Michael J. Kolb
Philadelphia Metro Area
jobs@meekay.net | www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljkolb
Software engineer and technical manager, experienced in developing enterprise software solutions for intelligent business optimization, high volume transaction processing, and massively scalable ecommerce. I combine technological expertise with business acumen.
- Expert in all aspects of the software engineering and delivery, including requirements analysis, architecture, performance engineering, build management, test automation, production implementation, maintenance, and refactoring
- In-depth understanding of enterprise information technology solutions including ecommerce, optimization problems, sales force automation, and materials resource planning
- Graduate-level education in entrepreneurism, corporate & investment finance, and international economics
- Experienced in estimation, project planning, technical execution, interviewing, hiring, supervising, leadership, and coaching
Experience
Manager/Consultant, May 2015 – Present
CapTech Ventures, King of Prussia, PA
- Specialized in Systems Integration using Java-related technologies
- Completed training in iOS development with Swift, Amazon Web Services, and Agile software engineering methodology
- Led teams writing proposals for business development at new and existing clients
- Conducted pre-sales demonstrations and “chalk talks”
- Coached and mentored direct reports and other employees
- Deployed on various projects, including the following
Consultant/Senior Software Engineer
Fortune 100 Insurance Company, Springfield, MA
- Worked on a set of RESTful microservices based on Spring Boot to expose mainframe data to downstream applications using a combination of Verastream Host Integrator terminal-scraping and SOAP-XML services
- Provided coaching and expertise in the modern Java/Spring ecosystem and DevOps practices
Consultant/Senior Software Engineer
Fortune 50 Telecommunications Company, Philadelphia, PA
- Worked as a full-stack developer on a set of mission-critical internal applications and services, using Java 8, jQuery, Spring MVC, Spring Boot, MongoDB, and Kafka
- Participated in Scrum/Agile methodology on a DevOps-based team with 100% test automation using Selenium WebDriver and Cucumber
- Developed new functionality that resulted in approximately $5 million in cost savings by the end of my deployment
Consultant/Data Architect
Fortune 50 Financial Company, Charlotte, NC
- Performed data lineage analysis, performance optimization, and maintenance on a Teradata reporting database
Consultant/Senior Software Engineer
Fortune 50 Telecommunications Company, Philadelphia, PA
- Completed a high-impact data engineering project to refactor and extend the data pipeline for television, movie, and music metadata, resulting in a projected cost avoidance in the hundreds of millions of dollars
- Used Clover ETL, along with custom code in Java and Scala, to construct ETL processes for ingesting and merging data from various third-party sources
- Provided expertise in Oracle SQL functionality and performance optimization
Lead Technical Manager, Software Development, January 2010 – February 2015
GSI Commerce / eBay, King of Prussia, PA
- Implemented a variety of software engineering projects for GSI’s scalable ecommerce platform, including new features, bug fixes, and performance enhancements, as both a direct contributor and as a manager.
- Performance engineering using J2EE technologies, Spring MVC, Mule ESB, Java Message Service (JMS), and Oracle.
- Lead efforts in test automation, including selection, integration, and deployment of tools and technologies, such as Rational Integration Tester and Selenium Grid.
- Scoped, estimated, and managed projects according to Agile principles. As technical manager, assured the technical execution and quality of projects delivered.
- Advised and participated in budgeting processes, system architecture, product management, and project management.
- Learned and navigated organizational dynamics to achieve project deliverables.
- Staffed projects to budget, assigned tasks, mentored, and evaluated performance of approximately 15 employees and contractors, in three cities on two continents. Interfaced with other teams and external vendors.
- Earned a GSI Excellence Delivered award 2011Q1 for leading a 12-person team to redesign the cart and checkout user experience for 60+ client stores.
- Earned a GSI Excellence Delivered award 2012Q1 for managing a project to prevent a premature exhaustion of numerical IDs in the legacy web store.
Lead Software Engineer, March 2004 – January 2010
MCA Solutions, Philadelphia, PA
- Designed and developed Java/J2EE and Oracle PL/SQL stored procedures for commercial enterprise software incorporating statistical demand forecasting analysis, inventory management, and materials resource planning functionality.
- Led a team of ten developers.
- Gathered requirements, designed data model and software architecture, and implemented new features.
- Implemented Web application modules using AJAX and MVC design techniques.
- Implemented application localization support for European and Asian languages.
- Implemented components using technologies such as RMI, SOAP/XML-RPC, and JMS.
- Refactored software to improve quality, enhance performance, and enable new features.
- Screened and interviewed prospective employees.
Lead Software Engineer, November 2001 – March 2004
Aetna US Healthcare, Blue Bell, PA
- Designed and developed Java/J2EE and DB2 stored procedures for a custom commission payroll system capable of millions of transactions on a monthly and weekly basis.
- Led a team of twelve developers and contractors.
- Gathered user requirements, designed data model and software architecture for a new system.
- Customized commercial software for enterprise use.
- Provided on-call system support.
Software Engineer, June 1998 – April 2001
Trilogy Development Group, Austin, TX
- Designed and developed Java/J2EE, JNI, and other languages and technologies for commercial enterprise software incorporating product configuration search-based optimization and rule-based dynamic pricing.
- Responsible for development and maintenance of multiple products including a proprietary object/relational framework and SAP integration.
- Specialized in build management, engineering for quality, and diagnosis of memory leaks and application performance problems.
- Assisted with customer support issues.
Education
Master of Business Administration, September 2009, Drexel University LeBow College of Business
BS Computer Science, May 1998, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Engineering
Certifications
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform
SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) Agilist
Private Pilot (Multi-Engine, Land) with Instrument Rating