Engineering leader who...
- Loves technology. ‘Nuff said?
- Understands that great software products are not just the result of great technology but of a great team and a great culture.
- Has proven ability to align strategy, teams, and individuals to create a culture that facilitates creativity and productivity.
- Has built and managed successful development teams for a variety of projects in both product development and professional services capacities.
- Is a seasoned technologist who has built large, high-traffic distributed systems for several triple-A titles as well as enterprise-grade systems for the automotive and hospitality industries.
- Relishes the opportunity to work with great people to build innovative and captivating experiences for users worldwide.
Specialties:Technology leadership, architecture, scalability, developing great teams, strategy planning, project management, client/partner management, technology budget planning.
Important bits:
Sense of humor and an outsized sense of fun.
Object Oriented Programming and Design, technical architecture and infrastructure, API design, cloud PaaS (Amazon AWS, Heroku, Hybrid), SaaS development, C#, Java, SQL, Ruby, Scala, Mongo, Chef
Vice President of Engineering @ From August 2015 to Present (3 months) Los Angeles, CaliforniaDirector, Platform Engineering @ Brought on to re-engineer Cornerstone's technology platform at various levels including culture, process, architecture, and strategy. As the head of Platform engineering, I had the opportunity to lead Cornerstone's big data strategy which included the acquisition of Evolv, a leading workforce and talent analytics start-up, in the Bay area for $46mm in cash and stock. In addition to big data, my team is leading the charge on various Platform initiatives which include (but are certainly not limited to) transitioning a 200-person technology organization to Continuous Delivery, re-architecting 10+ products built over the last 15 years, and most importantly building a Platform with the size, scale, and innovation of SalesForce.
This is not your run of the mill type of problem. We are solving some crazy $hit. If you like writing a runtime kernel, elastic scaling in hybird clouds, microservices, data at "a-terabyte-a-week" scale, writing your own language, and language compilers, just to name a few. Then this is your kinda place. From July 2014 to August 2015 (1 year 2 months) Santa MonicaDirector of Engineering @ Was hired to rebuild. reimagine, and scale Kareo’s engineering organization and software architecture by building a progressive and agile technology culture. This included establishing new engineering norms, the hiring bar, and foundation for growth. Net result was the ability to efficiently scale the organization from 11 to over 60 with hires from Sony Online Entertainment, Google, Amazon, Blizzard, IGN, GameSpy, Symantec, SendGrid, and Flurry Analytics as well as setting up offshore teams in India.
Organizationally, restructured the teams around features and micro-services rather than component teams, introduced continuous integration, and institutionalized “fast feedback” through agile philosophies to facilitate an emphasis on delivery which was reduced from months to a two week cadence.
Was the critical engineering resource on Kareo’s EHR software acquisition and
was charged with building a Java team, integration architecture (.NET/SQL Server to Java/Oracle), and technical “go to market” plan with short timeline and limited resources. Also represented engineering for investor presentations, calls, and meetings.
Provided the technology road map for engineering to move from a desktop client powered by a monolithic, proprietary server application towards a browser based and service oriented
architecture. Introduced deep monitoring and log management systems with AppDynamics, Gomez, and Sumologic, respectively, to reduce mean-time-to-resolution and established a Performance and Reliability team to improve system availability and system response times. From February 2012 to July 2014 (2 years 6 months) irvine, caTechnical Director, GameSpy Technology @ Successfully led a driven, multi-disciplinary engineering organization that is driving the technical strategy behind GameSpy's and IGN's technology products. This engineering organization consisted of 15+ highly motivated and highly skilled engineers, project leads, and technical leads in both the San Francisco and Orange County offices with projects spanning product development, professional services, and support for over a thousand titles to date.
Was responsible for the product engineering vision, its alignment with the business, and its execution to support all aspects of business operations. This includes liaising with GameSpy’s product group, sales organization, and executive leadership, building relationships with other business units in IGN, and ultimately, building consensus to deliver a technical vision that is consistently aligned with the needs of both businesses: IGN Entertainment and GameSpy Technology. This culminated in GameSpy’s recent business pivot with the launch of GameSpy Open and full technology support for independent game developers at nearly zero up front cost; shifting from traditional licensing to a subscription-based business model. From August 2011 to February 2012 (7 months) Orange County, California AreaLead Engineer, GameSpy Technology @ Built and managed GameSpy Technology’s product engineering organization (web, SDK, and platform teams) with a string of successful product and title launches in both the independent and triple-A segments. Such titles include Grand Theft Auto IV, Monster Hunter 3/Tri, Crysis 2, Civilization 5, Red Dead Redemption, Dungeon Defenders, Bulletstorm, and Borderlands. Each required a hands-on coordination effort to ensure that engineering resources were deployed effectively, a consistent feedback loop was established, and milestones were clearly delineated with the studio(s).
Champion process improvements to refine the customer value chain by optimizing the “build-measure-learn” feedback loop. This included the successful transition to Scrum methodology after years of waterfall-based development and the introduction of Kanban for tactical work not part of strategic priority.
Kickstarted the transition to open source technologies and away from Microsoft by initiating the re-design of GameSpy’s matchmaking system to increase scalability and maintainability as well as to reduce costs, complexity, and technical debt. Development efforts reduced system’s server foot print by 86% while at the same time exceeding performance expectations of the legacy system. Utilizing virtualization, the net result were significant CapEx savings when IGN migrated to a new data center. From June 2008 to August 2011 (3 years 3 months) Orange County, California AreaSenior Software Engineer, GameSpy Technology @ Championed Agile methodologies using the Mario Kart Wii development team to test drive Scrum. Working closely with Nintendo Co. Ltd. in Japan and using short 1-week iterations, the team was able to quickly iterate over essential features and deliver consumable APIs to Nintendo at an early stage. Such quick iteration gave both GameSpy and Nintendo enough runway to build scalability and stability tests for the new system which resulted in day 1 launch with 4.9 million players and zero support issues. Game has since grown to 24+ million players to date with scores and race ghosts downloaded nearly 10 million times per day - and still with zero support issues.
Worked closely with Rockstar Games to develop and integrate GameSpy’s service APIs into Grand Theft Auto IV as well as Rockstar’s games portal “The Social Club” (www.socialclub.rockstargames.com). GTA IV boasts one of the largest services integration for GameSpy’s technologies and was the biggest entertainment launch in history at the time with $500 million in sales over 5 days and day one launch of 6+ million players. Using GameSpy’s statistics system, Rockstar tracks over 6600 statistics per player across 25+ million players and generates hundreds of near real-time leader boards through GameSpy’s cloud data systems. From June 2007 to June 2008 (1 year 1 month) Orange County, California AreaApplication Infrastructure Engineer @ Built and managed web architecture for American Honda’s dealer management application(s), the “Interactive Network” (iN), used by Honda’s network of dealers worldwide. System powered consumer financing, vehicle warranty, parts ordering, vehicle inventory management and procurement, warranty and recall claims, and other critical dealer operations.
Drove transition to .NET from classic ASP by building concept dealer portal used by Honda Mexico and mentoring developers in object oriented programming and design. Implemented standards for the development organization including staff transitioning, coding guidelines, and architecture recommendations.
Played a critical role in building EDI exchange system between back-office providers such as ADP and Reynolds & Reynolds and to standardize data interchange using the open STAR standard (http://www.starstandard.org/). From December 2004 to June 2007 (2 years 7 months) Torrance, CAUX Engineer / Java Engineer @ Responsible for user interface and web-tier development using Struts MVC framework, JavaScript, and Flash for Hotel Informations Systems central reservation product(s). Work involved close collaboration with the product and engineering teams to define customer use cases, working UI prototypes, and feature integration in an n-tiered J2EE environment. Responsibilities soon expanded to team management which included mentoring two junior engineers in object oriented programming using ActionScript, JavaScript, and Java. From August 2001 to April 2006 (4 years 9 months) Lake Forest, CAWeb Developer @ Provided software development for Jet Propulsion Laboratories in support of JPL’s Deep Space Network Satellite development in Spain, Australia, and the U.S. Projects included collaboration portal to facilitate intercontinental communication of schematics, design, and project planning. From February 2000 to August 2001 (1 year 7 months) Pasadena, CA
University of Southern California From 1995 to 2000 Michael Ruangutai is skilled in: Object Oriented Design, System Architecture, Team Building, Team Management, Team Leadership, .NET, TCP/IP, REST, SOAP, API design, Java, Distributed Systems, Scrum, Agile Methodologies, Web Applications, Web Services, Kanban, High Availability, Scalability, APIs, Get It Done, Testing, Mobile Applications, JavaScript, C#, Software Development, SQL, Agile Project Management, Cloud Computing, SaaS, Ruby, User Experience, MongoDB, Software Design, Amazon Web Services..., XML, Architecture, Java Enterprise Edition, Integration, Ruby on Rails, OOP, Git, MVC, Open Source, Software Engineering, Objective-C, SOA, MySQL, User Interface, Architectures
Websites:
http://www.cornerstoneondemand.com