Michael Lang

Director of Product Development

As Director of Product Development, was responsible for all software products of the company as well as managing development staff and product development scope, schedules and delivery.

• Stabilized a system prone to frequent crashing and abnormal exits within four weeks of start. Also eliminated numerous deadlocking situations and faulty multi-threading mechanisms in the application.
• Worked with team in first two months to reduce outstanding bug list from approximately 400 distinct issues to less than 20 non-critical issues.
• Introduced OOA&D principles that ultimately reduced the code base from ~600k lines of code to a more manageable 200k lines of code while more than quadrupling the functionality of the system itself.
• Developed and taught bi-weekly training sessions to train junior developers in programming techniques and teach object oriented design and coding principles.
• Architected and implemented full context searching of candidate skills and resumes and building advanced search criterias that automatically cross-referenced to job posting descriptions and requirements and generated list of best matches of candidates for the posted job, thus eliminating several hours per day of manual keying of data to get same results.
• Developed, defined and oversaw all requirements documents for enhancements to the system as well as delivery schedule by working closely with others in the company. Worked closely with Q/A team to ensure new functionality was tested thoroughly and customer reps to ensure customers were aware of scheduled system downtimes for impending software upgrades.
• Utilized relational nature of database to automate various areas of the system as well as reducing data keying and redundant data entry tasks.
• Oversaw implementation of database management tools that allowed starter templates database schemas to be managed by non-technical personnel as well as automatically applying development changes to the database schemas of existing customers as new software releases were rolled out.
• Architected and oversaw development XML forms definition interface that allowed web-based data entry forms to be visually designed and instantly deployed to the web. The XML standard not only defined the form itself, but fully controlled the import of collected data into the database so that any number of data collection forms could be developed within the system and without assistance from the development staff.
• Architected and implemented a complete e-mail client system that mimicked Microsoft Outlook in functionality, including HTML formatting, spell checking, address book, etc., but had additional capability of importing candidate resumes submitted via e-mail, whether attached as separate document or as part of the e-mail itself. Additional functionality also allowed contact information to be generated automatically and info in the e-mail to be attached to the correct contact records for tracking and viewing by others in the company.

As company downsized, incorporated the role of Manager of Information Systems in addition to maintaining all duties as Director of Product Development.

• Quickly restored all network operations that spanned 14 NT 4.0 servers and two Citrix Metaframe servers after they were actively targeted for attack through the Internet. Additionally, prevented all future network tampering through proper security administration on all servers and firewall.
• Rebuilt corporate web-site and MS-Exchange server after existing server hardware crashed.
• Implemented backup/restore procedures for all servers to allow services to be quickly restored without rebuilding from scratch.
• Implemented anti-virus protection for entire network as well as converting all desktop machines from Windows 95 to Windows NT workstations to bring complete stability and security to the network.
• Consolidated backend servers for production and development environments from four servers each to one server hosting all necessary backend services for each environment to increase stability and ease of maintenance with reduced staff on hand.
• Researched and purchased two new server boxes that allowed all 16 servers to be consolidated into two boxes that were easily relocated to new office when current office closed down.