Technical Consultant
Greater Seattle Area
- Current
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- Technical Advisor at Trusera.com
- Past
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- Vice President of Engineering at Trusera
- Director, Mechanical Turk at Amazon.com
- CTO and Vice President at A9.com
- Senior Manager, Algorithms at Amazon.com
- Principal Software Engineer, Search and Ordering Systems at Amazon.com
- Software Engineer, Search Systems at Amazon.com
- Software Engineer at Interactive Catalog Corporation
- Senior Software Engineer at Interactive Threshold
- Software Engineer at Siemens Medical Ultrasound
- Education
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- University of Washington
- University of California, Irvine
- Recommended
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1 person has recommended Ruben - Connections
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468
connections
- Industry
- Internet
- Websites
Ruben Ortega’s Summary
Innovative and focused technologist capable of building algorithms, software, systems, teams and infrastructure that scale to handle millions of transactions per day and generate billions of dollars per year.
Engineering leader who can also make the difficult decisions such as which software we should use, triage or discard, while communicating the rationales for decisions to the organization.
Manager who can effectively lead small 2-10 person teams, as well as larger 30-40 person teams.
Eight years experience assisting patent attorneys and in-house legal teams in deciding which Intellectual Property opportunities to pursue and which to avoid.
Recognized as a top tier interviewer who is able to identify and recruit the best talent for an organization. Interviews range from entry-level engineers to CTOs, and includes legal and IP lawyers. Performed over 100 interviews/year over the last 9 years. Mentor for others tasked with assessing potential candidates.
Ruben Ortega’s Specialties:
Software Architecture and Data Scaling, Interviewing Candidates for Software Engineering, TPM, Web Design, and Intellectual Property Attorneys, Patent Disclosures and Assessment.
Ruben Ortega’s Experience
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Technical Advisor
Trusera.com
(Public Company; 1-10 employees; Health, Wellness and Fitness industry)
October 2008 — Present (1 year 2 months)
Working as an executive advisor to the engineering leadership team, product team, CEO and board.
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Vice President of Engineering
Trusera
(Internet industry)
April 2007 — October 2008 (1 year 7 months)
Managed the infrastructure and hired and developed engineering team for an online health network network focused on helping members share real world experiences. Led the creation of innovative software to improve the authoring experience for the customer. Leveraged agile development practices (SCRUM) and technologies (Ruby on Rails, SOLR, Amazon Web Services) to improve speed of development, quality of deliverables, and focus on developing software that was core to the business.
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Director, Mechanical Turk
Amazon.com
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; AMZN; Internet industry)
November 2005 — March 2007 (1 year 5 months)
Responsible for scaling and technical success of Amazon’s latest innovative product the Mechanical Turk (http://www.mturk.com). Participated in the design of an infrastructure that could dynamically scale from hundreds to thousands of transaction per second. Hired to reach our head count goals with experienced engineers, and managed performance of team. Mentored senior engineers and managers across the organization in both career, technical and recruiting skills. Forecast and set goals for growth of website for internal and external customers.
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CTO and Vice President
A9.com
(Public Company; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)
November 2003 — November 2005 (2 years 1 month)
Managed the development, launch and features of the A9.com website, including the following innovations: searchable history, searchable bookmarks, and searchable diary assisted by an integrated Firefox/IE browser toolbar. Tested and scaled systems to withstand the launch day surge typical of most large Internet launches. Negotiated relationships between Amazon Infrastructure and A9 team as the first of Amazon’s remote development centers, and the template case for future development centers. Authored A9 subsidiary infrastructure and security proposals for interacting with Amazon.com. Hired and retained top tier engineering talent. Delivered performance reviews and managed a team.
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Senior Manager, Algorithms
Amazon.com
(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; amzn; Internet industry)
January 2003 — December 2003 (1 year )
Recruited, interviewed and hired team to implement Google searches and Sponsored Links on Amazon.com. Built and managed team to deliver an alternate data store capable of supporting 100 million updates of customer click-streams per day. Architected, budgeted and hired developers to deliver search snippet service and search image service for Amazon’s innovative “Search Inside the Book”.
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Principal Software Engineer, Search and Ordering Systems
Amazon.com
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; AMZN; Internet industry)
January 2000 — January 2003 (3 years 1 month)
Drove projects that scaled website to 1,000,000 search queries per hour. Created Sponsored Links software for Amazon.com that generate advertising revenue via search. Negotiated for software from third-party vendors. Created Real Time Email Service for a centralized online email deployment and tracking. Architected software and participated in global re-design of Amazon’s Ordering Application software. Interviewed and recruited engineering leads to own the new system.
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Software Engineer, Search Systems
Amazon.com
(Public Company; 51-200 employees; AMZN; Internet industry)
1998 — 2000 (2 years )
Created innovative search recommendations that have generated over $1 Billion in revenue. Replaced Amazon's original search engine with Altavista SDK and scaled it for International and product line expansions. Architected a scaling project for search and catalog systems using XML over HTTP, saving the company millions of dollars and improved the customer experience. Implemented Web-search technology using Junglee's Shop-The-Web and crawls of the web for Universal Product Finder.
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Software Engineer
Interactive Catalog Corporation
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
1997 — 1998 (1 year )
Software Engineer focusing on multi-platform issues for iCat electronic commerce software. Worked with Win32, Solaris, IRIX, HPUX, Oracle, MySql, SQLAnywhere, and JAVA/RMI.
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Senior Software Engineer
Interactive Threshold
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
1996 — 1997 (1 year )
Sole software engineer for a service and application development company. Designed and developed shrink-wrapped software PC/Mac CD-ROM Trains of North America, released Sept 1996 using Director/Lingo. Also delivered, Java, SQL, ISAPI DLLL, CGI and and Javascript solutions for games and online shopping carts.
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Software Engineer
Siemens Medical Ultrasound
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Medical Devices industry)
1994 — 1996 (2 years )
Analyzed, coordinated and implemented optimization of the controlling software mechanism and its twelve subsystems for the Elegra ultrasound machine. Development included C++ for the high level optimizations, C for device driver development, and Unix scripting utilities for optimization support.
Ruben Ortega’s Education
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University of Washington
M.S. , Computer Science and Engineering , 1992 — 1994
NASA Graduate Students Researchers Program, 1993
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University of California, Irvine
B.S , Information and Computer Science , 1987 — 1991
NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU), 1990
Additional Information
Ruben Ortega’s Websites:
Ruben Ortega’s Groups:
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A9ers -
Amazon Global Network
Ruben Ortega’s Honors:
6,963,867: Search query processing to provide category-ranked presentation of search results
6,853,993: System and methods for predicting correct spellings of terms in multiple-term search queries
6,606,619: Computer processes for selecting nodes to call to attention of a user during browsing of a hierarchical browse structure
6,564,213: Search query autocompletion
6,549,904, 7,542,978: Auction notification system
6,489,968, 6,466,918: System and method for exposing popular categories of browse tree
6,401,084, 6,144,958: System and method for correcting spelling errors in search queries
6,185,558, 7,050,992: Identifying the items most relevant to a current query based on items selected in connection with similar queries
6,169,986: System and method for refining search queries
6,006,225: Refining search queries by the suggestion of correlated terms from prior searches
7,444,324 Spell Corrector
7,565,425 History Server
7,565,157 Location Based Search
Ruben Ortega’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
