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Sean Levy: Software Dev

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Contact

Email
snl@cluefactory.com
Web
https://cluefactory.com/
Social
@snl@mastodon.world

Other forms of contact (IRC, Zoom, WhatsApp, etc.) available on request.

Brief Biography

I have lived and worked in Southern California, Pittsburgh, Boston and Portland in settings ranging from high-level academic research to high-pressure dot com chaos. In 2005 my wife and I moved to Yucatan, Mexico, where we live in a small town on its western coast. I focus on telecommuting work arrangements and coordinate with my clients and colleagues over the Internet.

I am self-motivated, used to producing substantial volumes of work on my own, am adept at reverse-engineering existing work and fixing hard-to-find bugs and have a proven track record of being productive in teams that are geographically dispersed. I am comfortable in many roles on a software development team and have worked in a range of environments, from academic research to high-pressure startups. Small engagements are acceptable.

Operating Systems

Languages/Environments

Specific Areas of Expertise and Interest

Work History

October 2017 - March 2024, Founder at ClearOPS.io (Remote)

Used Modern Perl to build a data collection system for Internet metadata (WHOIS, DNS, other externally visible / unavoidably public data sources). Implemented an analytical engine that produces reports based on this data, analytics stack in SQL and PL/SQL under PostgreSQL, web interface and API. Heavy database-side development (stored procedures, code generation in SQL).

July 2012 - August 2014: Software Engineer, kWantera LLC (Telecommute)

Worked for a leading-edge energy market arbitrage startup. Architected and implemented the first version of their all-encompasing client-facing portal, integrating JavaScript-based client-side charting libraries such as d3 with Twitter Bootstrap and a back end implemented using Flask, including WebSockets for real-time updates to browser-based clients. Built the core of their data collection system which integrates demand data from real industrial sites with live market data from all major ISOs in the United States.

2014 - 2017, Open-Source Work

Ported Tor Browser to OpenBSD. Wrote driver for the Araneus Alea II USB TRNG, got it accepted into tree (now known as urng), maintained various ports including Tor Browser.

January 2007 - June 2012: Chief Architect, Lytix LLC (Telecommute)

Designed and implemented a semantically-aware graph-oriented database system and analytical back end which used P2P techniques to extend the functionality of the system seamlessly. Core of the system is a graph representation and manipulation API that includes integrated support for ontology, flexible containers and support for typed attributes on all objects. Included full application stack for building dynamic web-based presentation and delivery systems with an RPC-based API using Google Protocol Buffers or JSON-RPC. Used as the platform for a suite of financial analytics applications ("Google maps for the financial world").

July 2004 - July 2006 - Perl Contractor / Clue Factory (Telecommute)

Various employers found via jobs.perl.org. Worked over full spectrum of various perl-based web stacks on systems ranging from simple scripts to an internationalized poll-taking system for radio market research with hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users. Used Perl5 under Debian Linux and FreeBSD with various frameworks (Mason and various other templating systems, DBI, etc.).

June 2001 - July 2004: Member of Technical Staff, CERT/CC (Pittsburgh, PA)

CERT (now called US-CERT) is a center of Internet security expertise that studies computer security vulnerabilities, coordinates large-scale response to incidents, and publishes a widely read list of advisories and notes on and related to computer security and the Internet. Located at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, my work focused on AirCERT, an open-source system for the collection, analysis, dissemination and archiving of security-related data. As a member of the technical staff I also advised and assisted on incident and vulnerability reports, consulted with research groups inside and outside of the organization and contributed to a variety of computer security-related projects at the center.

March 2000 - April 2001: VP Eng., Halosoft Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA)

First employee of a startup founded by Dr. Levent Gursoz and funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Played integral role in acquiring funding, forming technical team, and leading efforts aimed at benchmarking and improving the scalability and performance of leading-edge virtual machine technology. Participated at all levels, including architecture, design and implementation.

September 1998 - August 1999: Research Programmer, PDL, CMU (Pittsburgh, PA)

Programming and research in the area of network-attached storage and other research areas of interest to the Parallel Data Lab (PDL), a research group within the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. One of five research programmers in a group of approx. 25 faculty, graduate students and staff. Kernel-level and user-level development and design, research into multiple aspects of network-enabled storage systems and computational support for very large data sets, work on publications, and interaction with funders and colleagues via various forums.

September 1996 - January 1998: Senior Member of Technical Staff, Lycos, Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA)

System Programming Team Lead, responsible for reporting system for Lycos Web service, benchmarking, troubleshooting, and general software development projects in the Operations Group. Managed a team of four people including self. Directed week-long benchmarking session at Digital Equipment Corp.'s Greenbelt, MD benchmarking center.

1990 - September 1996: Senior Research Programmer, EDRC, CMU (Pittsburgh, PA)

System architect for n-dim, an information-modeling tool and support system for collaboration. Design and implementation of all facets of the system and co-authorship of publications as a part of a team of 6 developers (4 graduate students, 2 staff) and multiple faculty/researchers.

n-dim included a portable, prototype-based, object-oriented environment (BOS), with associated object-oriented programming language (stitch), interfaces to relational database management systems and user-interface toolkits.

1988 - 1990: Research Programmer, EDRC, CMU (Pittsburgh, PA)

Project programming and facilities support. Duties included maintenance of the Distributed Problem Solving Kernel (DPSK), development of user interface toolkits for the X window system, applications and systems work in several variants of LISP, general UNIX systems programming and support, and hardware and software facilities support and liaison with CMU CS department.

Project work included expert systems development using KEE on Sun workstations and Symbolics LISP Machines, communications and user interface software for concurrent engineering design environments developed at EDRC, a Motif-based DAG visualization toolkit and applications, and various projects involving integration of multiple programming languages and representations (Scheme/C, LISP/Fortran, etc.).

1985 - 1987: Partner/Founder, Benway Computer Systems (San Diego, CA)

Designed and implemented early 4GL-style infrastructure and used it to create vertical-market software for the auto body shop industry.

1982 - 1985: Systems Programmer, University of San Diego (San Diego, CA)

Responsible for campus computing facilities software, including networking, e-mail, account management and other ad-hoc development efforts. VAX/VMS, Ultrix-11, AT&T SystemV, CP/M, DOS and other now-ancient environments.

Selected Publications and Technical Reports

Allen Dutoit, Sean Levy, Douglas Cunningham, Robert Patrick: The Basic Object System: Supporting a Spectrum from Prototypes To Hardened Code, Proceedings of the Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 31, 10,pp. 104-121, ACM Press, October 6-10 1996.

Yoram Reich, Suresh Konda, Ira Monarch, Sean Levy, Eswaran Subrahmanian: Varieties and issues of participation and design, Design Studies No 17(1996), pp 165-180

Birgitte Krogh, Sean Levy, Allen Dutoit, Eswaran Subrahmanian Strictly: Class-based modeling considered harmful, in Proceedings of HICSS-29: 29th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science J.F. Nunmaker, Jr. and R.H. Sprague, Jr. (eds), IEEE Computer Society Press (1995), Vol 2, pp 242-250

Sean Levy, Eswaran Subrahmanian, Suresh Konda, Robert Coyne, Art Westerberg, Yoram Reich: An Overview of the n-dim Environment, Technical Report EDRC-05-65-93, Engineering Design Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University (1993)

Eswaran Subrahmanian, Suresh Konda, Sean Levy, Ira Monarch, Yoram Reich, Art Westerberg: Computational support for shared memory in design, in Automation-based creative design: current issues in computers and architecture A Tzonis and I White(eds) Elsevier Science Publishers (1993)

Eswaran Subrahmanian, Suresh Konda, Sean Levy, Yoram Reich, Art Westerberg, Ira Monarch: Equations aren't enough: informal modeling in design, Artificial Intelligence in Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing Vol 7 No 4 (1993) pp 257-274

Eswaran Subrahmanian, Robert Coyne, Suresh Konda, Sean Levy, Richard Martin, Ira Monarch, Yoram Reich, Art Westerberg: Support system for different-time different-place collaboration for concurrent engineering, in Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE Workshop on Enabling Technologies Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WET IpCE), IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA (1993), pp 187-191

Ira Monarch, Suresh Konda, Sean Levy, Yoram Reich, Eswaran Subrahmanian, Carol Ulrich: Shared memory in design: theory and practice, in Proceedings of the Invitational Workshop on Social Science Research, Technical Systems and Cooperative Work (Paris, France), Department Sciences Humaines et Sociales, CNRS, Paris, France (1993) pp 227-241

References available upon request

Updated on 2024-08-24


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