JJ BEHRENS

1817 Clayton Way
Concord, CA 94519
 
jjinux at gmail dot com

JJ turns out reliable, high performance software…He's hard working and honest, and he writes some of the cleanest code I've had the pleasure of reading — Patrick Tufts, co-founder of 24 Hr. Diner

Status - I just accepted an offer from Google.

Education - I have a Bachelor of Arts (with honors) in mathematics with a concentration in computer science from St. Mary's College of California. I won the Br. Alfred Brousseau award for "outstanding scholarship as a mathematics major."

Profile - I am an enthusiastic and friendly extrovert. My most notable traits as a programmer include: an incredible dedication to producing clean, well-documented, well-tested code on time and on budget; a passionate love of programming and especially programming languages; and a commitment to the open source community.

Career Objective - I would like to program in an innovative, results-oriented company where I am required to consistently solve difficult technical problems. Clean code, a clear direction, and a healthy life balance are the things I look for most in a company.

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Skill Set - On a scale of one to five, five being the most familiar, I am familiar with the following technologies:

Programming Languages:

  • ActionScript (AS3): 3
  • C: 4
  • C++: 3
  • Erlang: 2
  • Haskell: 3
  • Java: 3
  • JavaScript (Ajax): 4
  • Perl: 4
  • PHP: 5
  • Python: 5
  • Ruby: 4
  • Scala: 2
  • Scheme: 3
  • Shell scripting (sed, awk, sh, make): 3
  • x86 Assembler: 2

Operating Systems:

  • FreeBSD (including creating ports): 5
  • Linux: 5
  • OS X: 4
  • Solaris: 3

Web Programming:

  • Apache: 5
  • CSS: 4
  • Django: 3
  • HTML (XHTML): 5
  • jQuery: 4
  • nginx: 4
  • Pylons (contributor): 5
  • Rails: 4
  • Twisted: 3
  • XML (SAX, DOM): 4
  • Zope and Plone: 4

GUI Programming:

  • AWT and Swing: 4
  • GTK and GNOME (C, PyGTK): 4
  • QT and KDE: 4
  • SDL and PyGame: 4
  • Tk (Perl, Ruby, Python): 4
  • XUL: 3

Databases:

  • MySQL: 5
  • PostgreSQL: 3

Protocols (RFC-level knowledge):

  • HTTP: 4
  • IPv6: 5
  • SDP: 5
  • SIP: 5

Other Applications:

  • CVS (usage and administration): 5
  • Git: 4
  • Lex and Yacc (C, OCAML, PLY): 4
  • Selenium: 4
  • Subversion (usage and administration): 4

Other Programming Skills:

  • Agile software development (extreme programming): 5
  • Asynchronous network programming (stackless Python, gevent, Twisted, node.js, etc.): 5
  • Behavior Driven Development (BDD using Cucumber, RSpec, and Webrat): 5
  • Client/server programming: 5
  • Compiler and interpreter design: 2
  • Design patterns: 5
  • Embedded programming: 2
  • Facebook APIs (RFacebook, PyFacebook): 4
  • Functional programming: 4
  • Internationalization (I18N) and localization (L10N) including multi-byte languages, Unicode, and UTF-8: 5
  • Kernel programming: 2
  • Model view controller (MVC) programming: 5
  • Multi-threaded programming: 4
  • Object oriented programming (OOP): 5
  • Peer-to-peer programming (P2P): 3
  • RESTful web services: 5
  • RPC mechanisms (CORBA, XML-RPC, RMI, etc.): 4
  • Scalable Internet architectures: 4

Articles:

Technical Editing:

Other Achievements:

  • I maintain a popular blog, and I've spoken at most of the nearby Python and Ruby groups.
  • I was acknowledged in Foundations of Agile Python Development.
  • I was acknowledged in RFC 3974 and RFC 4193.
  • I am the author of GCipher, an open source encryption GUI and network proxy written in Python using PyGTK.
  • I am the author of Aquarium, an open source Web application framework written in Python. Aquarium was mentioned in Oracle and Open Source and is in use all over the world.
  • I was the coauthor of Freetrade, an open source shopping cart system written in PHP and used in several ecommerce sites.

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Employment History:

10/2010 to 3/2011 - Twilio (a web services startup)
Senior Software Engineer. Lead a project as it moved from prototype to production via refactoring, performance testing, and scalability enhancements. Used Python and Twisted. Built various prototypes using Socket.IO, node.js, js.io, gevent, WebOb, Twisted, zeromq, Flask, Jinja2, Ruby, Rails, and MySQL.
6/2009 to 10/2010 - Fandor (a small indie film startup)
Software Architect. Built fandor.com, which is a site similar to NetFlix on-demand. Used Ruby, Rails, ActionScript, JavaScript, jQuery, MySQL, the Flash Media Server (FMS), Wowza, and BDD. Integrated with Boxee, Limelight, Facebook, and Roku. Made open source contributions to LongTail Video (JW Player, a Flash video player).
3/2008 to 6/2009 - 24 Hr. Diner (a three-person startup)
Senior Software Engineer. Architected and built a general-purpose recommendation system similar to Amazon's system using Linux, nginx, MySQL, and Python.
7/2007 to 11/2007 - MultiCosmic (a two-person Facebook startup)
Senior Software Engineer. Built a Facebook app called Free or Best Offer using Linux, MySQL, Ruby on Rails, and RFacebook.
8/2006 to 5/2007 - Foxmarks Inc. (a startup by Mitch Kapor)
Senior Software Engineer. Built www.foxmarks.com (the corporate website), login.foxmarks.com (the account management application), and my.foxmarks.com (used to view your bookmarks online) using Linux, MySQL, Python, Pylons, and Genshi.
1/2004 to 8/2006 - IronPort Systems (a startup acquired by Cisco)
UI Platform Engineer within the Architecture and Platform Engineering Group. My Web application framework, Aquarium, was officially adopted across the entire organization. Architected the user interface to configure the email gateway appliance, including centralized management and localization to eight languages. (The user interface alone consisted of over a quarter of a million lines of code.) Built a Web server named Glass that could run under stackless Python with coroutines. Was responsible for the common look-and-feel of IronPort applications across the company.
8/2001 to 12/2003 - NTT Multimedia Communications Laboratory
Software Engineer. Worked (sometimes in a team, usually alone) on a wide range of research and development projects using: Perl, Ruby, C, C++, sh, Jython, Tk, QT, KDE, Swing, Zope, Mason, mod_perl, IPv6, HTTP, SSL, XML-RPC, Linux, FreeBSD, XML, PGP, Apache, PostgreSQL, client/server programming, multi-threaded programming, peer-to-peer programming, and I18N.
9/2000 to 5/2001 - Echobridge
Programmer 2. Built Catholic Healthcare West's website using Python, MySQL, SQL Server, Apache, Linux, and Aquarium.
6/1999 to 9/2000 - Clear Ink
Web Engineer 2. Worked on multiple ecommerce sites using PHP, MySQL, Solaris, and NT.
1/1998 to 4/1998 - Sun Microsystems
Resolution Coordinator Intern. Provided technical support over the phone to other members of Sun Microsystems using Solaris.
11/1997 to 5/1999 - Saint Mary's College of California
Group Tutorial Leader. Tutored groups of three to fifteen students who were learning Turbo Pascal, C++, and x86 assembler.

Here is some sample code written in Python and Ruby. Here is my GitHub account. References are available upon request.