP/Compaq hardware to new Dell PowerEdge servers running VMWare ESX and Windows 2003 Server
•Identified, purchased and implemented the best in breed SAN solution for Apex Learning’s growing data needs by rolling out a 3PAR ES200 with 7+ TB of storage -
Director, Platform Integration
Jobster
(Privately Held; Internet industry)
October 2007 — June 2008 (9 months)
Led the program management and development initiatives for an industry leading “white-labeled” branded Social Networking Careers web site.
Highlights:
•Provided leadership for Platform Integration development and release management teams consisting of project management, application development, UI design, system integrated testing, infrastructure, data and reporting and production operations of the Jobster White Label Web solution in an Agile/XP environment
•Managed technology relationship with cross functional teams, outside vendors and external stakeholders, business program management to ensure appropriate tracking, communication, and timely issue escalation and mitigation to continue to drive the project towards a successful deployment
•Expert in social networking technologies and features sets for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Classmates, many others -
Group Director, Operations & Technical Systems
Jobster, Inc.
(Privately Held; Internet industry)
October 2004 — October 2007 (3 years 1 month)
Responsible for deploying and maintaining large-scale SaaS applications with a commitment to high availability. Provide assertive leadership for the direction and development of a Technical Operations & IT team responsible for delivering high availability software applications on a 24x7x365 basis. Reported to the CEO
Highlights:
•Seasoned technology leader that helped Jobster scale their development and release processes and procedures in line with other industry leaders, LinkedIn, SimplyHired, CareerBuilder, Monster.com
•Built Jobster’s corporate IT and Production systems from 1 server to almost 100 servers
•Directly responsible for 9 employees across 3 groups including: Technical Operations, IT and Reporting and Corporate Website Development
•Led the initiative to build a data warehouse from inception to implementation for customer reporting needs, from the ETL creation across our supported databases, Oracle 10g, MySQL to the normalization of data for reporting purposes -
Senior Program Manager
Microsoft
(Public Company; MSFT; Computer Software industry)
January 2004 — October 2004 (10 months)
Responsibilities include providing technical expertise and program management to strategic projects including Windows Build Labs, Windows Test Tools, Managed Source and Onboarding of Internal Applications for the Business Group IT team within Microsoft. Reported to the Group Program Manager.
Highlights:
•Directly responsible for scoping and executing the migration of Windows Build Labs and other projects into corporate sponsored datacenters; managing personnel, hardware and unbelievably high customer expectations
•Reduced the Windows Build Process time down from 10+ hours to 6; saving big dollars across the organization both in peoples time and ability to contribute improvements to the daily build
•Implemented and adhered to corporate project management and software development methodologies to ensure compliance for all audits of programs and projects. All programs and projects take part in a full SOX and internal security audit reviews -
Director of Software Test & Technical Operations
Apex Learning, Inc.
(Privately Held; E-Learning industry)
February 2000 — January 2004 (4 years)
Managed the successful design, testing and deployment of technology initiatives and projects for a Paul Allen, online educational services company focused on the virtual school market for state governments and large school districts. Report to the CTO.
Highlights:
•Directly responsible for 3 critical groups of employees, 10 in total: Technical Operations, Information Technology and Software Quality Assurance
•Implemented a suite of online tools to manage defects, track releases and implement version control resulting in faster build times and a very rigorous process to ensure quality code was released quickly with reliable and repeatable results over time
•Directed the launch of the first 3 iterations of Apex Learning’s Learning Management and Customer Management Systems
•Member of corporate leadership team responsible for establishing direction and priorities for the company; that enabled the company to continue operating while new funding and executive management was secured -
Technical Account Manager
Microsoft
(Public Company; MSFT; Computer Software industry)
December 1998 — February 2000 (1 year 3 months)
Served as a technical liaison for Fortune 500 companies including—Intel, Amazon and Corbis. Primary responsibilities included providing internal technical project management across the client's organization specializing in Internet technologies. Reported to the Premier Support Manager.
Highlights:
•Directly responsible for Amazon, Corbis and Intel’s E-Business accounts and technology services delivery.
•Best in the West, FY2000 Q1 – Microsoft
•Award given for top performer out of 80 TAMs in the Western Region -
Systems Analyst
Microsoft
(Public Company; MSFT; Computer Software industry)
March 1998 — December 1998 (10 months)
Lead contributor in the design, implementation and support of projects and systems through the entire software development lifecycle including concept, design, development, testing, launch and transition phases. Reported to the Production Support Manager.
Highlights:
•Key role in the implementation and support of three complex non-HR systems: PressTiger, Litigate Tool and MS Give (http://msgive).
•Responsible for Installing, upgrades, troubleshooting and routine DBA activities for multiple SQL Server 6.5, backups/restore, importing/exporting data and troubleshooting errors in transactional replication environment.
Jason Grimes’s Education
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Washington State University
Information Systems , Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering , 1993 — 1998
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University of Idaho
Electrical Engineering, Computer Science 1993 — 1996
Additional Information
Jason Grimes’s Websites:
Jason Grimes’s Interests:
Downhill mountain biking, snowboarding, music...is there anything else? :)
Jason Grimes’s Groups:
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On Startups - The Community For Entrepreneurs -
Linked:Seattle -
Ex-MS -
Virtualization Architect
Jason Grimes’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- job inquiries
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- business deals
- reference requests
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