Resume
Experience
Independent software developer
February 2026 to present
Indexing and archiving the world’s crosswords at the Every Puzzle Project and xd archive. Builder of The Cross(word) Reference. Author of puz.py and hodoku-py.
Career break
February 2020 to February 2026
Time with my kids and hobbies, a sabbatical year in Oslo (2024-25).
Intermedia Labs (HQ Trivia)
Contractor, October 2017 to February 2020
Returned as HQ Trivia grew past one million concurrent viewers. Instrumented the platform, scaled the app backend, and rebuilt video delivery for AWS multi-region and edge caching.
Director of Engineering, April 2016 to June 2017
Built HQ, a platform for real-time interactive video. HQ Trivia launched on it in summer 2017 and became the company’s primary focus.
Vine (Twitter)
Director of Engineering, December 2012 to April 2016
First full-time backend engineer for the Vine app at Twitter. Led backend development and operations from launch through the first years of rapid growth.
Senior Software Engineer, January 2012 to December 2012
Data pipelines and front-end features on the Google Finance team in New York.
Microsoft
Principal Software Design Engineer, October 2000 to November 2011
Six years in Redmond, five remote including a short stint in Shanghai. Led teams building xml web service features for .NET Framework, Visual Studio, and Windows.
drugstore.com
Lead Software Design Engineer, July 1999 to October 2000
Worked on the web site and led development of the order processing system.
Education
University of Washington, BS in Computer Science.
Patents
Named inventor on several US software patents, including these on Google Patents.