Jack Alves

510.604.3609
[email protected]
www.tigerlight.com/jack (photo)

478 Vermont Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94707

My experience includes many years as a hands-on manager of projects and groups related to software and
website development. I have great judgment to bridge business and technical objectives. I contributed to
projects at every phase from product definition through implementation, test, and post-release evaluation.
I've had responsibilities that ranged from hands-on technical work to high level oversight. Typically,
management responsibilities included:

• negotiating and managing requirements

• creating and improving processes
• managing project clients
• recruiting, managing and evaluating staff
• forecasting and tracking budgets and schedules
• writing reports, functional specifications and user documentation

I worked 5 years as a software engineer at the beginning of my career. Now I do a little coding for my own
projects, mostly using Javascript/AJAX, HTML, CSS, PHP, and Python. I am comfortable working in a
Windows, Mac, or UNIX environment as necessary.

Project Management Consulting

2007- 2009

I provided project management consulting for two clients, and worked on a few of my own projects.

Applied Minds, Inc / Star Wide Web

I was hired by my former employer (Applied Minds, Inc) to get a troubled project on track and
prepare to spin-off a company. My contributions included high level strategic planning and
project management of a web site, popstra.com for exploring celebrity relationships.
Components of the project included a website built on Wordpress, an embeddable Flash
application, a Facebook quiz application, and integration with a graph database.

This was a very low budget project with team members in different locations. I prepared
functional specifications, budgets, and schedules. I coordinated activity of team members and
pitched in with testing, and data grooming. I wrote a few Javascript tools for data exploration. I
contributed to business strategy and participated in presentations to venture capital firms.

University of California, Mathematics / Institute of Mathematical Statistics

I worked with a mathematics professor who leads a variety of technical projects related to
bibliographic information. I provided strategic insight, helped focus plans, and wrote project

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 management plans. I contributed to writing a $2 million grant which he subsequently received
to build the Bibliographic Knowledge Network.

Personal Projects

I built a demo website wiggleback.com that displays things that happened on a given day in
history. I built a website for my wife's business. I experimented with building a simple robot. I
also wrote a screenplay and did some drawing.

Metaweb Technologies and Applied Minds, Inc

2002 - 2007

Metaweb was spun-off from Applied Minds in 2005 to develop technology for the next generation of
the web. What some people call Semantic Web or Web 3.0. I transitioned from Project Manager with
Applied Minds to Director of Engineering at Metaweb.

Director of Engineering (Metaweb, 2005-2007)

At Metaweb I managed development and launch of freebase.com which is a website for

collaborative creation of data and data structure. I managed 14 people split into four groups
(back, middle, front, QA). The technology includes a proprietary graph database (C++/Python),
an API (Python/Javascript), and the freebase.com website (AJAX). My responsibilities included
prioritizing development, managing people, recruiting, budgeting, establishing processes, and
managing releases. I also pitched in to help with builds, data loads, and testing. We used
Selenium and Python for automated testing.

Project Manager (Applied Minds, 2002-2005)

At Applied Minds I worked with the software group that designed and built working prototypes
(Java, Flash, Javascript) for government intelligence agencies and large corporations. Several
projects had budgets over a million dollars, no project was smaller than $300k. The work
focused on building user interfaces for very large graph databases.

My core responsibilities included requirements setting, budgeting, scheduling, and reporting. I

contributed to writing proposals, user documentation, testing, and design. The twelve person
project team included designers, scientists, developers, and a quality assurance engineer. These
projects had no tolerance for late or over budget delivery. A key to success was my ability to
prioritize development based on client expectations.

Project Management Consulting

1998 - 2002

Quality Assurance Specialist (Teleias, 2001-2002)

Project Manager (GarmentTrade.com, 2000-2001)
Business Management Consultant (Circle24.com, 2000)
Project Manager (DoughNET.com, 1999)

During this period I took one full year off then did short-term work on a variety of projects at
the dot com startups and a systems configuration management company listed above.

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 Responsibilities included planning and tracking feature development, testing, reporting, and
coordinating development with other groups. In some cases I contributed to business strategy.

I am happy to provide details related to this work. I am leaving out details too keep my resume
to a reasonable number of pages.

Scopus Technology and Viewstar

1989 - 1997

Scopus and Viewstar are two distinct companies. I combine them here because my role was the same.
I built quality assurance teams in fast growing companies. I owned responsibility for quality assurance
testing, development processes, build management, release management, system configuration, and
software packaging. I managed people and established processes for recruiting, performance
evaluations, test automation, test tracking, bug tracking, and software builds. I interacted with
developers, managers, the technical support team, and other groups. I was the overall manager of the
software releases, triaging final features and fixes to deliver products.

Director of Engineering Services and Quality Assurance (Scopus, 1995-1997)

Scopus primarily built customer relationship management (CRM) software (C++, Java, TCL). I
grew a group of 3 quality assurance engineers to a Release Engineering group of 26 staff
including four managers and two temps. I directed creation of processes for bug tracking,
building software, packaging, testing (WinRunner), tracking product releases, customer support
team interactions, and requesting purchases. During this period I managed 8 major and over 20
minor software releases.

Director of Engineering Services and Quality Assurance (Viewstar, 1989-1995)

ViewStar built workflow software (C++, LISP) for scanning and processing documents. I
formed the quality assurance group starting with no staff and grew the group to 21 staff
including two managers and six temps. At Viewstar I engineered processes for all aspects of the
product life cycle and cross department interactions. We used SILK for automated testing.
During this period I managed at least 5 major product releases concurrent with quarterly minor
releases.

I also managed a previously troubled IT group during a period when the company relocated 200
employees. The relocation project included redesign of the corporate network, hardware and
software modifications to every computer (300+) in the span of a weekend with a handful of
technical staff. We were 100% operational by Monday morning.

I joined Viewstar as a software engineer; I was promoted 3 times: to supervisor, to manager,

then to director; at each stage I accumulated responsibility for new groups; I was voted MVP of
1994 by employees and received several other awards during my six year tenure.

EDUCATION

New York University, Computer Science, B.A.