James F. Ruffer III

312 238 8571

CTO, Partner

RESOLUTE Games / Memphis, Tennessee My current role is to assure the successful execution of the company’s business mission through development and deployment of the company’s web presence. This requires envisioning the company’s service offerings as a web-based business, leading implementation of web applications, iPhone applications and planning for risk and growth.

Responsibilities

*Strategy & Planning
* Working with the company’s other founders, identify opportunities and risks for delivering the company’s services as a web-based business, including identification of competitive services, opportunities for innovation, and assessment of marketplace obstacles and technical hurdles to the business success.
* Identify technology trends and evolving social behavior that may support or impede the success of the business.
* Evaluate and identify appropriate technology platforms (including web application frameworks and the deployment stack) for delivering the company’s services.
* Lead strategic planning to achieve business goals by identifying and prioritizing development initiatives and setting timetables for the evaluation, development, and deployment of all web-based services.
* Participate as a member of the senior management team in establishing governance processes of direction and control to ensure that objectives are achieved, risks are managed appropriately and the organization’s resources are used responsibly, particularly in the areas of software development, office networks and computers, and telecommunications.
* Collaborate with the appropriate departments to assess and recommend technologies that support company organizational needs.

Implementation & Deployment
* As a member of the senior management team, participate in the selection and registration of the company’s web site domain names, including any related-but-unused domains that could compromise the integrity of the business (through competition, typosquatting, etc.).
* Establish email service for the company (in the absence of a system administrator).
* Select and set up a software revision control system and repository.
* Select and set up web-based internal communications systems, such as a wiki, blog, chatroom, project management, and bug tracking systems.
* Collaborate with the other founders and potential customers to develop use cases (or user stories) and specifications that describe the implementation of the company’s services as a web application.
* Collaborate with a User Experience Designer and potential customers to prepare wireframes or mockups of a prototype of the company’s web application.
* As a member of the senior management team, participate in the selection of a graphic designer who will create the company corporate identity and design the web application’s look and feel. Ensure that the graphic designer has sufficient web experience, follows guidelines established in the User Experience design process, and delivers assets that can be easily adapted to web requirements.
* Select and manage company staff or outsourced vendors who will implement a design as iPhone apps using CSS and XHTML conforming to web standards.
* Select or define the company’s software development methodology.
* Establish a specification conformance and testing regimen based on user stories and the User Experience design.
* Promulgate coding conventions and documentation standards.
* Review current best practices for the selected web framework and establish the initial architecture for the application.
* Select and manage company staff or outsourced vendors who will implement the application.
* Establish and supervise the software development process, setting short-term objectives and assessing progress as defined by the selected software development methodology.
* Conduct code reviews and specification conformance testing as defined by the selected software development methodology.
* Establish and supervise a quality assurance process, including integration and system testing.
* Select, deploy, and monitor performance profiling tools and procedures.
* Review and approve proposed development releases and manage the release process.
* Evaluate and select web application hosting providers.
* Establish an application deployment process and supervise deployment to staging and production servers.
* Monitor application performance and review any application failures in staging or production.
* Support the marketing process by providing implementation of technical requirements for Internet marketing and search engine optimization.
* As a member of the senior management team, establish a customer service and support process, with particular responsibility for web-based services that implement the support function. Establish a process to integrate customer service and support with the software engineering process to support resolution of customer issues and improve application usability.

Operational Management

* Maintain up-to-date knowledge of technology standards, industry trends, emerging technologies, and software development best practices by attending relevant conferences and reading widely (including reading your peers’ blogs!).
* Define and communicate company values and standards for acquiring or developing systems, equipment, or software within the company.
* Ensure that technology standards and best practices are maintained across the organization.
* Share knowledge, mentor, and educate the organization’s investors, management, staff, partners, customers, and stakeholders with regard to the company’s technological vision, opportunities, and challenges.
* Ensure company technical problems are resolved in a timely and cost-effective manner.
* Develop, track, and control the development and deployment annual operating and capital budgets for purchasing, staffing, and operations.
* Supervise recruitment, training, retention, and organization of all development staff in accordance with the company hiring process, personnel policies, and budget requirements.
* Establish standards of performance and monitor conformance for staff (through performance review) and vendors (through service level agreements).
* Ensure the company’s internal technological processes and customer-facing services comply with community expectations and applicable laws and regulations for privacy, security, and social responsibility.
* Promote achievement of the company’s business goals within a context of community collaboration by developing policies for sharing software code, technological innovation, business processes, and other intellectual property.
* Contribute to open source software development, standardization of technologies, and evolution of best practices by collaborating with peers outside the company, releasing code, presenting at conferences, and writing for publication (online or offline).

Sr. Security Engineer

Voltage Security / Chicago, Illinois

Product positioning and the technical validation process which includes: out of box demonstrations, custom demonstrations, proof of convent events, pilot events, and competitive technical sales situations.
Manage all aspects of the customer relationship, including providing sales and technical assistance with distributors, contractors, and end users.
Manage overall training of customers in use, administration and customization of Voltage cryptography and Public Key Infrastructure (PKIs) products.
Manage the positioning of clients’ custom technology and applications for use with the Voltage platform.
Serve as lead technical expert resource for sales and consulting teams to build plans to enable large scale, business critical applications to utilize the Voltage Security platform for information security.
Develop and implement sales plans.
Prepare sales engineering reports by collecting, analysing, and summarizing sales information and engineering and application trends.
Account accomplishments listed below:

Security Engineer

Guidance Software, Manhattan, NY / Chicago, Illinois

Strong security background in incident response, firewalls, IDS, NIDS & HIDS, VPN, and PKI, as well as excellent communication skills to effectively support Account Executives during sales cycle.
Provide technical product information and assist in producing accurate and timely presentations, quotes, RFIs, RFPs, configurations, and installation planning.
Support various sales activities that drive prospects through the awareness and consideration phases of the sales cycle. 75% travel.
Increase acceptance, adoption, and usage of company products within a client organization to create selling opportunities. Serve as technical evangelist in support of the sales force and customer’s internal sale.
Participate at trade shows and conferences
Interface to product marketing and engineering pertaining to customer requirements and competitive trends.
In-depth knowledge of network security concepts with application knowledge of firewall and encryption applications.
General knowledge of Information Security Products and Techniques (Intrusion Detection, URL filtering, Firewall & system monitoring, encryption technologies/VPNs/PKI/IPSEC, etc.)
Strong Presentation skills with confidence to speak in front of small and large groups
Working knowledge of network routing protocols.
Good interpersonal/customer-relations skills and the ability to guide prospect/client ideas into practical security solutions using EnCase Enterprise Edition.

Consultant

Unixbox, Troy, NY

Conceive, create and expand a computer consulting firm. I was able to organically grow this company to a 40+ account and 5 employees. Realized that in order to grow it any further I needed to ask for money or sell
it to a larger consulting firm. So that is exactly what I did. Sold it to SI Technologies.
Selling, implementation and administration of Computer networks ranging from 10K – 400K
Build and Manage a collocation center for customers equipment
Implementation and administration of the following:
- Peer to Peer NT 4.0, 2000, 2003 Server
- Mac OS9, OSX, OSX Server.
- Novell 4.2 – 6.5 Suse
- Unix Freebsd, SCO, SUN, CentOS, Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian, Mephis, Fedora and other flavors
Training to the following companies:
- Fairpoint Communications
- Colospace
- Cihost
- XO communications
Pentesting with 4 other independent ethical hackers.
Deployed and maintain a wireless network in a 25 miles radius
Solutions including:
Apache2; PHP 4/5; MySql; Exim; Postfix; Bind/DNS; Intermapper; Nagios and
Motorola

Network Engineer

Empire Technology Solutions, Albany, NY

Design and price network best fitted to clients needs ¨
Install network and test to clients satisfaction¨
N/T 4.0 and Unix network installations¨
Connect customers LAN to WAN or internet using N/T or Unix¨
Document old and new network¨
Connect LAN/WAN securely with VPN servers¨
TinyTerm application to work with Sco Unix. ¨
Configure and maintain FilePro to work with Sco Unix
Responsible for increasing customer satisfaction, creating accounts, and negotiating purchases for vendors.¨
Developed and implemented new customer and trouble ticket databases.¨
Implement new virtual machines for customer’s websites
Management and training responsibilities.¨
Implemented three new Freebsd servers replacing 2 old BSDI systems.¨
Maintain 3 BSD boxes; web server, mail server, and shell box.
Saved company money on the purchasing of new equipment
Rewired, labeled, and reorganized building and computer rooms.