Mark Turney

Summary

Passionate developer looking for difficult problems to clarify and solve through beautiful design and elegant code. Experience designing and developing cross-platform applications for both large and small organizations.

Key Accomplishments

• Developed software to control robots that inspect nuclear power plant steam generators for defects. Wrote features and made improvements that were instrumental to the launch of a defect analysis software suite that reduced inspection staffing requirements by over 80% and dramatically improved inspection repeatability.

• Architect and lead developer of the Microsoft Learning Content Development System. This application significantly simplified the Microsoft e-learning production process, provided instructional designers with instant feedback while writing e-learning content, and has become an externally facing Microsoft product.

• Architect and sole developer of the new Microsoft e-learning form-factor. This new e-learning form-factor dramatically reduced localization costs across 16 languages, reduced content testing by 47%, and has facilitated multi-million dollar content resale partnerships with Best Buy and Dell by utilizing industry e-learning standards.

Experience

• Software Development Engineer III - Zetec Inc.

  2008-Present

  • Partnered with domain experts to expand a suite of more than 10 different applications used to inspect nuclear power plant steam generators for structural defects. I implemented dozens of new features and hundreds of modification to a code base of more than two million lines of C++ BOOST and Qt code.

  • Developed control and calibration logic that determines the robot's location and orientation within a steam generator when an operator manually moves the robot to known locations. Once calibration is complete, the robot follows an automated acquisition plan specified by the operator.

  • Wrote a series of features that largely automate the configuration of the display of inspection eddy current signal data. These features expedite analysis setup and allows for setup validation which improves the consistency of defect analysis.

• Software Development Engineer II - Microsoft Corp.

  2005-2008

  • Champion, architect, and lead developer of the Microsoft Learning Content Development System. Previously writers typed directly into XML files and needed the build team to create an HTML package before they could see the course that they had written. The LCDS is a forms based authoring tool which abstracts XML and file management away from the writer. The author can now see the final course as they type. This tool is used to create all Microsoft Learning's e-learning content, is being used across Microsoft, and has become an externally facing Microsoft product.

  • Proposed, architected, and developed the new Microsoft e-learning form factor. This form factor isolates content from presentation and combines them only at run-time. This removes the need for a build step during production, makes re-branding an existing course as simple as replacing a single folder, and makes supporting a new language as easy as adding a new XML global content file for that language.

  • Added support for the e-learning industry SCORM standard to the Microsoft e-learning authoring tool and form factor. This compatibility allowed third party learning content management systems to import and distribute Microsoft e-learning content for the first time. SCORM support was a deciding factor in multi-million dollar partnership deals with Best Buy and DELL.

• Independent Software Developer

  2003-2005

  • Architected, designed, and developed a sales force call management application as well as the associated databases used to track contacts, calls, meetings, and projects. This web application was developed using Python, CGI, PostgreSQL, XML, XSLT, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

  • Architected, designed, and developed a web crawling application framework using Python, Regular Expressions, and PostgreSQL. This framework was used to create a series of web crawlers that collected sporting statistics.

  • Maintenance development and new functionality for existing database driven dynamic web properties. This involved database design as well as the integration of new features into pre-existing PHP, C++, CGI, MySQL, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript code bases.

• Product Designer - Microsoft Corp.

  2000-2003

  • Served as the developer and technical point of contact for interactive media. I worked with authors to develop a series of XML driven interactive media pieces.

  • Designed and managed the development of the group's media content management system. Served as the administrator of the group's media server.

  • Designed and managed the production of a new vector art library. This illustration library is used exclusively within Training & Certification animated and illustrated content. The use of this illustration library has expanded into Microsoft's web based media and e-learning content due to its high quality and small file size.

• Designer / Technologist - TK Productions Inc.

  1993-2000

  • Introduced web design and development to TK Production's offerings, adding a new revenue stream and helping to better serve our customer's needs. Designed and developed more than 10 web properties.

  • Introduced 3D animation and visual effects to TK Production's offerings, assisting our movement into a higher priced segment of the video production industry.

  • Created dozens of high quality 2D and 3D animations. Shot and edited hundreds of hours of video footage for broadcast and corporate use.

Education

• Ursinus College

  B.A. English Literature, Minor in Biology, 1993-1997

Professional Development

• University of Washington

  Certificate in Embedded and Real-Time Systems Programming, 2010-2011