Michael Schechter

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry

January 2007 – September 2010 (3 years 9 months)

Led a 5-person team as part of the Search User Experience division, responsible for the design and implementation of a shared services platform for search frontend development. Designed and developed large scale, high performance web serving tier used to serve all Live Search/Bing web requests for all search verticals, mobile, and API endpoints. Developed shared services used to unify and protect search ecosystem. Examples of services provided include rendering, security, instrumentation, experimentation, geo-location, monitoring and alerting. Created standardized API to access shared services, and worked closely with over 40 diverse partners to adapt these services. Individually responsible for coordinating and executing seamless transition from Live Search brand to Bing brand.

Responsible for developing the vision for Search Personalization, and then executing against the established roadmap. Designed and drove requirements for the development of the User Data Platform, which provides large scale, high performance search personalization signals for all Bing users. Designed heuristics for user behavior analysis and drove requirements across feature teams spanning both search and advertising products. Designed personalization features, including search history, personalized result ranking, and user centric ad optimization. Responsible for data mining of query and click logs to develop new, differentiating customer facing features. Ensure that all personalization features provide industry leading privacy controls.

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry

February 2006 – January 2007 (1 year)

Member of small development team tasked with turning a successful incubation product, "Start.com", into a scalable, personalized portal and web gadget platform for new Windows Live initiative, known as "Live.com."

Responsible for feature specs, project management, technical design, partner management, and release management for all aspects of the product. Redesigned Web Service tier to improve developer experience, end user performance and security by moving from an SOAP/XML based architecture to one based on REST and JSON. Designed APIs and necessary product features for customization of core web site by large partners. This platform supported the launch of 4 major co-brands (Verizon, Qwest, Alienware and Lenovo) without engagement from the core engineering team.

Drove customer requirements and services implementation for creation of mobile portal experience. Designed instrumentation platform for site and gadgets to allow for accurate reporting of customer and business intelligence data. Drove redesign of SQL Server backend infrastructure to improve performance, extensibility, and availability.

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry

September 2004 – February 2006 (1 year 6 months)

Member of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 development teams.

Conceptualized and served as primary developer on first version of SQL Server Upgrade Advisor, which shipped with SQL Server 2005. Designed and developed core analysis engine and associated API used by partners to extend product functionality. Designed and developed both graphical and command line UI components of the product, supportability features, and integrated analysis into SQL Server Setup process. Utilized C# and Managed C++ for all aspects of the product, and extensive XML for reporting components

Developer on SQL Server Management Tools team. Developed database scripting components as part of SQL Server Management Studio. Developed SQL Server Database Upgrade Test Toolkit to help ISV partners identify and correct upgrade issues within proprietary applications. Worked directly with over 100 ISV partners to upgrade over 1000 customer databases prior to SQL Server 2005 RTM, and fixed associated database engine upgrade issues. Tools developed with C# and extensive T-SQL scripts.

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry

September 2001 – September 2004 (3 years 1 month)

Member of the SQL Server 2005 development team.

Test automation developer on the SQL Server Playback test team. Leader on development efforts to increase automation efficiency and reduce user errors. Optimized multiple test processes, automated many manual tasks, implemented utility libraries for increased code reuse, and implemented automated test launching system. Reduced required time for full test pass by 84% and improved valid bug finding rate by 60%.

Designed new test systems to identify performance and correctness bugs in core SQL engine. Met with customers and partners to solicit test participation and provide feedback about issues identified during testing of their applications. Developed shipping components for SQL Server 2000 Best Practices Analyzer.

Most development performed using C++ with ASP.NET user interfaces.

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry

May 2000 – August 2000 (4 months)

Member of the SQL Server 2000 development team.

Designed and implemented a high-performance database auditing tool for statistical analysis of feature usage in customer systems. Results used to prioritize test runs and drive test development for future releases. Tool was implemented using T-SQL and C++.

Nonprofit; 11-50 employees; Nonprofit Organization Management industry

January 2000 – May 2000 (5 months)

Developed and launched a new version of the Juvenile Justice Evaluation Center website. Migrated existing static content to dynamically generated pages using extensive Perl scripting.