Software Development Engineer
email: markturney@gmail.com
website: markturney.com
example software: markturney.com/software.html
Passionate developer looking for difficult problems to clarify and solve through beautiful design and elegant code. Experience designing, developing, and maintaining cross-platform desktop and web applications for both large and small organizations.
Developed software that controls robots which inspect nuclear power plants for defects. Wrote features and made improvements to software that were instrumental to the shipment of an industry first inspection analysis program that reduced inspection staffing requirements by over 80% and dramatically improved inspection repeatability.
Architect and lead developer of the Microsoft eLearning authoring application. This tool is being used by many groups within Microsoft and it has been shared with external partner companies.
Architect and sole developer of the new Microsoft eLearning form-factor. This new eLearning form-factor simplified the content production process, reduced content testing by 47%, and has facilitated content resale partnerships with Best Buy and Dell by utilizing industry eLearning standards.
C++ / STL / Boost / Qt Framework
XML / XSLT / XML Schema
HTML / CSS / Javascript
SQL (PostgreSQL, SQLite)
C / Assembly / Bash / Python / PHP
Linux / Windows / MicroCOS-II
2008-Present
Worked closely with domain experts to define and implement more than twenty new features and to make more than 300 modifications and bug fixes. Our software is used to inspect nuclear power plant heat exchangers for cracks and other structural defects. This software suite consists of more than nine different applications within a code-base of more than two million lines of C++ BOOST and Qt code.
Wrote calibration and control logic as well as GUI elements that operators use to control robots mounted within steam generators. This software was integrated with the rest of our acquisition suite so that the robot follows an automated acquisition plan once calibration is complete.
Wrote a component that imports data collected from other manufacturer's probes. Added software that allows users to calibrate recorded signals using standardized defects across multiple data files, to create new composite signals, and to validate the results of the calibration. Developed a feature that allowed users to save filtered and composited signals for later use.
2005-2008
Champion, architect, and lead developer of the Microsoft eLearning authoring application. This application is a forms based authoring tool which abstracts XML, SCORM, and file management completely away from the end user. Usability testing has demonstrated that almost no training is required before a user could author an entire eLearning course for the first time. This tool is being used by many groups within Microsoft, it has been shared with external partner companies, and it is on track to becoming a new Microsoft product.
Proposed, wrote papers, held meetings, championed, architected, and soley developed the new Microsoft eLearning form-factor. This new eLearning form factor removed all presentational data from the XML schema and strictly isolated XML course content from a presentation layer that transforms the XML content into XHTML at run-time. Content authors were then able to view their content in its final form while they were authoring. The need for a build process during production was eliminated. Content could now be easily re-skinned simply by replacing the folder containing the course's presentation layer. The new presentation layer was a single file set that was fully globalized and worked across all 16 target languages with only a single extra XML global content file for each new language. Full SCORM support was added to allow our eLearning content to work within third party learning management systems. This feature was a deciding factor in following multi-million dollar partnership deals with Best Buy and DELL.
Served as the maintainance developer for the original Microsoft eLearning form-factor. Worked with instructional designers and subject matter experts to add features to the original Microsoft eLearning product and to log, prioritize, and fix bugs. This eLearning form-factor was hand-tagged XML content that was transformed into HTML files during a build process before the final result could be viewed or published. The transform and support files were duplicated for each target language and individually localized resulting in hundreds of files.
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 different sportings statistics.
Maintainance development and new functionality for existing database driven dynamic web properties. This involved database design and extension, as well as the integration of new features into pre-existing PHP, C++, CGI, MySQL, XHTML, CSS, and Javascript code bases.
2000-2003
Served as the developer and technical point of contact for interactive media. I developed 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 eLearning content due to its high quality and small file size.
1993-2000
Introduced web design and development to TK Production's offerings, adding a new revenue stream and helping to more broadly serve our customer's advertising 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.
B.A. English Literature, Minor in Biology, 1993-1997
Certificate in Embedded and Real-Time Systems Programming, 2010-2011